DP Tool Club 17/CD_ASCQ_17_101194.iso/vrac/flip416.zip/MESSAGES.COM/HELP.FLS

Text File | 1994-04-05 | 42KB | 876 lines

{function key 1}
section 5.0 command reference

this is the command reference for flipper.

section 5.1 this table of contents

section 5.2 general information.

section 5.3 quick commands.

section 5.4 using flipper's review mode.

section 5.5 advanced review mode features.

section 5.6 searching.

section 5.7 basic configuration changes

section 5.8 loading and saving configurations

section 5.9 advanced configuration changes.

section 5.10 cursors

{function key 2}
section 5.2 general information.

flipper does several things automatically.  first of all,
flipper will echo what you type so you can catch typing
mistakes.  next, flipper will read the output of some programs
automatically, as it is being written to the screen.  any
features can be turned off if you desire.

whenever alt is pressed, if flipper is speaking, it stops.
the automatic output is silenced only until you strike another
key, such as the shift key.  the computer continues to execute
the program, even if you silence the voice.

flipper can also react to keys that you press.  the following
assumes that the default configuration, or a similar one is
loaded.  if you move around the screen with the arrow keys,
flipper will read the material you are moving over.  for
example, if you move line by line up or down, flipper will read
the lines as you move onto them.  if you move left or right a
character at a time, flipper reads the character.  if you move a
word at a time using control left arrow or control right
arrow, flipper reads a word at a time.  you can also move a
sentence at a time, forwards or backwards right in your word
processor or editor, using the alt left arrow and right
arrow keys.  refer to section 5.3, for further information.

the fourth method for accessing information from the screen is
to use the quick keys described in section 5.3. the quick keys
allow you read or spell words or lines in the vicinity of the
cursor without removing your hands from the home positions on
the keyboard.  they are accessed by holding down alt and
pressing keys near the right hand home row.  you can also set
flipper so that when you hold down alt and press a number key on
the top row, it will read a section of the screen that you have
chosen, such as a status line for a word processor.  see the
paragraph on the w command in section 5.4 for an example.

the most complete tool you have for reading the screen is the
review mode, which you start by pressing alt semicolon.  the
features available in the review mode are explained in section
5.4.  while you are in the review mode the computer is stopped,
and you can move across the screen having its contents read to
you.  many of flipper's other functions are also controlled from
the review mode.

you can stop flipper and get back to your application program by
pressing alt space bar at any time.

{function key 3} section 5.3 quick commands.

this section describes commands that can be changed by using the
define interview.  it assumes that you are using the default
configuration, or a similar one.  the quick commands are
accessed by holding down the alt key with your left hand and
pressing one of the keys near the right hand home row.  since
your hands do not have to leave the home row, you can check
something quickly while you are typing without losing your place
on the keyboard.  if you need to use one of these keys for a
program, you can use the alt n command which is described at
the end of this section.

the alt key is the key to the left of the space bar.  holding
down the alt key and pressing slash will announce the position
of the cursor.  the keys on the right hand home position, j,
k, and l, will read the word to the left of the cursor, the
word under the cursor, and the word to the right of the cursor,
respectively.  the keys below them, m, comma, and period,
will spell these same words.  the keys above the right hand home
row, u, i, and o, will read the line above the current
line, the current line, and the line below the current line,
respectively. in addition, alt y reads the line before last.
note that these keys form a block on the keyboard around the
right hand home row.  the middle key reads the current item, the
right key reads the next, and the left key reads the last.  the
top keys, u, i, and o, refer to lines, the next row to
words, and the bottom row refers to characters.

flipper will read a sentence at a time if you use alt left
arrow or alt right arrow.  it will actually scroll through
the text in your word processor.  alt up arrow will read the
current sentence.  flipper can also read continuously, sentence
by sentence.  continuous reading is started by alt down arrow.
you can stop it at any time with an alt.  after you are done
making changes or reviewing that section, you can start flipper
reading your text from that point on with an alt down arrow.

