Hey Mark, I remember years ago you created a grammar of sorts called vortex which allowed you to use Select-and-Say in part at least in noncompliant apps.  I was looking around your repository recently and wasn't able to find it. Did you still have it published somewhere? do you still use it?

Yes, Vortex is still available.  I've been using it with DNS 14 for

years and recently switched my home system to DNS 15 and Vortex seems to

work fine with it.

 

You want the Vortex branch of my git hub repository for Vocola 2,

https://github.com/mdbridge/Vocola-2/tree/vortex.

 

Check out then install Vocola from that branch (see installation

instructions in README.md).  Most of the Vortex code is at

https://github.com/mdbridge/Vocola-2/blob/vortex/src/to_MacroSystem/_vortex.py;

you can browse it to see the block list and commands offered.

 

Vortex provides "basic text control" for most applications except a

block list of applications that Dragon handles well.  Basic text control

means you have full select and say ability including correct XYZ for the

most recent utterances.  This is what DNS 12 used to provide for

nonstandard applications.  Vortex isn't quite as good because it doesn't

empty the utterance buffer when you physically type a key or click a

mouse.  I generally decline the Dragon chrome extension and just use

chrome directly with Vortex.

 

Editing of application text is implemented via backspacing plus

retyping; it thus works even with things like the command prompt or X

terms that don't handle shifted arrow keys.

 

Vortex uses SendInput so it also has the advantage of solving the doubled

keys problem for dictation.

 

WARNING: this is not an official Vocola feature or polished and I don't

have time to support it.  If Rugider or someone else wants to

incorporate this technology in their products, they are more than

welcome to do so -- the basic idea comes from Joel Gould and my code is

under the MIT open source license.

actually, I think I left it with shift-arrow keys for highlighting so you can see what's selected, but it would be easy to have a list of apps to not use shift keys for.
(My xterm defaults turn shift arrows into normal arrows)

This is really cool Mark. I'm surprised it's really mostly one main file _vortex.py plus some injected callbacks.

https://github.com/mdbridge/Vocola-2/compare/vortex

For some reason I remember there being more grammar commands, but it looks like it just takes all of the standard dragon commands like correct x thru y, resume with x, etc.

It would be awesome if this were an option built into natlink. I know they are working on getting py3 going now. I can almost follow what you're doing, but I think I need to read Joel's original whitepaper to understand more about the dictation object. A couple of us have been looking at UIAutomation to find and select the underlying text, but this is great since it's right in dragon's system. The UIA stuff will be good for others that don't use dragon though.

Adding this for reference. I'm not sure if this is up to date or the same as what's in vortex yet, but putting it here.

https://qh.antenna.nl/unimacro/aboutunimacro/history/voicecoders.pdf

Aha! I finally found this post about Vortex... I saw it when it first went by, but my Google-foo was not strong enough to find it when I wanted to use it. I only found it today when I ran into your post complaining about DNS 13 dropping BasicTextControl, which led to you creating vortex as far as I can tell.

Mark: Q: Are there any issues using Vortex without using the rest of Vocola?  does it interfere with traditional Dragon  scripting (and for that matter, with nontraditional Dragon scripting).

 

I want to continue using my vanilla Dragon/AHK scripting approach, at least up until the point where I have the time to consider changing.

 

--

 

Perhaps I can generalize this question:

 

 there are many different commands scripting systems for Dragon, ranging from Dragon's own, Vocola,  various DragonFly, Kaldi...

 

( and my own somewhat nonstandard AHK scripting which is built on top of Dragon's basic scripting)

 

Are there problems running  more than one of these same time? Apart from the usual problems of resource contention, and conflicting vocabulary.

 

 if I can run them simultaneously it makes it easier to migrate.

 

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DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

Vortex is a modified version of Vocola; that said, it's fine to install it and simply use no Vocola commands. It and/or Vocola will not interfere with KnowBrainer, or Dragon's built in scripting.
They shouldn't also not interfere with dragonfly or caster and related packages as long as they are using the NatLink combined installer. Vocola and thus Vortex do not yet support the new Python 3 NatLink being worked on.

If you want to try vortex, just install http://vocola.net/unofficial/Vocola-vortex7.zip instead of the latest version of Vocola using the instructions at http://vocola.net/v2/InstallVocola.asp

one caveat though, vortex modifies the Vocola Dragon extension so it cannot what characters Vocola commands are sending to the application; this allows it to update the dictation buffer and/or cancel it when appropriate. If you're primarily using dragonfly, you will need to set up something similar for your dragonfly commands. This will likely be much harder to do from Dragon built-in scripting.

(in the ideal world, someone will figure out how to detect that keys are being sent to the application and process them appropriately, excluding the keystrokes that vortex itself sends.)