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Automatic Screen Access Program (ASAP) for IBM and compatible computers September 1991 Copyright 1991 MicroTalk 337 S. Peterson Louisville, KY 40206 Voice: (502) 897-2705 Fax: (502) 895-3022 Modem: (502) 893-2269 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Trademarks Accent is a trademark of Aicom Corporation. Audapter is a trademark of Personal Data Systems. ASAP and LiteTalk are trademarks of MicroTalk. Braille 'n Speak is a trademark of Blazie Engineering. BrailleMate is a trademark of TSI. DEC-TALK is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. DoubleTalk is a trademark of RC Systems, Inc. Echo is a trademark of Street Electronics Corporation. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. LapTalk is a trademark of Computersmith Enterprises. MS-DOS is a registered trademark of MicroSoft Corporation. Sounding Board is a trademark of GW Micro. SynPhonix and Sonix are trademarks of Artic Technologies. VoTalker is a trademark of Votrax, Inc. Word Perfect is a registered trademark of Word Perfect Corporation. License MicroTalk agrees to grant to you, upon receipt of the completed registration form, a license to use the enclosed software with the terms and restrictions set forth in this agreement. The enclosed software and its documentation are copyrighted by MicroTalk. The software is protected from unauthorized duplication by Federal law. You may not copy or reproduce this material except as specifically set forth in this license agreement. 1. You may make copies of this software for your own use provided you reproduce all copyright notices. 2. You may not distribute copies to others. You may, however, transfer the original and all copies, along with this license, if ii you provide MicroTalk with written notice and the transferee fills out a registration form and agrees to be bound by the terms set forth therein. LIMITATIONS This software is sold as is. MicroTalk assumes no liability for damages of any kind that may arise from the use of this software and makes no claims about its fitness for any particular purpose. The exclusion of implied warranties is not permitted by some states. The above exclusion may not apply to you. This warranty provides you with specific legal rights. There may be other rights that you have which vary from state to state. iii Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The MicroTalk BBS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Disk Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 About This Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Synthesizer Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Using ASAP with DoubleTalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Using ASAP with Accent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Using ASAP with Audapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Using ASAP with Braille 'n Speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Using ASAP with DEC-TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Using ASAP with the Echo PC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Using ASAP with LiteTalk and LapTalk . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Using ASAP with PortTalk synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Using ASAP with the Sounding Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Using ASAP with SynPhonix and VoTalker . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Using ASAP with Other Synthesizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 General Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 What is BIOS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Silencing the Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Temporary Silence: SHIFT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Normal Silence: Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 iv Permanent Silence: Alt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Refreshing Your View: Both Shift Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Reviewing Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Line Review Commands: 7, 8, and 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Word Review Commands: 4, 5, and 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Character Review Commands: 1, 2, and 3 . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Move to Top of Window: 0,5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Move to Bottom of Window: 0,2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Move to Left Edge: 0,1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Move to Right Edge: 0,3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Announce Entire Screen or Window: 0,0 . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Announce from the Cursor Down: 0,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Quick Read by Screens: 0, PGDN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Quick Read by Screens for WordPerfect: 0, Right Arrow . . . . 19 Type Word at Reading Cursor: 0,8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Parking the Reading Cursor: 0,ENTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 One-Shot Control Panel Command: 0,[command] . . . . . . . . . 20 The Repeat Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Other Audio Ques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Special Action Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Using the Control Panel: Alt-Enter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Changing Options in the Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Navigation Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Moving Directly to a Line: A-Y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Returning the Reading Cursor to the Real Cursor: Z . . . . . 23 v Moving to a Relative Line: Up Arrow and Down Arrow . . . . . 24 From the Cursor Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Word by Word: Ctrl-Arrows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Character by Character: Left Arrow and Right Arrow . . . . . 24 The Rest of the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Altering Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Attribute Monitor: Alt-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Read By Screens: Alt-B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Set Page: Alt-Dash and Alt-Equals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Color Announcement: Alt-C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 DOS Output Announcement: Alt-D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Extended ASCII Announcement: Alt-E . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Find Attribute: Alt-F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Ring Bell at Column: Alt-g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Horizontal Cursor Position: Alt-H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Indention Notification: Alt-I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Keystrokes Announced: Alt-K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Label Keys: Alt-L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Most Punctuation Notification: Alt-M . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Numbers: Alt-N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Noise with DOS Output: Alt-O . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Key Pad Ignore: Alt-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Quiet: Alt-Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Auto Read: Alt-R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Snow Checking: Alt-S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Time: Alt-T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 vi User Defined Keys: Alt-U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Automated User Function: CTRL-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Let User Defined Keys Pass Through: CTRL-Right Bracket . . . 36 Viewing Method: Alt-V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Announce Typing as Words: Alt-W . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Extended Activity Checking: Alt-X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Support Computers of Yesteryear: Alt-y . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Zap a Command: Alt-Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 The Numeric Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 User Function: 1 to 9 F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Pitch Adjustment: 1 to 9 P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Speed Adjustment: 1 to 9 S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Volume Adjustment: 1 to 9 V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Setting the Top Left of a Window: [window] T . . . . . . . . 41 Defining the Bottom Right of a Window: [window] B . . . . . . 41 Zooming in on a Window: [window] Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Closing a Window and Returning to a Full Screen View: 0 . . . 42 Announcing a Window's Contents: [window] A . . . . . . . . . 42 Memorize: [window] M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Recall: [memory bank] R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Using a Software Cursor: [window] U . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Monitoring Screen Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Monitor Character and Read Line: 1 to 9 L . . . . . . . . . . 45 Monitoring Characters and Announcing Windows: 1 to 9 C . . . 45 Monitoring Entire Windows: 1 to 9 W . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 vii Extended Monitoring: [window] E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Extra Action: [setting] x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 More about Set Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Switching from Color to Mono: Ctrl-T . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Setting Granularity: 1 to 9 G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Dialing with a Modem: [com port] D . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Redial Last Number: 9D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Printer Interception: [printer port] I . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Saving Settings: CTRL-S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Starting ASAP with a Different Speed, Pitch, or Volume . . . 54 The Lexicon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Technical Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 The Brand Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 viii Introduction Automatic Screen Access Program (ASAP), as its name suggests, gives you speech access to applications programs automatically. While there are other programs that provide speech access to applications software, ASAP lets the computer do the work for you. That means you don't have to be a genius or even a very patient person to start using thousands of programs with speech. Unlike other speech access software, ASAP lets you use the computer like your sighted peers; you just start the program of interest without having to configure your system for speech. Of course, if you need to further tailor an application's behavior, ASAP lets you do that, too. Once you start ASAP, it stays in the background constantly watching the screen and notifying you about important changes that happen. You don't have to learn a bunch of screen access commands; instead, you use the application's commands, and ASAP observes the program's reactions to determine what you want to hear. There are also additional keys you can use to go back and review the screen for text that you might need to hear again. These, as you'll see shortly, are accessed, for the most part, with the numeric keypad. In addition, ASAP has a "Control Panel" where you alter the way ASAP behaves. The method you use for getting ASAP started depends on which synthesizer you have. If you use the DoubleTalk , you just type "asap" and press Enter. If you're using another synthesizer, there's some more information you need to provide along with the "asap" command. That information is the key word that identifies your synthesizer and the port where your synthesizer is attached. You'll get exact specifications on those details shortly. There is also an installation program that copies the ASAP software to your hard disk and builds a custom command for your particular setup. In other words, you tell install what kind of hardware you have, and it copies the relevant software and makes a simple command you can type to start the system for your particular synthesizer. You'll get details about install shortly. In addition to giving the synthesizer's key word