alt semicolon will start the review mode.  see section 5.4 for
documentation of the review mode.

alt h starts the help mode.

all of the alt number keys are set to read the window with the
same number.  this is useful, for example, if you want to be
able to read a status line or part of a status line that your
application programs puts on the screen.  definition of the area
to be read is started by pressing w during the review mode.
for example, if your program has a status line on line 25, you
can set alt 8 to read it by pressing w, then 8 for the eight
key, then 1 for the starting column, 80 for the ending column,
25 for the starting row, and 25 for the ending row.

alt p reads the page meaning read the whole screen.

alt f flips between the primary and secondary configurations.
refer to section 5.8 and section 5.10 for more information about
setting up and using configurations.

alt space bar stops flipper at any time, and leaves the review
mode.

if you need to use one of the above keys for a program, you can
just press alt n.  flipper will then say normal, meaning
that the next key press will be treated normally instead of
being captured as a command to flipper.  for example, if your
communications program uses alt h to hang up the modem, you
would press alt n, to get flipper to disregard the next key,
and then the alt h.

{function key 4}
section 5.4 review mode

flipper's review mode is started by pressing alt semicolon.
when it is active, the following functions are available.  if
you hold down control while pressing a key in review mode, the
instructions for that key are read.

many of the functions of the review mode are similar to the alt
keys in the regular mode.  j, k, and l read the previous,
current or next word.  the difference between using the review
mode and the alt keys is that when you use the alt keys, you
read the material without moving, where in the review mode,
these keys also move your location. for example, if you continue
to press the l key in the review mode, you will advance a word
at a time, reading out each word. similarly, the u, i, and
o keys will take you to the last line, read the current line,
and take you to the next line.  the m, comma, and period
keys do the same one character at a time.

additionally, there are keys in the review mode which do
functions which are unique to the review mode.  for example, the
t key will announce the time of day.

the b key will take you back to where you were the last time
you were in the review mode.  this is useful for example, if you
are referring to information from one part of the screen while
typing it into another part of the screen.  you just hit the b
key each time you reenter the review mode, taking you back to
the area of the screen that you are using the review mode to
examine.

the c key will take you out of the review mode, and move the
cursor to the present position, if it is possible.  if the
cursor can not be moved into a location, for example away from
the dos command line or onto a status line for a program,
flipper will say failure after moving the cursor as close as
it can to the indicated location.  the s key will allow you to
enter a search pattern as described in section 5.6.  the
semicolon key moves your position back to the cursor.

the p key will read the current page, or screen.  if you want
to read only a portion of the screen, you will need to set up
one of the alt number keys.

the e key will read the enhancement at the current position.

the g command lets you grab a line of text off the screen.
you can then put it back in a different place, or in a different
application.  you mark the beginning of text with the mark with
the x key, and then move to the end of the text and press g.
you can read back the text later with shift g, and you can put
the text back into an appication program later with the put
action which you can attach to a key.  the default grab buffer
is small, about 100 characters, but you can enlarge it by
putting a g on the command line for flipper, followed by the
number of characters you want.

slash in the review mode will announce current position, row and
column.  alt slash in the review mode will announce the position
of the cursor.

you can use the v command to change flipper's voice, as
documented at the end of section 6.0.

you can also use the cursor keys, left, right, up, and
down. the left and right keys move a character at a time
in each direction and read that character.  the up and down
keys move a line at a time, and the lines are read.  these same
keys, with control, move words to the right or left, and single
lines up or down, and read off the word at that position.  this
is useful, for example, to read a column of words.

pressing the d key will allow you to define many of flippers
actions.  it is documented in section 5.5, below.