and where it's connected, you can give the asap command additional information about how to start. That, too, is described in complete detail later. First, though, take the time to read the following important material. Registration Before you get started, please take a minute to fill out the registration card and drop it into the mail. It is important to register so MicroTalk can keep you informed about future editions to this and other software. If you like, you may simply print the information on a separate sheet of paper and return it and 1 the card. The information requested is your name and address, your phone number, and suggestions about the manual and the software. Feel free, in fact, to contact MicroTalk at any time with your ideas, suggestions, and criticisms. The MicroTalk BBS MicroTalk maintains an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) that contains lots of ASAP related discussions, tips, and tricks. In addition, the BBS always contains the latest version of ASAP. MicroTalk BBS is available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. The phone number is 502-893-2269. In order to access the BBS, you need a modem, telecommunications software, and a program that extracts packed files. If you don't have a program to extract files, you'll find one on the BBS. As a registered ASAP user, you may download new versions of ASAP as often as you like for up to one year after the date of purchase. After that, MicroTalk may charge a small fee for future upgrades. The files you need to get from the BBS are called asap.zip (for the program and update information) and asap-doc.zip (for the latest version of the documentation). Disk Contents The following files are supplied on your ASAP master disk: Install.bat is a program that helps automate the installation of ASAP. Complete details about its use are described shortly. You can also get a summary of its use by typing "install" from the DOS command line. ASAP.COM is the speech access software. It is the program you'll use to give your other applications speech capabilities. ASAP.SET contains your preferred settings. BRAND.COM is a program that lets you brand your personal serial number into new versions of ASAP that you may download from the MicroTalk BBS. See the section of this manual titled "The Brand Program" for complete details on its purpose and usage. ASAP.LEX is a text file containing ASAP's lexicon. This file is used to add your personalized pronunciations to words the speech might not say correctly. Generic.tbl is a table of synthesizer codes provided for those who use synthesizers that ASAP doesn't internally support. Read aboutit in the "Using Other Synthesizers" section of this manual. 2 ASAP.TXT is a normal text file containing the manual to ASAP. READ.ME if it is on your disk, contains important last minute information that didn't make it into the printed or recorded documentation. About This Manual This manual is designed with several goals in mind. First, it, combined with the power and flexibility of ASAP, should get you using the program in just a few minutes. The manual starts with the basics and graduates to a reference section arranged to make learning the finer points simple. The table of contents includes the actual command keystrokes with, of course, the page number where you get complete details on the particular function. (Let the table of contents serve as a handy command summary and road map pointing to a full discussion of the subject.)Secondly, the manual is designed as a tutor and reference. The reference section gives you helpful tips about the use of each feature discussed. You should give the manual a thorough reading at least once. (You wouldn't want to miss out on something important.) After that, keep the manual handy for those times when you forget the particulars of a seldom used feature or you have a new situation at hand. It wouldn't hurt to read the manual again in a few months once you've mastered the program to pick up on some of the finer points that may have eluded you the first time around. While the contents of this manual was as complete as possible when it was published, there may be information about the program that has changed recently enough that it could not be included in this text. This is especially true in the case of the recorded documentation. For such information, see the file on the disk called "read.me". If there is a "read.me" file on your disk, it contains any information that adds to the material provided here or explains new features that have not yet been incorporated into the printed text. To see the information in the read.me file, log onto the drive that contains this program. (Usually, this will be drive A) with a command like the following: a: (Don't forget to press Enter after typing "A:". When you do, your prompt changes to the letter of the drive you typed.) Then, type the following command: type read.me 3 System Requirements Automatic Screen Access Program requires an IBM, IBM XT, IBM AT, IBM Ps/1 or IBM PS/2 or any computer compatible with one of these. You need a version of PC-DOS or MS-DOS of at least 3.1. ASAP is written in assembly language, so its memory requirements are minimal. It requires less than 30 K so the memory restrictions are really more applicable to the programs you plan to use than that of ASAP. Installation ASAP is easy to get installed. There's a file on the disk that came with your package to make installation painless and quick. Appropriately enough, it is called "install." It works by getting the details from you about what kind of hardware (speech synthesizer and computer) you have and how you have that hardware connected to your computer. It then takes this information and makes a new command that you can type to give ASAP all the information you specified with the install program. That way, you only have to provide that information once. From then on, you just use the command to get the speech started with the details about your setup that you initially provided. The command install makes for you is called "s.bat". It is a simple batch file that you can start up by typing the letter "s." This new command performs several functions including adding the asap directory to the path, starting up any additional software your synthesizer may need, and adding options to the asap command line that identifies the synthesizer and port you specified when you installed it. If you're not familiar with what a batch file is, consult the manual that came with your operating system. Briefly, though, it is a file that contains a series of commands. You can type the name of the batch file to provide all those commands instead of typing all those commands contained in the batch file. The install program needs three details about your system to make an accurate installation. It needs to know what synthesizer to use, the port where that synthesizer is connected, and the kind of computer you have. You tell install these details by typing them on the line along with the install command as described shortly. Each detail is separated from the others on the line with a space. Again, the install program takes this information and builds you a command called "s" that you use to get your speech started without having to manually do that every time you use it. In addition to building the proper command to start ASAP with your particular hardware, the install program creates a directory on your hard disk for ASAP related files, copies the programs 4 from the distribution disk to that directory, and copies additional software required by some synthesizers to make them talk. Install is also useful for updating an older version of ASAP to the latest. Once you've used the install command when you first receive ASAP, you don't need to worry about those parameters any more. Instead, all you need to do is type the letter "s" to start the speech. You may, of course, add the "s" command to your autoexec.bat file so the speech is started automatically when you turn on your computer, and you'll probably want to do this. It is a better idea, though, to try it out first to make sure it works properly so your system won't hang in case you've got problems with cables or specified the wrong port or something equally as possible. Before you use the install program, take a minute to insure your synthesizer is connected properly and that you've installed any device drivers your synthesizer may need. The Accent-PC, for example, needs a device driver. Check the instructions that came with your synthesizer for exact details about installing such device drivers. Although you don't have to do it before using the install program, you'll want to review the specific sections of this manual that describe particulars about each of the different synthesizers ASAP supports for information about synthesizer settings, notes, and additional information particular to the synthesizer you use. To use the install program, follow these steps: Make the distribution disk the current disk by typing its drive letter followed by a colon (:) and pressing Enter like this: a: When you type the drive letter, the colon, and press Enter, your prompt should change to the letter representing the drive. If it didn't, or if you get a message like "bad command or file name", try it again. Once you log onto the drive containing your distribution disk, you can get a summary of usage by typing "install" on a line by itself. When you do, the file shows a screen something like this: Usage: install [synthesizer] [port] [y or n] This line means that you should replace the [synthesizer] part of the example with an actual synthesizer name or key word as displayed by the install file. You can get a complete list of 5 those key words by typing the "install" command name. Go ahead, give it a try; it simply shows you how to supply it with the information it needs to make your installation correct and quick. The list of synthesizers you see on the install screen looks something like the following. (Note that it is important to type the synthesizer key word correctly, so the narrator of the recorded version of this manual spells the words.) Accent (The family of Accent synthesizers.) Audapter (The Audapter Speech System) DoubleTalk (the DoubleTalk synthesizer) BNS (the Braille 'n Speak in "speech box" mode) Dectalk (The DEC-TALK synthesizer) Echo (The Echo PC generic (for synthesizers not specifically mentioned here) LT (The LiteTalk and LapTalk synthesizers) SB (The Sounding Board synthesizer) SynPhonix (the SynPhonix synthesizer) Votalker (the VoTalker synthesizer) Along with the synthesizer type, the install program needs to know how you have the synthesizer connected to your computer. Most synthesizers connect either via one of the printer ports or one of the communications ports. The key words for these ports are also listed on the install screen for your reference. They are the following: com1, com2, com3, com4, lpt1, lpt2, or lpt3. Note that some synthesizers don't connect via one of the ports. Specifically, DoubleTalk, SynPhonix, and VoTalker use another technique for communicating with your computer, so you don't need to give a port for these synthesizers. The final detail the install program needs to know about your system is if your computer is one of the older kinds of machines like the XT or machines even older than that. If you have an XT or older, type a "y" after the port specification or the place where a port specification would have gone if you're using one of the synthesizers that don't use ports to communicate. If you're using a newer machine like the AT, type a "n" instead. Chances are you've got a newer machine. If it turns out that you're wrong, no harm done, you can install again later. If you're not sure what your machine is, try "n" first. A typical install command might look like the following: install doubletalk n 6 That command tells install that you're using a DoubleTalk and that you have a newer machine. (Remember, the DoubleTalk doesn't use a traditional port, so one isn't specified here.) Here is another example: install dectalk com1 n This example tells install that you use a DEC-TALK, you have it connected to com1, and that you have a newer machine. Remember, upon completion of install, you'll have a new command called "s" that you'll use to get speech started. Again, you may wish to add the "s" command to your autoexec.bat file so the speech starts up without you having to type "s." You may, however, wish to try the manual method for a few days, there are some advantages to it, especially if others use your computer. If you look at the S.BAT file, you'll see a series of commands, each on a separate line, that get any additional software required by your particular synthesizer started, and you'll see a line that begins with "asap" followed by a series of options to tell ASAP which synthesizer you have and which port that synthesizer uses. You could use the ASAP command manually to accomplish the same thing, but it is easier and quicker to use the "S" command. The examples in the following paragraphs show what options are required for each synthesizer just for informational purposes. Again, if you use the install command to get yourself setup, all you have to do is type "S" to get the system started up for your setup. Synthesizer Support ASAP was designed for and is very closely tied to the DoubleTalk synthesizer or one of the synthesizers based on the DoubleTalk (like LiteTalk or LapTalk). MicroTalk realizes, however, that you may already own speech synthesis hardware or that you may prefer some other speech system, so ASAP provides support for other synthesizers as well. Unfortunately, not every synthesizer supports all the features of the DoubleTalk family. Where a synthesizer won't work with a particular function, the fact is noted in the section devoted to that synthesizer. The temporary silence feature is particularly difficult to accomplish without specific support for it in the synthesis hardware. ASAP makes every attempt to support this feature with varying degrees of success on various synthesizers. Again, these facts are noted in the discussion of the specific synthesizer. Note that while the discussion of each synthesizer shows an example of how to use the asap command with parameters for that synthesizer, if you used the install command, you won't need to type the command listed in the discussion of your synthesizer. 