{function key 5}
section 5.5 advanced review mode

many of the commands in the review mode can be preceded by a
number, which can be typed using the keypad or the regular
number keys.  that will result in the forward or backward motion
being done that many times.  for example, 50 l will move
forward 50 words.  the keys which usually read the current line,
word, or character, i, k, and comma, will move to an
absolute coordinate, for example 10 i will move to line 10,
10 k will move to the tenth word on the line, and 10 comma
will move to the tenth character or column on the line.  a
number before the p command will result in the current page
being read starting from that line.

whenever you are asked for a row or column number, you can press
return, to use the old value.  flipper will read it out to
you, so you can check a defined window setting, for example, by
pressing w to start the definition, then selecting the window,
and then pressing return in response to the questions.  you can
also answer c, to use the current cursor position, or x, to
use the position of the marker.

holding down shift while pressing the u, i, and o keys
will move you to the first line, the middle line, and the last
line of the screen, respectively.  the j, k, and l keys
will move you to the beginning, middle or end of the current
line, respectively, and the m and period will move you to
the beginning or end of the current word.  as odd man out, shift
comma will spell the entire current word.

holding down the alt key while pressing m, comma, or
period will move you character by character while pronouncing
the military alphabet word for the appropriate character.  it
will also read the extended ascii number for any other symbol.

the f command allows you to flip between two configurations,
primary and secondary.  this allows you to configure flipper two
different ways, and then easily switch between them. you can
also load an unlimited number of configurations into the
computer's memory using the flipext command and then load them
using the f command.  to retrieve the third configuration that
you loaded with the flipext command, for example, you would
type 3 f.  see section 5.10 for additional information on the
use of flipext, flipload, and flipsave.

the x command is used to mark a location on the screen.  you
can use the marked location in several different ways.  you can
move to the marked location with a shift x.  if you type x
when you are being asked a row or column number, the position of
the mark is used, row or column.  additional marks can be used
by preceding x with a number up to nine.  for example, 2 x
sets the second mark.  2 shift x jumps to the second mark.
whenever you are asked for a row or column number, you can reply
with the c key, to use the current position, or x, to use
the marker position, or number x, to use another marker.  you
can also read from where you are to the mark using the r
command.




{function key 6}
section 5.6 searching

searching is the process of having flipper look for something on
the screen.  you tell flipper what you want to search for by
pressing s in the review mode, typing what you want to look
for, and then pressing return.  flipper will then search forward
and tell you if it finds what you were looking for by giving its
position and moving there.  once the pattern is defined, you can
search for the pattern repeatedly by pressing alt j, k, or
l in the review mode. alt l is used to search forward from
the current location on the screen.  alt j will start a
backward search, and alt k will do a forward search over the
whole screen, starting at the top.

for example, to search for the word dog on the screen, first
enter the review mode.  then press s and then type d o g
followed by a return.  flipper will jump to the first letter of
the first occurrence of dog on the screen, and announce where
that is, row and column.  to search for other occurrences of the
word dog on the screen, press alt l repeatedly.  flipper
will continue to advance to the first letter in each of the
following occurrences of the word dog.  when there are no more
on the rest of the screen, flipper will say pattern not found,
and will not move.

in addition to searching for simple words, you can also search
for enhancements and other types of things on the screen using
wild cards.  they are entered into the search pattern by
pressing control and a letter.  wildcard characters are special
characters in a search string.  they can be entered into search
strings along with plain characters to search for classes of
characters, or attributes like enhancements or the beginning of
a line.

the option keys also allow you to choose whether capital letters
will match small letters during a search.  for example, if you
want to search for changes in the video enhancements on the
screen, you would press s, to start the search, control e,
for enhancement, and then return, to show that you have
finished the string, and then alt j or l as many times as
you wish to find wherever the enhancements are changed on the
screen.

to find, for example, a regular, non-enhanced character followed
by an inverse video character, you would press s, to start the
search, control r, for regular, control a, for anything,
control i, for inverse, and then return, and the search string
is defined.  you can then press alt j or l as desired to
find that on the screen as many times as it occurs.  the search
string is saved until you change it or restart flipper when you
boot the system.  the search string is also saved and reloaded
with the configurations.

to get a list of the wildcards that you can use in a search, hit
control s from review mode.

if you know the number for a symbol or enhancement, you can
enter it into the search pattern by using control n.  flipper
will prompt you for the character number.  you can use the
military spell commands, alt m, comma, and period in the
review mode, to find the number for a character that is on the
screen.  you can also use the e command to get the number for
an enhancement that is on the screen.