7 Recall that install makes a new command that contains the specific commands for the synthesizer you selected. All you have to do is type the letter "s." Using ASAP with DoubleTalk To install the synthesizer, follow these steps: Make sure your computer's power is off. Plugging a board into a machine that is not turned off can damage the board, the computer, or both. remove your computer's cover. Check the manual that came with your computer for exact instructions on this procedure. Next, select an empty slot in which to install the device and remove the cover plate associated with that slot. Put the cover in a safe place in case you ever want to cover the hole again, but keep the screw that holds the cover plate in place. You'll use it to secure the synthesizer board. Gently insert the board into the slot making sure it fits firmly in the slot and use the screw from the cover plate to secure the board. Plug the supplied speaker into the jack on the board's rear panel. Locate the plastic volume control knob on the board's rear panel and adjust it to about the mid point of its movement. Later, you may want to further fine tune the volume, but setting it at the midpoint now insures you don't accidentally try the unit with the volume all the way down. You are ready to replace the cover and give ASAP a try. Skip to the "Getting Started" section for instructions on starting the program. Using ASAP with Accent If you use Accent-PC, make sure you've installed the device driver as described in the Accent documentation. After that, you can get ASAP started with the Accent-PC with the following command: asap accent lpt3 If you're using the AccentSA, make sure your synthesizer's DIP switch settings are as they come from the factory. This is important. ASAP will appear to work with the AccentSA if the switches aren't exactly right, but you'll loose data. Just 8 insure those DIP switches are set as the manual for the Accent recommends, and all will go well. The command to start ASAP with the AccentSA is much like that for the Accent-PC, except that instead of lpt3, you use one of the com ports. The following command is typical: asap accent com1 Using ASAP with Audapter To begin using ASAP with the Audapter synthesizer, turn on the synthesizer and hold the rocker switch down to do a factory reset as the manual recommends. Then, move to the serial menu. Move to the handshaking option on the serial menu and select "software handshaking." Finally, save those settings into Audapter's non- volatile memory. After following these steps the first time, each time you use the synthesizer in the future, just turn on the speech and give the following command: asap audapter com1 Using ASAP with Braille 'n Speak ASAP supports the new commands available to Braille 'n Speak. In fact, you must have a Braille 'n Speak with a ROM revision of at least June 1991 to use ASAP with the Braille 'n Speak support. This doesn't mean you can't use older Braille 'n Speaks, it just means that you'll have to use the "Echo" synthesizer or the "Generic" synthesizer setups for older Braille 'n Speak machines. Before you can use ASAP with Braille 'n Speak, you must set Braille 'n Speak to 9600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity. In addition, you need to set handshaking to "software." Finally, you need to turn on "speech box mode." If you've got an older Braille 'n Speak, you'll also need to set the punctuation to "none." This is done for you automatically with the newer Braille 'n Speaks. If you still hear punctuation characters when you've turned them off with ASAP, you'll know that you need to turn them off from the Braille 'n Speak. To use ASAP with Braille 'n Speak, use a command like the following: asap bns com1 Using ASAP with DEC-TALK To use ASAP with DEC-TALK, make sure the settings are 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, and software (Xon-Xoff) handshaking. This is how the synthesizer is shipped, so if you haven't changed anything, you should be in good shape. 9 Start ASAP with the command: asap dectalk com1 You may, of course, substitute another port for the "com1" shown in this example. DEC-TALK is very slow to react to commands to silence it and even slower to resume speech after silencing. The temporary silence command, therefore, is rather unresponsive, but it is still useful when using the auto-read or read by screens features described later in the manual. Using ASAP with the Echo PC When using ASAP with the Echo PC, make sure the synthesizer is set to 9600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity. Use the following command to get ASAP going with the Echo: asap echo com1 (You may substitute another com port for "com1" in this example.) The temporary silence command is not available for this synthesizer. The auto-read and read by screens commands aren't available for this synthesizer. Using ASAP with LiteTalk and LapTalk To use ASAP with LiteTalk or LapTalk connected to one of your serial ports, use the following command: asap lt com1 If you've connected the synthesizer to one of your parallel ports, use this command: asap lt lpt1 Note that if you use LiteTalk and you have to turn off power to the synthesizer, you can re-initialize the baud rate by turning on the synthesizer then pressing one of the shift keys on your computer. See more about baud rate initialization in the LiteTalk manual. 10 Using ASAP with PortTalk synthesizers ASAP supports the PortTalk command set. PortTalk is a program originally written by Artic Technologies to make interfacing their synthesizers easier for other screen access manufacturers. While ASAP supports Artic synthesizers without the use of PortTalk, ASAP does provide PortTalk support for other speech synthesizers that use the PortTalk command set. Such synthesizers include TSI's BrailleMate and several others. Using ASAP with the Sounding Board To use ASAP with the Sounding Board, install the speech software for the synthesizer as described in the Sounding Board's manual. It is recommended that you use the options to turn off Sounding Board's use of the function keys and to make the speech buffer as small as possible. A value of about 80 characters seems to work best. After the speech software is installed, use the following command to get ASAP going with the Sounding Board: asap sb lpt3 Using ASAP with SynPhonix and VoTalker ASAP directly supports the SynPhonix and VoTalker synthesizers. Each of these synthesizers, however, requires the software that came supplied with the synthesizer to make it talk. Once that software is started, ASAP automatically detects the presence of that software and adds the screen access features for which it is famous. The software that came with your synthesizer is called sonixtts.com (for the SynPhonix) or, in the case of the VoTalker, sonix.com and tts.com. To get the system going with the Votalker, you need three commands: sonix, tts, and asap. To get the system going with the SynPhonix, you need two commands: sonixtts and asap. Using ASAP with Other Synthesizers While not specifically mentioned, ASAP supports a variety of other synthesizers. You can modify the file on your disk called generic.tbl to plug in the specific codes to adjust your synthesizer, or you can even use the table as it comes from MicroTalk with no specific codes. To add codes for your synthesizer, you'll need a text editor that supports plain ASCII files. Load the generic.tbl file into your editor and fill in the areas between the slashes on each line with the specific codes to perform the function shown at the end of each line. 11 Getting Started Naturally, you're anxious to get started with ASAP, so do it. If you followed the procedure in "Installation," you have a command called "s" that is used to start speech. Type "s" and press Enter. ASAP announces your name or the program's serial number followed with the message, "ASAP Installed." After that, ASAP announces, in a low pitched voice, the state of any modifier keys that are locked. On AT machines, for instance, you'll hear, "Num Locked" to indicate that key's light is on. The different pitch lets you know the words "Num Locked" aren't really on the screen but are, instead, status information. You are now ready to take advantage of the power provided by ASAP in your applications. General Operation Once you start ASAP, you're ready to go. The text displayed on the screen is spoken as it goes to the screen. Your keystrokes are also announced. When ASAP announces your keystrokes, you'll notice the pitch of the pronunciation of a letter is raised if that letter is a capital letter. This pitch elevation is also active while editing on a character-by-character basis (when you use the arrow or delete keys). Of course, if you like you may modify this behavior so the keys you type are spoken as words instead of characters or not spoken at all. These are functions of the "control panel." The control panel is where you control ASAP. It lets you adjust the speed, volume, and pitch of your synthesizer as well as a variety of preference options related to how the program behaves. The control panel can also be used to review text already displayed on the screen. In addition to the control panel to look at text on the screen, ASAP lets you use the numeric keypad to look at various parts of the screen without actually having to use the control panel to do it. For the most part, that's all there is to it. ASAP is designed to automatically work with your applications, and it does. From now on, just use the applications without concerns about the speech environment. The remainder of the manual gives you options for customizing the speech and its behavior to your tastes and discusses handling special situations. 12 What is BIOS? As you use ASAP, you'll want to become familiar with some of the ways other programs use to put characters on the screen. In general, there are three methods for getting text on the screen. The first is through graphics. While not strictly text, some programs draw text characters in a graphics environment. ASAP (or any other screen access package) can't work with this kind of program. Another method for getting text to the screen is to use DOS or the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) which are both available to all programs running on the PC under MS-DOS. Examples of such programs can be seen with all of the DOS commands and many utility programs. ASAP announces the text that is routed through the BIOS, but it isn't necessary for a program to use BIOS for ASAP to work. In general, in fact, some programs work better when they don't use BIOS. The third method for putting text on the screen is for the program to put it directly on the screen itself without going through DOS or BIOS. The advantage of using this method rests mainly on speed. A program with specific requirements can put the text on the screen much more quickly than can the more generalized DOS or BIOS routines. Full-fledged productivity applications usually put the text directly on the screen. Most word processors and editors, for instance, use their own screen updating routines because many of them re-write the entire screen with every key you type. This process would prove far too slow if the software depended on DOS or BIOS for this. ASAP works just fine whichever method is used to get text on the screen, but the behavior and characteristics of the program differ depending on the method a specific program uses. You will, in fact, notice that when you start an editor, ASAP won't read you the entire screen. (This would quickly become annoying.) Instead, when a program uses its own means to update the screen, ASAP uses the cursor position and screen attributes (differing colors) to decide what parts of the screen should be spoken. When you use an application like a telecommunications program, you'll want to configure that program to send its screen text out standard channels if possible. That's because you'll usually want to hear all the text that gets displayed on the screen as its put there. If a telecommunications program won't let you configure to use BIOS for screen updating, use ASAP's printer interception feature and tell the telecommunications program to print whatever goes to the screen. See "Printer Interception" later in this manual. 13 Silencing the Speech As great as it is to have automatic speech access to thousands of programs, its just as important to have techniques for silencing the speech. ASAP supports three different ways to silence speech. The method you use depends on your needs at a particular time. If, for example, there is a lot of DOS output in progress, you'll most likely want to completely turn off the speech with the ALT key. If you want to silence the speech and make it catch up with real time operation, use the control key. Finally, and uniquely ASAP's, you may temporarily silence speech with a press of one of the shift keys. Read more about each of these methods in the following paragraphs. Temporary Silence: SHIFT ASAP gives you the unique ability to silence speech temporarily. Temporary silence, as mentioned earlier, however, is very difficult to implement without cooperation from the speech synthesizer. Once other manufacturers realize the power of this feature, they'll surely add that capability to their systems, too. When they do, ASAP will add support for it for that synthesizer. In the meantime, this feature works flawlessly only with DoubleTalk, LiteTalk, and LapTalk. It works with varying degrees of success with other synthesizers, and MicroTalk will do everything in its power to work with any manufacturer that wants to add these capabilities. The temporary method of silencing speech is most useful in situations where you're working with familiar material or text that is repetitive in nature. The DOS directory command provides a good example of such a time. Usually, when you use the dir command from DOS, your main interest is with the names of the files on a disk or directory. The extra information concerning the number of characters and date is useful, of course, but usually not needed. Sighted computer users can simply ignore the parts of the display they aren't interested in. Now, you can, too. As you hear the name of a file, press the SHIFT key. The remainder of the line is silenced and you immediately hear the next file name. In addition to silencing the DOS dir command, the temporary silence command is useful for repetitive kinds of information. Think for instance of those bulletin boards you call with a message header at the beginning of each message. With the temporary silence command, you can skip over the repetitive material unless you really want to hear it. One other word about temporary silence deserves mention. The command is extremely useful after using a Page Up or Page Down command to skip past lines of little or no interest. You may 14 also use temporary silence with the auto read command discussed later in this manual. On some synthesizers, the temporary silence command may act much like pressing the Control key--that is, it silences the speech and immediately brings it back if there is more to speak. It can be useful, even in the worst cases, with the auto-read and read by screens commands to make the command continue even after a silence. Those commands, as you'll see when you read about them, are terminated with any key. The shift is the exception to this rule. Normal Silence: Control The control key silences speech and lets it come back as more material appears on the screen. This form of the silence command is useful when you hear a lot of information not of particular interest, and you want to skip it. Keep in mind that speech tends to slow down the normal activities happening on the screen. Use the control key to stop the speech and immediately pick back up with the current information on the screen. Permanent Silence: Alt The alt key silences speech and keeps it off until you press another key. This form of the silence command is useful for commands, especially those that come through standard output that you aren't interested in. Press the alt key, and the speech stops. Speech returns with the press of any other key. It is useful to use the control key to re-engage speech, because the program you're using won't take any action with a key like control or shift. Refreshing Your View: Both Shift Keys ASAP provides you a way to repeat the relevant or emphasized text on the screen. You refresh your view of the material displayed on the screen by pressing both shift keys simultaneously. When you do, you'll hear the text that is, in some way, distinguished from other text on the screen. Reviewing Text While ASAP's operation is nearly always what you want by default, there are times you want to repeat portions of the screen. ASAP takes advantage of the fact that the new enhanced keyboard has its own separate arrow keys, and lets you use the numeric keypad to examine the screen at your leisure. The following table shows the commands to use to review specific parts of the screen. 15 The commands are arranged in a logical fashion to help you easily remember them. Line Review Commands: 7, 8, and 9 The top row of keys on the numeric keypad, the 7, 8, and 9, are line oriented commands. They read the previous, current, and next lines respectively. Word Review Commands: 4, 5, and 6 the next row, the 4, 5, and 6 are word oriented keys. They read the previous, current, and next words on a line. In addition, pressing 5 twice yields a spelling of the current word. The previous and next word commands also perform a special function when pressed twice. If you're already at the end of a line and you press the next word key, ASAP announces "right" in a low pitched voice. But, if you press the next word command again, ASAP skips down to the next word on the next line. In fact, if the next line, and even the line after that is blank, ASAP skips down to the next word on the screen, no matter how many lines down it is. You'll hear a tone in your computer's speaker for each line that ASAP skips to get to the next word. This works in a similar fashion for the previous word command except, of course, the movement is toward the top of the screen. Character Review Commands: 1, 2, and 3 The third row of numbers, the 1, 2, and 3, gives you the previous, current, and next letters on the current line. Additionally, pressing 2 twice, among other things, makes ASAP give you a phonetic pronunciation of the character. This is useful if you can't distinguish two letters with similar sounds. The system ASAP uses for phonetic pronunciation is the military standard. The other information announced when you press 2 twice is the attributes of the current character, the cursor position, the status of any of the locking keys, and a color code used for remote setting of some of ASAP's functions. If your cursor were on line C (the third line on the screen) and the character under the cursor was the letter "D", ASAP might say something like the following: Delta, white on blue, c 1, num lock, hb. This tells you that the character under the cursor is the letter "D", the character is white on a blue background, the cursor is on the third line in the first column, and that the num lock light is on. In addition, the "HB" gives you a color code used for setting up some of ASAP's functions from the command line. You can read more about this special code in "Remote Attributes". 16 The numeric keypad method of examining the screen for text that is already displayed is different from the methods discussed in the "Control Panel" section of this manual in the following ways: First, the position established for reading with the numeric keypad may be independent from the computer's cursor position. This means you can park the keypad's reading position on part of the screen and leave it there while performing other editing functions. See "Parking the Reading Cursor" later in this section for more information on this feature. A second difference between using the keypad and the control panel for reviewing text is the fact that the keypad's ability to examine the screen doesn't tie up the program you are using. In other words, while the program is running, you may use the keypad to examine the screen without stopping what the program is doing. The control panel, on the other hand, stops the program running in the foreground while you are using the control panel. The control panel function completely takes over the keyboard--any command you use is interpreted by ASAP, and you must "exit" the control panel to return the keyboard to the application in use. Contrast this with the use of the number pad: If you want to hear the current line, you just press "8". To hear the previous line, you press "7". To go back and perform any function in the application you're using, you just give the program the normal command for that function. To achieve the same actions using the control panel, you press Alt-Enter. This means hold down the Alt key. Then, with the Alt key still depressed, press, then release the Enter key. Finally, after you release the Enter, release the Alt key. Pressing Alt-Enter makes ASAP go into the control panel. When you enter the control panel, ASAP announces the current line. To hear the previous line, you press Up Arrow. To return to the application, you must press Escape to exit the control panel. Then you can use the application's normal commands. You can get complete details about using the control panel later in this manual. Note: If you use the 84-key keyboard (with no separate arrow keys), you'll need to turn on numlock before using the numeric keypad to examine the screen. You may also use the shift key to access any function associated with a key that would normally require toggling the num lock key. Pressing 8, for example, makes ASAP read the current line if num lock is on. You may press shift-8 to use 8 as an up arrow key for the application in use. The Numeric Movement Commands The 0 on the numeric keypad performs a special function. When you press it, ASAP waits for another key to perform one of the functions discussed in this section of the manual. These commands move the reading cursor to the extremes. 