{function key 7}
section 5.7 basic configuration changes

flipper keeps two complete configurations inside its own memory.
these include the current search string, defined blocks, margin
settings, symbol sets, option choices, etc.  to switch back and
forth between them, you press the f key, for flip, during
the review mode, or alt f outside the review mode.  to save
configurations, you can type flipsave filename.flp at the dos
prompt, where filename is any valid name.  to load the
configuration back in, type flipload filename.flp.  see
section 5.10 for more information.

changing flipper's voice.  voices are changed by pressing v
during the review mode, and pressing the function keys.  keys
one and two raise and lower the speed of flipper's voice during
normal output.  similarly, keys five through ten control the
pitch, inflection, and amplitude of flipper's voice.  you can
change flipper's three voices separately, keyboard echo,
command, and automatic output, by using alt, control, or shift
with the function keys.  press return when you are done.

flipper's characteristics can be modified either temporarily or
permanently, to match your changing needs.  many of these can be
changed by pressing the function keys during the review mode, in
combination with the alt, control and shift keys.  all of them
alternate on and off, so the best way to use them is not to
memorize where they are, but to just try them until you find the
one you want.  after you have flipper set the way you want,
there are two programs, called flipsave and flipload, that
you can run from the dos prompt that will save the configuration
in a file that you specify on the command line.  flipload is
automatically run with the file start.flp, so you can change
this file to make flipper start up in your favorite
configuration.  flipper has many other facilities for handling
configurations, which are described in section 5.10.  section
6.0 of the instructions describes the available options.

flipper can read any character or symbol that appears in the ibm
character set.  this includes the letters and symbols which
appear on your keyboard, but also includes such things as forms
drawing characters and shaded boxes.  these additional symbols
are off by default, but you can turn them all on by using the
override all symbols on option function key 6 during the review
mode.  you can tell flipper which selected symbols to read by
pressing insert during the review mode and then pressing the
function keys.  the symbols are divided into descriptive sets
such as forms drawing symbols, mathematical symbols and foreign
symbols.  you can also turn on symbols from the keyboard by
typing them.  if you want to turn on specific special symbols,
flipper can read through a list of them and you can tell it to
read them or not one at a time.  to get the list of symbols
which are to be turned on or off, press insert, then control
f, control m, control d, or control a, and you will be
given a list of form symbols, math symbols, decorative symbols
or accent and other foreign symbols, respectively, and asked to
select the ones you want.  alt insert and alt delete
combinations are used in the review mode to insert symbols into
flipper's letters set or delete symbols from flipper's letters
set, for example if you want accented characters sent directly
through to a synthesizer.  they are documented in section 5.9.

to delete characters from the character set, you can press
delete during the review mode and then type the symbols which
you want to remove from the character set.

if you know the ascii code for a symbol that you want to turn on
or off, you can put that symbol into the character set by typing
the number and then the insert key.  similarly, you can remove a
symbol from the symbol set by typing its number and then the
delete key.  flipper will tell you what the ascii code for the
characters that you are moving over when you use the military
spell commands alt m, comma, and period over non
alphabetic symbols.

the selected set of symbols are saved and reloaded with the
configuration, and primary and secondary sets are maintained
along with the rest of the configuration.

if you are spelling or moving one character at a time, all
symbols will be read whether or not they are turned on.