17 Move to Top of Window: 0,5 Pressing 0 followed with 5 on the keypad moves the reading cursor to the top line of the current window. If no window is defined, the cursor moves to the first line on the screen. The line is announced. Move to Bottom of Window: 0,2 Pressing 0 followed with 2 moves the reading cursor to the bottom of the current window and announces the text on that line. If no window is defined, the cursor moves to the last line on the screen. Move to Left Edge: 0,1 Pressing 0 followed by 1 moves the reading cursor as far left as it can go in the current window. If no window is defined, the cursor moves to the left edge of the screen. The character under the cursor is announced. Move to Right Edge: 0,3 Pressing 0 followed with 3 moves the reading cursor as far right as it can go in the current window. If no window is defined, the cursor moves to the right edge of the screen. The character is then announced. Announce Entire Screen or Window: 0,0 Pressing 0 twice reads the entire screen or currently active window without moving the reading cursor. While ASAP reads the text, you may use the temporary silence key (shift) to skip past lines you don't want to hear. Announce from the Cursor Down: 0,. Pressing 0 followed with "." announces the contents of the currently active window from the reading cursor position to the end of the window or screen. If the entire screen is the active window, the entire screen from the cursor down is announced. The reading cursor position is not affected by this command. Quick Read by Screens: 0, PGDN As you'll see in the "Read by Screens" section of this manual, ASAP lets you read large amounts of text without further interaction from you. While the Read by Screens command is more flexible than the Quick Read by Screens command, the quick version is much handier to use. The limitation is that when you use the quick version of the command, your program must use the PGDN command to move to the next screen. This is true much of 18 the time, and if it is, there is no limitation to the quick version. If PGDN does something besides moving to the next screen in your program, you'll have to use the normal Read by Screens command. Quick Read by Screens for WordPerfect: 0, Right Arrow Most programs use the PGDN key to move by screens. WordPerfect, however, uses PGDN to move to the next printed page which usually isn't the next screen. To accommodate WordPerfect users, ASAP uses keypad 0 followed with the right arrow key to make WordPerfect read by screens. Don't forget that you can use the read-ahead command to read continuously, but the advantage of Read by Screens is that you get a more natural rendition of the text. Get complete details about Read by Screens in that section of the manual. Type Word at Reading Cursor: 0,8 ASAP supports a most useful feature which is accessed with 0,8 on the keypad. This command takes the word at the reading cursor and types it into whatever program in use. The type current word command can be used directly in DOS. Get a directory of files on your screen with the dir or dir/w command. Next, use the keypad to move your reading cursor to a file's name that you want to use. Press 0,8 and ASAP types out that file's name for you. All you have to do to start the file is press Enter. Parking the Reading Cursor: 0,ENTER Pressing "0" on the keypad followed with Enter toggles the behavior of the reading cursor. Normally, ASAP follows the system cursor. When you use the current line command (8), ASAP announces the line on which the application's cursor rests. You may, however, select to park the reading cursor in a particular spot on the screen. To do so, move the reading cursor to the spot of interest, and issue the park command. Use the same command to unpark the reading cursor. Note: The application's cursor is the cursor position of the program you are using. The reading cursor is an imaginary cursor used to point at the text you want spoken. It is sometimes useful to park the reading cursor. Think of those times when you're interested in a particular part of the screen and want to keep track of that text. By parking the cursor on that section of the screen, you can keep close tabs on it with the current character, word, and line commands. 19 One-Shot Control Panel Command: 0,[command] In addition to the other review type functions of the 0 key on the numeric keypad, 0 followed by any valid control panel command (on the main part of the keyboard) lets you access the control panel commands without actually going into the control panel. This is useful if you want to adjust a single option in the control panel. The time command is an example of a command you'll enjoy frequent access to. To get the time announced, you'd press 0,Alt-T. (Alt-T is the control panel command for announcing the time. See more about control panel commands in "Control Panel" later in this manual. Remember that all control panel commands are valid when preceded with 0 on the numeric keypad. You can take advantage of this fact when you want to move the reading cursor to a specific line on the screen. The numeric keypad method of reviewing the screen provides no means of moving the reading cursor directly to a specific line on the screen, but by using 0 followed with a letter from A to Y, you can achieve this function. Again, read about all the commands available in the control panel in the appropriate part of this manual. The Repeat Filter The more you use your computer, the more you'll notice the tendency of programs to decorate the screen with characters that look great, but don't add much to the speech user's enjoyment of the program. Often, a program prints a line of equal signs to separate parts of a screen display. Fortunately, ASAP gets around this annoyance with the repeat filter. The repeat filter lets you know about repetitive characters without forcing you to hear all of them. It works like this: When ASAP sees a series of duplicate characters, it always announces the first three. If there are more than three, it only says the repeating character twice, then it says the word "rep" followed by the exact number of duplicates. (The word "rep" is just a shorthand way of informing you about the repetition.) If, for instance, there were thirty-five equal signs printed on a line, ASAP says "equals equals rep 35". Note that if you're not using the "Most Punctuation" setting, ASAP won't bother you with any of the equals signs. Instead, it just skips past the material as if it weren't there at all. You'll use this feature when reading text to skip section separators and the like. 20 Other Audio Ques ASAP gives you the obvious benefit of speech with your speech synthesizer. It also uses some other sounds generated on your computer's speaker for a variety of purposes. When you press a key in the control panel that is not a valid command, ASAP makes a "bonk" sound to inform you that the command is not used. Don't worry about this sound; it just lets you know that you didn't use a valid command. ASAP makes a beep sound when you have the caps lock on and you type a character with the shift key down. This sound doesn't mean anything is wrong, it just reminds you that caps lock is on. ASAP makes a low-pitched buzz when you're using DOS output and you press Alt to silence the speech. You don't get the sound when you press Alt--you already know when you do that--instead, it gives you the sound when the program is finished putting text on the screen and is ready to accept another key from you. This feature is useful when you examine a long directory listing. You can type the dir command then press Alt. When the directory is on the screen, ASAP buzzes to let you know the computer is finished displaying the directory list. There are two other sounds ASAP makes with your computer's speaker. They are the bell sound, designed to let you know when you're typing at the end of a line, and the clicking sound, used for making a small noise when text goes through DOS. You can read more about these two sounds and how to control them in the following paragraphs. Special Action Keys In addition to the explicit commands in the control panel, on the numeric keypad, and its ability to react to a program's action from your command,, ASAP acts on several keys in the background without you giving it a command. ASAP announces your keystrokes for instance. Following is a list of the other actions ASAP takes with other keys. Left and Right Arrows announce the character under the cursor. If the cursor moves more than one position, the word under the cursor is announced. Up and Down Arrows announce the contents of the line where the cursor moves when you press the arrow. If the cursor doesn't move when you press the arrow key, ASAP looks for color changes on the screen. It then looks for the color with the least use and announces the text appearing in that color. If this extended checking gets in your way, turn it off in the control panel with alt-X. 21 The Page Up and Page Down keys perform a rather complex function- -when you press Page Up or Page Down, ASAP waits for the program you are using to change the screen to the next display, then it reads the entire screen to you. This function proves extremely useful for reading large amounts of text. The Control Panel In addition to providing standard speech access to many off-the- shelf software packages, ASAP lets you fine tune the system to optimize the speech environment for the particular program in use. Most of the time, ASAP will automatically work with the application you use, but the options discussed in this section of the manual provide the ability to alter the way ASAP works. In addition to altering the speech environment, you can review text already displayed on the screen with the commands available in the control panel. Once you set up a program to work a special way, ASAP lets you preserve those settings so that the next time you use that program, you'll get your favorite environment setup and ready to go. See "Saving Settings" later in this manual for details. Using the Control Panel: Alt-Enter Press Alt-Enter to enter the control panel. Once you press Alt-Enter, ASAP announces the contents of the current line on the screen. While you use the control panel, ASAP takes over all keys and uses them for its own purposes. You can also use the keypad's "0" to tell ASAP you want to use only a single control panel command, so you don't need to formally enter and exit the control panel if you just want a single control panel command. The commands ASAP uses are discussed in the following pages. When you finish with the control panel, press Escape to exit and return your keyboard to its normal operation. When you press Escape, ASAP announces "Exit" to confirm your action. Changing Options in the Control Panel There are two basic ways of changing options in the control panel. One of them uses the Alt key in combination with another key. This kind of control turns an option either on or off. The second kind of control panel command is used to adjust settings that have several possible settings. These kinds of adjustments are made by using one of the number keys located at the top of the main part of the keyboard and following that with a letter to indicate the desired option. Setting the top edge of a window is an example of an option that takes several settings. To set the top edge of a window, you press the number of the window you want 22 to set, then you press the "T" key to tell ASAP to set the top of the chosen window. The following paragraphs describe each of the functions available from the control panel. Navigation Commands Part of the control panel's purpose is to position the reading cursor to an area of interest and announce the text in that area of the screen. The ability to examine text on the screen is often called "review." When you first enter the control panel with Alt-Enter, ASAP announces the line on the screen where the cursor is located. You then use the navigation commands, discussed below, to maneuver the reading position to any interesting part of the screen. In addition to reviewing text already displayed on the screen, the control panel lets you change the operation of ASAP. Most of the commands that alter ASAP's operation, in fact, depend on you first pointing to the area of interest then giving the program the command to alter the functionality. The window setup commands, for instance, expect that you first move the reading cursor to the top left edge of the window before you give the command to define the top left edge of that window. (Read more about setting up windows in the "Set Windows" section of this manual.) The control panel's commands are arranged to make hand movement minimal. Nearly every function available in the control panel can be accessed without removing your fingers from the home row of keys. Moving Directly to a Line: A-Y Once in the control panel, the letters A to Y move you directly to a specific line on the screen and announce what's on that line. A moves to the top line of the screen, B moves to the second line, and so on. Y, of course, moves to the bottom line. The cursor's horizontal position isn't affected by this command. See also "Moving to a Relative Line." Returning the Reading Cursor to the Real Cursor: Z While it is never necessary to return the reading cursor to the real cursor's position, it is sometimes desirable. Recall from the previous discussion that the letters A-Y move the reading cursor to the indicated line. The letter Z takes the reading cursor back to the real cursor and announces that line. 23 Moving to a Relative Line: Up Arrow and Down Arrow While it is useful to move directly to a specific line on the screen, you'll usually want to move either up or down one line from the line you just read. Use the semicolon (;) and slash (/) keys (or the Up Arrow and Down Arrow) for this purpose. Semicolon and Up Arrow both move your reading cursor up one line and announce the contents of that line. If you're already at the top of the screen, pressing semicolon makes ASAP announce "top" then read the current line. Slash and Down Arrow move down one line and read the new line. If you're already at the bottom of the screen, pressing slash or Down Arrow makes ASAP say "bottom" before announcing the line's contents. See also From