{function key 8}

section 5.8 loading and saving configurations


this section describes flipper's multiple configuration
capability, including the use of the f command and the utility
programs flipload, flipsave, and flipext.

all of the changes that you make to the way flipper works,
including its voices, the character set, option settings, search
strings, etc., are referred to as a configuration. once you
have flipper set up the way you want within a spreadsheet, for
example, or for a spelling checker, you will undoubtedly wish to
save the configuration so that you can use it again later.

flipper not only lets you save and reload a configuration, it
will allow you to you to make up several of them and switch
between them quickly.

for example, you might want to have one configuration for
entering text into wordperfect, and a different configuration
for proofreading your text, with punctuation and capitalization
turned on.  it would be very clumsy, of course, to always enter
the review mode, make the changes, leave the review mode, etc.
to set up flipper to make this faster, first, set up a
configuration for wordperfect the way you want it.  then make
the other configuration the same by pressing shift f.  now
both configurations are the same, set up for wordperfect.  now
you can put in the changes for the differences you want.  when
you then flip the configuration with the alt f command,
flipper will flip between the editing mode and the writing mode.

it is often useful to have two configurations, primary and
secondary, that only have one difference, so that you can change
that one thing quickly.

now that you have set up these two configurations for
wordperfect, you can save them for use later on.  to save them
permanently, after you exit wordperfect, flip to the primary
configuration, then execute the following command:

flipsave wpprime.flp

then flip to the secondary configuration with the alt f, and
execute the following command:

flipsave wpsecond.flp

you can then load those configurations later by executing the
command:

flipload wpprime.flp wpsecond.flp

the names wpprime and wpsecond are arbitrary, of course.

the last flipload command loads your starting configuration into
both the primary and secondary configurations.

flipext:

flipext is a command that you can use to set up other
configurations in memory, in addition to the primary and
secondary configurations that are built into flipper.  for each
configuration that you set up with flipext, you will use up
3 kilobytes of your system memory.  as you set up each
configuration with flipext, it is given a number, 1 for the
first one that you make 2 for the second, and so on.  flipext is
used with configurations that you have saved earlier with the
flipsave command.  for example, you can set up your starting
configuration as an external configuration by executing the
command:

flipext start.flp

at the dos prompt.  you use the configurations that you loaded
by going into the review mode, pressing the number of the
configuration that you want, then pressing the f key.

an simple example of the use of configurations set up with the
flipext command is the case of a computer which is used by both
blind persons and by sighted persons.  you can set up a silent
configuration for use by sighted persons, and a regular one for
use by blind operators.  you do this by going into flipper's
review mode and then turning off all of flipper's speaking
options, including automatic output, keyboard echo, reading
after arrow keys, reading after backspace and delete, the
backslash command, and you can also turn of the quick keys, and
the alt number keys.  with this configuration, the only
difference that flipper being loaded makes is the ability to pop
into review mode, and memory use.  you can then save this silent
configuration by leaving the review mode, and then executing the
command:

flipsave silent.flp

then if you put in the autoexec.bat file the line:

flipext start.flp silent.flp

then you can turn off flipper for use by a sighted person by
entering the review mode at any time, and then pressing 2 f.
when you need to use the computer again, you can press 1 f,
loading the starting configuration again, making flipper
interactive.

you can also change external configurations by going into the
review mode, setting the configuration the way you want it, and
then pressing the number of the configuration that you want to
change, and then shift f.  remember that you need to change
the configuration that you load from on the disk to make
permanent changes that will be there when you reboot.

flipper can load configurations automatically, each time you
start a program.  you simply list the configurations that you
want loaded in a text file, one per line.  the text file should
have with the same name as the program that you run, but with an
extension .fac.  the first two listed will be loaded into
flipper, and the rest will replace external configurations.  if
you want to skip one, and not have it be replaced, you can leave
a blank line.