the Cursor Right; The Rest of the Screen. From the Cursor Right While semicolon and slash read the previous and next lines of the screen, you can modify the behavior of these two commands by using the shift key along with the semicolon and slash. When you do, ASAP reads only from the reading cursor's position to the right. Word by Word: Ctrl-Arrows Use Ctrl-Left Arrow, and Ctrl-Right Arrow or Comma (,) and Period (.) to read word by word along a line on the screen. Comma or Ctrl-Left Arrow moves the reading cursor to the previous word and announces it. If your reading cursor is already at the left edge of the screen, ASAP says, "left" then announces the word of interest. Period or Ctrl-Right Arrow moves the reading cursor to the next word on the line and announces the word. If your reading cursor is already at the right edge of the screen, ASAP says, "right" then announces the word. Character by Character: Left Arrow and Right Arrow While comma and period move the reading cursor by words, shift of comma and period modify the lateral movement by restricting it to movement by characters. You may also use Left Arrow and Right Arrow to move character by character. Shift-comma (<) or Left Arrow moves the reading cursor to the previous character on the line and announces that character. The character is always announced, even if it is a punctuation 24 character and you have most punctuation turned off. In addition, moving by characters makes ASAP announce color changes on the line. (You'll always get some response from moving character by character.) Shift-period (>) or Right Arrow moves to the next character on the line and announces that character. The Rest of the Screen TAB reads the screen from the line following your reading position. This command is useful if you need to read an entire screen. Just enter the control panel, press "A" to move to the top line, then hit TAB to hear the remainder of the screen. Altering Settings While the commands in the previous section discussed navigation, this section describes commands that alter the performance of ASAP. Attribute Monitor: Alt-a Attributes are the characteristics of a character or a group of text that distinguishes the material from the text on the rest of the screen. (Highlighted or colored in a specific way are considered a character's attributes.) Normally, ASAP automatically informs you about changing attributes. It does so with a unique algorithm that tries to determine what catches the sighted user's eye on the screen and announces that text. Sometimes, though, there might be more changing on the screen than you care to know about. Even though ASAP only bothers you with the text that is different from the last time it notified you, if your interest lies in a specific attribute, use attribute monitoring to follow the specific attribute of interest. To use attribute monitoring, enter the control panel (with Alt- Enter) then move the reading cursor to the position or attribute of interest. Finally, press Alt-A. ASAP announces the attribute of the character of interest and offers you the chance to confirm or cancel. If you've already identified an attribute to monitor, ASAP announces "previous" along with the previously set attribute. If the previous attribute (instead of the attribute of the current character) is the one of interest, press "P" to tell ASAP to use that attribute instead of the attribute of the character at the reading cursor position. See also, Granularity; Setting Remote Attributes later in this manual. 25 Read By Screens: Alt-B While reading by lines is usually the method you'll use to read through lots of text that needs further editing or text you are totally unfamiliar with, you'll want to use read by screens for more serious reading where large bodies of text are at stake. Reading by screens provides the advantage over the auto read command of faster operation, thus, a more natural sounding rendition of your text. Each method has its place. Read by Screens works by reading your screen, giving the program you're using the key to display the next screen, and repeating the process indefinitely. Since not every program uses the same key to advance to the next screen, the read by screens feature asks you to specify the key used to tell the application you're using what the next screen command is. In most cases, the key is "page down," but ASAP lets you specify any key for this purpose. (Word Perfect, for example, uses the plus (+) key on the keypad for advancing to the next screen of text.) If your program's next screen key is, indeed, PGDN, ASAP also provides a short cut command that doesn't require you to notify it about the next screen key. That command is keypad 0 followed with PGDN. ASAP also provides a WordPerfect read by screens shortcut. That command is keypad 0 followed with the Right Arrow key. When you press Alt-B, ASAP says, "Press key to use as next screen key." When you press the key your application uses for moving to the next display screen, ASAP automatically exits the control panel, reads the current screen, and tells the program you're using to move to the next display. When the screen is read, ASAP repeats this process until you tell it to stop by pressing one of the alt or control keys. Note that while using the read by screens feature, you may still use the shift keys to silence individual lines of the text. You may also use the page up and page down keys to move quickly through sections of text of no interest without stopping the continuous operation. Read by screens reads the text to you in one of two different ways depending on how you have the punctuation setting. If you are using most punctuation, ASAP makes a slight pause at the end of each screen line. If you aren't using most punctuation, the reading sounds more natural, because ASAP tries to pause only at the end of sentences. The read by screens command lets you adjust the amount of text to read on each screen in one of two ways. First, if you're using the full screen, use the Page Top Set and Page Bottom Set commands to change the normal text that is read. 26 The second way to change the amount of text considered as a screen page is to set an active window. When you use Read by Screens with an active window, only the text in that window is spoken. See also: Auto read; Set Page; Windows; Quick Read by Screens; Quick Read by Screens for WordPerfect. Set Page: Alt-Dash and Alt-Equals Normally, when you use the Page Up or Page Down keys or the Read by Screens command, ASAP assumes the window of interest to be either the active window (if not using the full screen) or the entire screen except for the top and bottom lines. (Most programs use the top and bottom lines to display status information that doesn't drastically change from screen to screen.) This means that when you use one of these commands, you hear the text from line 2 to line twenty-four in the full screen view. ASAP lets you change the amount of text it considers as the screen to be spoken when in full screen view. The commands to use are Alt-Dash and Alt-Equals. To change the page size, move the reading cursor to the first line you want announced and press Alt-Dash. Next, if the bottom also needs changing, move the reading position to the bottom of the section of text of interest and press Alt-Equals. When using the Page Set commands, ASAP reads from the top line you specified to the bottom all the way from the left edge of the screen to the right. If there is text to the left or right of the window of interest, consider setting a window in which to view the text. See also: Windows; Auto read Color Announcement: Alt-C When you enable color announcement, ASAP announces color changes dynamically. In other words, if a program shows you a message with blue letters, ASAP says, "blue" before reading the text. Whenever the color changes, you are notified. The color announcement feature can help in some situations in programs that, for example, display several items of information on a single line, and one of them is highlighted. If there were such a screen, and it had four items, you can distinguish the selected item quickly by noting the color change. Normally, you won't want color announcement on--it can prove a bit much in programs that change colors frequently. ASAP is 27 usually smart enough to give you the important information when it is needed, but you have the option to hear color announcements if you wish. DOS Output Announcement: Alt-D Normally, ASAP reads all the text that is displayed through the normal DOS channels. (This is also known as BIOS output.) Usually, you'll want to hear all the text normally displayed by DOS. (Remember, you can temporarily disable DOS output by pressing the Alt key.) There are times, though, especially in programs that both use normal DOS output and put text directly on the screen, that you'll want to disable the DOS output. This situation occurs most frequently in some editors that display the text you are editing by putting it directly on the screen and route the status line information through the DOS output routines. You'll be able to tell if this is happening if a program continually announces the position of your cursor with each key you type. If you observe that kind of behavior from a program, disable ASAP's DOS output announcement while using that program. Extended ASCII Announcement: Alt-E Extended ASCII is the term used to describe the characters that aren't part of the normal ASCII character set. (The normal ASCII character set consists of all the letters, numbers, and punctuation marks normally used.) The extended ASCII character set are those picture-like characters often used to draw boxes or lines on the screen. Normally, you aren't interested in these, but having them spoken can be useful in some situations. ASAP announces characters in the extended ASCII character set by describing the character. If, for example, the character is a vertical line, ASAP says, "vertical line." For those characters that are ambiguous, ASAP simply announces the character's ASCII code value. (This announcement is given in a lower-than-normal pitch.) Find Attribute: Alt-F The Find Attribute command lets you quickly move the reading cursor to text that is different from other areas of the screen. To use the find attribute command, follow these steps: Press either Alt-Enter to get into the control panel, or use the "0" on the keypad for the one shot control panel command. Press Alt-F. ASAP says, "Find Attribute" and waits for you to press one of two keys to indicate how you want to find the attribute. 28 If you press the Down Arrow key, ASAP looks for the attribute from the last position of the reading cursor. Pressing any other key makes ASAP begin looking for attributes from the top of the screen or the current window. It is recommended that you use a convenient key (like the Right Arrow) if you use the one shot control panel method for using the find attribute command when starting the search from the beginning of the screen. (Remember, the one shot control panel command is accessed with "0" on the keypad.) Ring Bell at Column: Alt-g Normally, ASAP makes a tone when your cursor reaches column 72 as you type. You may find this useful in some editing situations especially when using some telecommunications software. If you don't want to hear the bell, use Alt-G to turn it off. When you press Alt-G, ASAP announces, "72 is set, enter new setting." ASAP expects you to type a two digit number indicating the cursor position at which you'd like to be notified. If you prefer no notification at all, enter 00 as the column. This turns off the feature. Note that you'll find this feature most useful when using line- oriented editors. Word processing programs usually don't bother you with worrying about where the cursor is located. The bell usually won't get in your way even while using a word processing program, because the word processor usually wraps (moves) the cursor to a new line before it gets to column 72 anyway. Horizontal Cursor Position: Alt-H The horizontal cursor position command lets you move the reading cursor directly to any column on the screen. When you press Alt- H, ASAP says, "Horizontal Position" and waits for you to type a two digit number. The number you type, of course, is the desired position. Once you type the number, ASAP moves the horizontal position of the reading cursor to that column. Indention Notification: Alt-I Indention notification refers to the act of informing you of the number of spaces that precede a line of text. If, for instance, you read a line that said "title" and it were preceded with 35 spaces, ASAP would announce "35" in a low pitch before saying "title." Keystrokes Announced: Alt-K Usually, ASAP