{function key 9}
section 5.9 advanced configuration changes

flipper has an interview system for defining what it does.  some
users may never need to this at all.  with the default
configuration supplied, the program works right out of the box.
but if you wish to customize many of flipper's powerful, new
features, you will want to use this menu system to set flipper
up the way you prefer.



to get to the definition menu, enter review mode and press d.
you will be asked a series of simple questions.  if you are not
sure of the answer to a question, just hit return and flipper is
likely to pick a reasonable choice for you.

for example, you can turn off echo for specific keys on the keyboard.
if you don't want the backspace key to say backspace as well as the
character you are deleting, just press d, for define in review mode,
then k for key, and when flipper asks you which key, press the
backspace.  flipper will then ask you if you want to echo that key,
and you hit n, for no.  you can then hit alt spacebar to leave anything
else on that key unchanged.


as another example, lets say that you would like to have the
alt 8 key read the tab key read the column number to you as you
tab over in a document.  you hit d, for define, and then k for
key, of the choices you are read.  flipper will then ask you to
hit the key you want to define, and you hit the tab key.
flipper will ask you whether you want the key echoed, and
whether you want to clear any flipper function from that key.
if you say n, don't clear it, flipper will then ask whether
you want it sent to the application.  you say y, for yes,
because you want the tab itself to be done, and then no when
flipper asks you if you want to do something before the
application.  you want it to be done after, so that flipper will
read off the column that you end up on.  flipper will then ask
what you want to do.  you then press c, for cursor functions,
again one of the choices available, and then p to read the
position of the cursor.  flipper will ask you whether you want
both the row and column read, or what, and you can respond with
c, to read the cursor column only.  flipper will then ask you
whether you want to read column one or just one.  after
answering these questions, and leaving review, flipper will read
the column number as you tab.  so, instead of having to call up
and ask for a feature, as many people have, by the way, you
can do it yourself.

if you want to find out what flipper is already doing, once you
have picked what you want to look at, a key for example, just
hit return at each question.  flipper will then tell you what
each of the current settings are as you go.  one good way to
learn how to configure flipper is to explore existing
configurations in this way.

you can move through the choices in this and all other flipper
menus by using the up and down arrow keys.  to select a menu
choice, either press the <return> key when you are on the
selection you want, or type the first letter of your selection.

pressing <return> in answer to a menu question will select the
previous setting for that option.  you can press the space bar
at any time and flipper will announce the previous or default
setting for the current menu option.

pressing the backspace key is a good way to find out where
you are, should you be interrupted while using the menus.
pressing <backspace> will cause the question to be read again.
pressing <escape> will back up to the previous menu, or, if you
are at the definition menu's main level, <escape> will quit and
put you back into review mode outside the definition interview.
if you leave with an escape or an alt spacebar, flipper assumes
that you want to leave the rest the same as it was.


each time flipper asks a yes or no question, you have similar
options, with spacebar to read the default, return to use the
old or default answer and backspace to re-read the question.

if flipper is asking for a number, such as an enhancement number,
a row number, or a column, you can answer with a return to get the
old answer, a c to use the current location, x to use
the location of the mark, or a number 1-9 followed by x to
use the location of one of the numbered marks.  remember, you
mark a location on the screen by pressing x during the review
mode, or a number and then x for one of the other marks.

for example, if you are asked for an enhancement number, you can
reply with a c and flipper will take the enhancement at the
current location.  if you are being asked for a row number, you
can respond 9 x and flipper will use the row of the ninth mark
as the answer.

you can also press spacebar to hear the current setting, and
backspace to re-read the question, as usual.

actions are a central part of the interview process.  that is
where you are asked what you want flipper to do.  the same
actions are available from a key, a reaction zone, or a cursor
move.  an action can be read a window, read a line, read the
cursor position, toggle a function key toggle, etc.  any time
you can do an action, you can do a series of actions.  this
means you can read several windows, the line number and then the
line of text, and so forth, in any combination.  one of the
questions asked is whether you want to allow automatic output
during an action.  the reason you might not want automatic
output during an action is that you might not want to hear what
the application would speak, because you want to explicitly
speak something that you chose instead.

the c cursor definition interview is explored in section 5.10.

the w selection from the define menu will allow you to define
windows with many more options than the simple w from review
mode.  these options include being able to read pop up boxes,
and specific enhanced areas, and detailed control over how the
material is read, including all symbols on, announcing enhancement
changes, spelling, etc.