announces the keys you type as they are typed. If you are a fast typist, ASAP silences any previous keystrokes as 29 soon as you type another key. You may also completely turn off the announcement of keystrokes with Alt-K. When you press Alt-K, ASAP responds, "Keys spoken = yes." To turn off the echoing of your keystrokes with speech, press "N" for "NO." Keystroke echoing is one of those "global" commands that doesn't get saved or altered by other programs that you might have saved settings from. ASAP considers that if you want keystrokes off, you probably want to keep them off. See also: Announce Keystrokes as Words. Label Keys: Alt-L ASAP lets you assign a label that gets spoken to a key. This feature is useful in programs like WordPerfect to announce the function of a key, especially one of the function keys.. You can assign nearly any key to a label with these exceptions: CTRL, Shift, Alt, NumLock, CapsLock, PrintScreen, and Scroll Lock. You may, however, assign combinations of the modifier keys with other keys. You may, for example, set Alt-F1 to say "Alt- F1." In WordPerfect, on the other hand, you might want Alt-F1 to say, "thesaurus" because that's the key that brings up WordPerfect's thesaurus function. Note that this label (and others) have already been set for WordPerfect. Those key labels get loaded up automatically when you use WordPerfect. New key labels you create get saved along with other settings when you save your settings. See more about saving key labels and other preferences in "Saving Settings" later in this manual. To use ASAP's key label command, press Alt-L. When you do, ASAP says, "Press Key to Label" and waits for you to press the key to which you wish to assign a label. When you type the key, ASAP announces any label previously assigned to that key, then it says, "Type What You Want it to Say" and lets you type a line that will be spoken when that key is pressed. Note that each label may be up to 13 characters long and no longer. If you try to make the line longer than that, ASAP beeps to let you know that you can't make the phrase any longer. When you've typed the label, press Enter to make ASAP accept the new key label. If you press the wrong key or decide you don't want to assign a label to the key you pressed, just press Escape instead of typing a label for that key. When you press Escape, ASAP says, "Canceled" and does not assign any label to the key. Of course, if the key already had a label, that label remains in tact. You may assign labels to up to 60 different keys in this way. If you try to add more than 60 key labels, ASAP says, "Key Table Full" and won't let you add any more labels. You'll have to 30 remove some of the previously assigned labels before you can add new ones. You can delete labels from keys by following the above procedure up to the point of typing in the label for that key. Instead of typing a new label, press Enter without typing anything; that makes ASAP remove that label from the key label list, thus giving you one more entry to work with. Key labels provide an excellent means of giving you extra feedback, but don't get too carried away with them. You can make your programs talk too much. Many of the function keys in WordPerfect, for example, already speak appropriate information when you press the key. Notice that when you press F10 in WordPerfect, ASAP says, "Document to be Saved." This particular key isn't assigned to a label, because WordPerfect itself puts that information on the screen, and ASAP announces it. Adding a label to that key would make it say more than you want. There are other WordPerfect commands, though, that simply bring up a menu with no title. By assigning labels to those kinds of function keys, you can actually get more feedback about your WordPerfect commands than the sighted user gets. Most Punctuation Notification: Alt-M Normally, ASAP doesn't announce punctuation characters. If you are a programmer though, you might prefer knowing about all punctuation. If this is the case, enable Most Punctuation notification with the Alt-M command. Note that even if you don't have most punctuation notification enabled, you'll still be able to hear the punctuation characters as you move with the left and right arrow keys or if you type one of the punctuation characters. (You'll always want to know about the character under the cursor.) In addition to punctuation pronunciation, the most punctuation command effects the pronunciation of "ASCII Graphics". ASCII graphics are characters that form little pictures on the screen. There are ASCII graphic characters for arrows, lines, and box drawing tools. They are often used for decorative purposes and to indicate selected items on a list. While Most Punctuation normally gives you all the punctuation characters, and Most Punctuation Off gives you none, you may tell ASAP to make exceptions to these general rules for both Most Punctuation and Most Punctuation Off. Instead of pressing "Y" or "N," select the exceptions by pressing "E." When you press "E," ASAP says, "Enter Exceptions" and lets you type any characters that you want to consider as exceptions to which ever mode of punctuation currently in use. In other words, if you're using Most Punctuation, and you press "E," you may enter up to 20 characters that won't get spoken while you're using Most Punctuation. Likewise, if you're using Most Punctuation Off, and 31 you press "E," you may enter up to 20 characters that will get spoken even with Most Punctuation Off. Numbers: Alt-N ASAP can announce numbers in one of two different ways. By default, it pronounces numbers as individual digits. With the Numbers command, though, you may instruct ASAP to announce numbers as numbers. This feature depends on your synthesizer's ability to announce numbers, permitting you to take advantage of special features or characteristics your synthesizer may support. With numbers set to "no", ASAP says the number "123" as "one two three." If you have numbers set to "yes," ASAP says, "one hundred twenty-three." Noise with DOS Output: Alt-O Noise with DOS output, as funny as the name sounds, comes in useful when using terminal communications software. It works by making a click each time a character is printed with normal DOS output. You can use this fact to let you monitor a remote computer's activity. As long as clicking continues, characters are coming in through the modem. When the clicking stops, characters have stopped coming in through the modem. Let this be your modem's activity lights. Key Pad Ignore: Alt-p If you use programs that make heavy use of the numeric keypad normally used by ASAP for reviewing the screen, you may instruct ASAP to ignore the use of the numeric keypad for screen review purposes. To ignore ASAP's use of the keypad, use Alt-P in the control panel. If you use Alt-P to ignore use of the numeric keypad, ASAP takes no action on the keys you press on the numeric keypad and, instead, passes those keys on to the application that requires them. Quiet: Alt-Q The quiet command turns off ASAP. It is intended for use by sighted peers who might use your equipment. When you turn Quiet on, all reading stops except for the control panel functions. If you occasionally use a system that other people use, consider starting ASAP with the @qy option. This installs ASAP then makes it quiet. When you need speech on the system, just enter the control panel and turn Quiet off. 32 Quiet is one of those commands that don't get saved when you preserve ASAP's settings--if you want your machine to be quiet, you will get it quiet no matter what programs are used. You may, however, turn quiet mode on and off from the command line or directly from the control panel. See also: Setting Options from the Command Line. Auto Read: Alt-R Auto Read is a feature that lets you sit back and do some serious reading. It works by feeding your editor down arrow keys and then reading the line the cursor moves to just as if you were sitting there pressing down arrow, listening to the new line, then pressing another down arrow key. This process continues until you press a key. The key you press to stop auto read depends on what you want to do next. Most of the time, you'll want to press one of the control keys. That stops auto read immediately and leaves your cursor right where you last heard. All keys you press while using auto read are passed on to the program you are using, so, unless you intend to use up arrow to move back to the line you just heard or something else of similar value, it is recommended that you use a non-destructive key to stop auto read. The Alt or Control keys work ideally for this purpose. If you press one of the shift keys while using auto read, ASAP makes the speech stop immediately, but instead of stopping auto read, ASAP skips right to the next line in the file you are reading. Use this feature to skim through familiar material. You'll notice that when you get to the end of a document, ASAP keeps sending the editor the down arrow key, so it sounds as if the last line continues on forever. To stop this, just press the control or alt keys. Note that while you issue the auto read command from within the control panel, the auto read feature automatically exits the control panel before beginning to feed your editor or word processor down arrow keys. See also: Read by Screens. Snow Checking: Alt-S Snow is a term used to describe video interference caused by accessing the video RAM from a program at the same time the computer is accessing the screen area on CGA type video boards. If you use monochrome, EGA, VGA, or if you aren't aware of the problem, don't use the snow checking capabilities of ASAP--all it does is slow down the computer. Even if you use CGA and don't 33 see the screen or don't have sighted peers looking over your shoulder, you'll probably want to leave snow checking off. When snow checking is enabled, ASAP waits until it is safe to read the screen before attempting any screen reads. Since ASAP does a lot of screen reading (after all, it is a screen reading program), you'll want to avoid using snow checking if at all possible. Again, it doesn't hurt anything not to use snow checking even if you use a CGA monitor. The worst thing that happens is interference on the screen. You may, in fact, want to leave snow checking off while using the computer by yourself, then if you have a friend or peer looking at your screen, turn on snow checking for that time. Snow checking works by waiting until your computer's hardware isn't accessing the screen before ASAP tries to read text from the video area. Naturally, this is slower than just reading the text at any time as is usually on other monitor configurations. This interference is not an ASAP problem. It results from a faulty design in the CGA board. Many programs offer the choice of snow checking, and ASAP is one of them. Snow checking is one of those "global" settings that doesn't get saved when you save settings. If you always want snow checking turned on, use the "@sy" option from the command line. If you installed the ASAP system as recommended in the "Installation" section of this manual, you could start up ASAP with snow checking set to "yes" with the command "s @sy". Time: Alt-T There isn't much that needs to be said about time announcement. If your computer has a clock, Alt-T announces the current time in 24 hour format. User Defined Keys: Alt-U Sometimes, you'll want to use an ASAP command often. If that command takes more than one keystroke, you might consider defining a user function for that series of keys. A user function can provide any function available from ASAP all with a single keystroke that you define. Laptop users who use computers that don't have a separate numeric keypad might find this feature particularly useful for defining the functions available on the numeric keypad. There is, in fact, a set file included on the disk called LAPTOP.SET that provides the functions of the numeric keypad with alt key combinations. See the file on the disk called LAPTOP.TXT for detailed information about this setup. 