p for a prefixed key:

this item lets you define keys based on what keys you pressed before.
for example, you can assign an action to the second press of a key.
you might want to define alt w to read the current word, and then
alt w again to spell the word.  you would use the prefix choice to
assign the action on the second, or double keypress.

the q selection, for quiet, allows you to select areas of the
screen which are not automatically read.  do not confuse them
with the windows of the w command.  quiet windows are
useful, for example, if a clock is on the screen and is being
read every second.  you can just put a quiet window over the
clock to silence it.  quiet windows are particularly useful when
you have extended automatic output on, which may to read too
much otherwise.  up to ten quiet windows can be defined at a
time, each associated with a number key one through nine, or
zero.  when you are defining a quiet window, you can respond d
instead of picking a window, to deactivate all quiet windows.
or, once you have selected a particular window, you can press
d to deactivate that quiet window.  the only speech that the
quiet windows will suppress is that from the automatic output,
or the extended automatic output.  when you read an area with a
command, the quiet windows have no effect.

one of the choices of how to read a window is to have flipper
send the selected text to a electronic brailler, or to a braille
display.  if flipper says device not ready, you need to set up
the output device.  you set up a serial device by putting a plus
sign on the command line for flipper, followed by a 1 for com1
or a 2 for com2.  you then need to set up the communications
port with the mode command to the correct baud rate, etc.  to
set up a parallel device, put an equal sign on the command line,
followed by a 1 for lpt1 or prn, a 2 for lpt2, a 3 for
lpt3, etc.  once the device is set up, you can braille any item
or window from an action.  in the review mode, you can braille
several lines starting with the line the review cursor is on by
typing a number followed by the alt equal.  if the margins set
using the w key are on, they will be used.  flipper requires
full hardware handshaking for serial braille devices, and com3
and com4 may be used if your computer bios supports them.

to create an exception vocabulary, write an ascii file with the
words whose pronunication you want to change one per line,
followed by an equal sign, and the characters that you want to
send to the synthesizer instead.  to load the exception table,
use the program flip_voc followed by a space and the name of the
dictionary file.  the space taken by the dictionary is close to
the size of the text file itself.  there is no need to sort the
dictionary, flip_voc will take care of that.  there is a example
vocabulary in example.voc.  to load it, you would give the
command:

flip_voc example.voc

after flipper is loaded.  the text after the equal sign for each
word can be a misspelling, or phoneme strings particular to the
specific synthesizer.

{function key 10}

section 5.10 cursors

having flipper place the cursor at the best point on the screen,
the place where the action is, is important to make
a program easy to use.  flipper will actually look for several
different characteristics, and attempt to choose the one that
makes the most sense.  sometimes it is necessary to give flipper
a hint, to make it use another method for selecting the cursor
position that works better for a particular program.  sometimes
it is necessary to make flipper use different techniques in
different parts of a program.

by default, flipper will assume that the cursor is where dos
says it is, and this usually works.  if it fails, flipper may
know it is not working and try something else.  what it tries
next is called an enhancement cursor, a patch of a different
color. there are several options which change exactly what the
enhancement cursor is, what color it is, how to look for it,
start at bottom of the screen and go up, for example, and so
forth.

finding cursors is one of the more important parts of being able
to use different programs.  a cursor is simply the point on
the screen that a programmer is calling attention to, by
blinking something, using a special color, or using an arrow.
flipper will look for many different kinds of cursor, and you
will sometimes need to give it instructions as to what kind is
used for a particular program or a particular mode.

press d for define and c for cursor and you can choose
a simple dos cursor, hardware cursor or enhancement
cursors of many different styles.  you can control the searching
pattern, and the specific appearance of acceptable cursors, if
you wish.  you can also pick the area of the screen where the
cursor should be.

flipper can remember up to ten different kinds of things to look
for at a time, and it will use whichever one it finds first, in
the order that you select.

the dos cursor is the most efficient and fastest cursor, if it
is available.  the dos cursor appears as a blinking underline or
block to a sighted person.  the hardware cursor is similar in
appearance, and is usually in exactly the same place, but it may
not be under some circumstances for example, lotus 123 and some
mainframe emulators need the hardware cursor.

at the dos prompt, the cursor is naturally at the location where
dos thinks it is.  in word processors, still usually works, but
in special modes, such as the spelling checker of wordperfect,
an inverse video cursor is used for the location of the
misspelled word, which is the important point on the screen.
the normal cursor is just sitting down on the status line,
waiting for your choice of what to do about the misspelled word.
in this case, you will want to tell flipper to forget about the
normal cursor, and put you on the misspelled word using the
enhancement cursor.  some applications may use an arrow pointing
to an item.

if you give flipper a first cursor which is an enhancement
cursor and a second cursor which is the dos cursor, this tells
flipper to use the enhancement cursor if there is one, so
if you leave the spelling checker and there is no enhancement
cursor, flipper will track the normal cursor.  in other words,
flipper will work correctly inside and outside of the spelling
checker if you tell it to prefer an enhancement cursor.

one important use of different cursors is that flipper can
recognize the mode of operation of a program by the changes in
the cursor.  by defining cursors separately for different areas
of the screen, or for different colors that it might be on, you
can have flipper behave differently.  for example, in lotus 123,
when the hardware cursor is on a black on white location, it is
in a cell and it is appropriate to read the whole cell after the
arrow keys.  if it is on a white on black location, then you are
most likely editing within a cell, and flipper should read
characters when the left or right arrow keys are hit.  another
thing that can be useful includes whether the cursor is in a
box.

you can either do some action when the cursor is selected or
moves, or you can change how the actions go after a key press by
defining a cursor as a lightbar or not a lightbar.  whether a
cursor that you have described is a lightbar or not is purely
your choice, simply setting a flag so you can refer to it later
when defining keys or other actions.  calling a cursor a
lightbar or not does not change in any way how flipper looks for
a cursor.  cursors can also be activated or deactivated as an action.

it may be necessary to use searches for enhancement changes,
moving around in review mode, and using the e command to
locate the enhancement changes that are being used for a cursor
in a program.  once you have found the enhancement
that you want to track, you can use the shift c command to
create a cursor of the color where the review position is.  once
you have found the cursor enhancement, you may also need to
change the search that flipper uses for the enhancement cursor
from top to bottom or bottom to top, or make other changes from
the define menu.  the enhancements that a program uses may
change depending on how it is set up, and on whether it is being
used on a color system or on a system with a monochrome monitor.
when asks if you want to require the enhanced area look like a
cursor, it means if there might be any status lines or similar
things that might have the same enhancement that you would not
want flipper to use as a cursor, similarly, if there are more than
one patches on a particular line, the might be a row of titles
or something else that may not be appropriate as a cursor.

if you press alt c, flipper will tell you which cursor it is
using, which is helpful when you are trying to set up several
cursors.

in the default configuration, what flipper reads after the arrow
keys is determined by the kind of cursor flipper decided to use.
if the cursor is normal, then flipper reads a character after
the left or right arrow keys, and it reads the whole line after
the up and down arrow keys.  if the cursor that flipper decided
to use was an lightbar cursor, however, then flipper will
read that enhanced area after any of the arrow keys.  this
results in automatically reading the appropriate material
when using pull down menus, as described below.

one very common use of enhancement cursors is for pull
down menus.  these menus, which are similar to those used
with mice in the macintosh computer, are becoming more
and more common. in general, these menus consist of a row of
keywords across the top of the screen, and when a item is
selected, a list of choices appears below it.  one item of the
list is usually highlighted, and you can move up and down the
list using the arrow keys.  if the item is highlighted using
inverse video, or if you select the proper enhancement using the
shift c command, then flipper will track up and down the menu
as you move the selected item.  if the cursor keys are set as
they are in the default configuration, then the selected item
will be read as you move onto it.  this makes use of these menu
systems very easy and natural.  you simply move through the menu
with the up and down arrow keys until you get to the choice you
want, and you then select that item by using the return key.

{end of help.fls}
.