34 To setup a user defined function, press Alt-U. (You'll probably want to press keypad 0 first unless you intend to work from within the control panel.) When you press the Alt-U, ASAP says, "Define What Key" and waits for you to press a key. The key you press is the key that will trigger the action you're about to define. While it is possible to define keys like plain letters and numbers, you'll almost never want to do that. Instead, you'll want to define keys that the program you'll use these functions in doesn't use for its own purposes. For the sake of discussion, say you want to make Alt-1 read the contents of window 1. You'd press Alt-1. Once you press the key to define, ASAP says, "Type a Delimiter" and again waits for you to type a key. The key ASAP is asking for with this question is a key that signals the end of the definition, so you'll want to press a key that isn't in the set of keys you're about to define. For the purposes of this example, press the Tab key. (You won't be using the Tab key in this definition.) When you press the Tab key, ASAP says, "Type keys to Define." Once you've told ASAP the key to define and the delimiter key, type the keys you want to assign to the trigger key. In the case of this example, those keys are keypad 0, 1, a. That is, the keypad 0, the "1," and the letter "a." While you're defining the keys for this function, the program performs just as it normally does, so you can insure that what you're defining is really what you want. In this case, you'll hear ASAP announce the contents of window 1 just as you told it to. When you've typed all the keys you want included in the definition, press the delimiter key again to tell ASAP you're through defining that key. When you do, ASAP says, "User Key Defined," and attempts to save the current settings so your new key definition will be preserved. If the set file can't be saved right away, ASAP will save it at the first safe opportunity. Once you've defined Alt-1 to read the contents of window 1, you may press Alt-1 to announce that window whenever you want. As with other ASAP settings, the user defined keys get saved with your set files, so you can make different keys do different things with each program you use or even for different sections of a single program. If you try to define a key that's already defined, ASAP says, "Already defined, press Escape to cancel or type delimiter." This message means that if you accidentally pressed a key that you forgot you used, you can press Escape to cancel the definition. Otherwise, if you really do want to replace the old definition, press another delimiter key just as you normally would and proceed with the definition. In addition to canceling the definition or replacing it, you can also remove a key's 35 assignment. To remove the definition for a key, proceed as if you were going to define it, except instead of adding keystrokes after the delimiter, just press the delimiter a second time. In other words, make a definition with nothing in it. When you make a definition with nothing to do, ASAP removes that definition from its internal table and saves the set file again just as if you had defined a function.. ASAP has room for about 250 keystrokes per set file. When the internal table is about to fill up while you're defining a user function, ASAP says, "User Definitions Full" and terminates the current definition. When tat happens, you might consider removing some older definitions you may no longer use or combine the functions of several definitions. A user function can use another previously defined user function, but the act of calling upon a second function ends the first function. In other words, if you have a function that reads window 1 and you want to make a new function that reads window 2 then window 1, you can enter the keys to read window 2 then, instead of entering the keys to read window 1, enter the key you previously defined to read window 1. Automated User Function: CTRL-6 There's one user defined key that ASAP takes special action on. That key is CTRL-6. If one of your user defined functions uses CTRL-6 as its trigger character, that function gets used when ever the program its associated with gets loaded. In addition, as with all set files, different parts of the program can have an automatic user defined function that gets used whenever some special text appears on the screen. See "Extra Action Windows" for complete details about setting up action windows that load new set files when something appears on the screen. Let User Defined Keys Pass Through: CTRL-Right Bracket If you define keys with the User Defined Function command that conflict with a command in an application, press CTRL-Right Bracket to let user defined function keys pass through to the application as if they weren't defined at all. Simalarly, you can press the Pass Key command followed with another CTRL-Right Bracket to pass a CTRL-Right Bracket on to the application in use. Viewing Method: Alt-V Normally, in an effort to provide as much speech feedback as possible, ASAP focuses on the entire screen. There are situations, though, when you'd prefer to restrict the view. ASAP 36 offers three methods of viewing the screen--by screen, columns, or windows. When you view by columns, ASAP automatically detects the presence of a multi-column format on the screen and reads you only the text in the current column. This method of viewing is extremely handy for editing a document displayed in several columns. If you were viewing by screens while editing a multi-column document, and you pressed Down Arrow, ASAP reads the entire line on the screen. But, if you were viewing by columns, ASAP reads only the column in which the cursor is positioned. Viewing by windows is similar to viewing by columns, except that instead of restricting the view to a column, ASAP attempts to restrict the view to a window drawn on the screen. This should probably be the default method of operation, except for the fact that some programs don't position the cursor inside the window of interest. If your applications behave properly, you'll be interested in using this method of viewing. An example of viewing by windows is seen when using the List program or the WordPerfect 5.1 file list menu. If you were viewing one of these areas by screens, and you pressed the Down Arrow, you'd hear more than one file name. Viewing by windows, on the other hand, restricts the view to the contents of the window in which the cursor rests. To change your viewing method, use Alt-V. When you press Alt-V, ASAP says, "View by" and announces the current viewing method. To change the viewing method, just press the first letter of the desired method--"S" for screens, "C" for columns, and "W" for windows. Announce Typing as Words: Alt-W Normally, ASAP announces the characters you type as they are typed. You may alter this behavior in two ways. By using Alt-W, you can make ASAP announce the characters as words. When you do, you won't hear each individual character as it is typed; instead, you'll hear the word you just typed as soon as you type a non- alphabetic character such as a space or return. When you turn on announcement by words, ASAP turns off the announcement of each keystroke, but you may use Alt-K to turn on the announcement of each keystroke while still using announcement by words if you prefer. Extended Activity Checking: Alt-X Extended Activity Checking refers to the process ASAP uses to provide you extra information about what's on the screen when you use the arrow keys. It works by watching the cursor activity 37 when a key is pressed. If no cursor activity occurs, ASAP examines the screen and calculates the attribute or color that occurs with the least frequency and announces the text appearing with that attribute. This feature is normally enabled, but you can turn it off with Alt-X. It is useful to note that when you turn off extra activity checking, ASAP turns into a screen reader like the others on the market--that is you lose the benefits of automatic operation. It is also useful to note that when using telecommunications programs, it may sometimes be necessary to turn off extra activity checking. You can determine the need for turning off extra activity checking in a telecommunications program if you seem to be losing characters. In addition to normal extended activity checking, ASAP provides super activity checking. Super activity checking is used in those programs that are extremely hostile to a speech environment. The most common cause of such hostility is a program's act of taking over the keyboard. When a program completely takes over the keyboard, the screen reader never gets a chance to act on the keys or commands you enter. Super activity checking is turned on by pressing the letter "S" after you press the Alt-X to select extended activity checking. You can turn off super activity checking by pressing "Y" for normal extended activity checking (the normal way you'll use ASAP), or by choosing "N" for no kind of activity checking. Support Computers of Yesteryear: Alt-y ASAP takes advantage of some of the advanced features of the AT and PS/2 computers from IBM and their compatibles. If you have an older computer that doesn't support some of these advanced functions, you can instruct ASAP to emulate them with the Alt-Y command. Unfortunately, if your computer doesn't support these features, you won't be able to get into the control panel to turn this emulation on. Fortunately, you can specify this information when you first start the program. To do so, use the following command to start the program. asap @yy If you used the INSTALL command as recommended, the command line option was already put into your "S" command used to get ASAP started. It is recommended that you try ASAP without the @yy option first. Then, if you find that you can't get into the control panel, just type the asap command again, this time followed by the @yy. (ASAP is smart enough to realize it is already running and takes this as a command to change parameters which is exactly what you want to do.) If it turns out that your computer requires this option, add it to your batch file that gets the program going. 38 See also: Setting Options from the Command Line. Zap a Command: Alt-Z The zap command is used to send control codes directly to your synthesizer. It is intended for advanced users and is, in fact, a command you'll probably never need to use. When you press Alt-Z, ASAP says, "Enter command and press Alt-Z when through." At that point, you may type any control string that directly controls your synthesizer. This is designed to take advantage of special modes your synthesizer may have that ASAP doesn't directly support. Once you've typed the control string, press Alt-Z to actually send that string to your synthesizer. Again, this command is not for the novice. You should possess detailed knowledge of your synthesizer's control code system before using this command. The Numeric Commands ASAP, in addition to the commands already discussed, supports several commands that use numeric adjustments. These are all used by pressing the number of interest (from 1 to 9) followed with a letter to indicate the adjustment desired. (You must use the numbers at the top of the keyboard, not those on the numeric keypad.) The following paragraphs describe these commands. User Function: 1 to 9 F Many synthesizers offer features that aren't found on all synthesizers. The user function setting lets you control these special functions. As the program is supplied, ASAP supports special functions for the DoubleTalk and LiteTalk, the Dectalk, and the Artic and VoTalker. The DoubleTalk and LiteTalk's user function effects a feature called the "filter" value. The filter value adjusts the voice quality. One of the settings, number 9, raises the filter to an extremely high value that, when combined with speed level 9, provides extremely fast speech with a sacrifice in the normally high quality of this speech. The DEC-TALK's user function command changes the voices. Recall from your DEC-TALK manual that the synthesizer comes with 9 different voices. The user function can be used to switch between these voices. One note of interest is that one of the parameters used to make these special voices is the pitch value, so you may also have to adjust the pitch to maintain the voice of interest. The Artic and VoTalker's user function command effects a parameter known as the filter, much like the filter available for DoubleTalk and LiteTalk. 39 Pitch Adjustment: 1 to 9 P Many synthesizers support the ability to adjust the average pitch of the speech. ASAP lets you adjust your synthesizer's average pitch by pressing a number from 1 to 9 followed with the letter "P." ASAP confirms your new pitch setting by saying, in the new pitch, "Pitch Set." Recall that when ASAP notifies you about a capital letter, it raises the pitch by 5 notches. That means that if your pitch level is set to a number above 5, the pitch actually "rolls" around past the highest level and gives you a lower pitch notification. Speed Adjustment: 1 to 9 S ASAP lets you set one of 9 different speeds to conform to your listening abilities. As you become more experienced, you'll probably use faster speeds. At first, though, you'll probably want to use the lower settings. When ASAP starts, it uses speed 5. You may change it by pressing a number from 1 to 9 followed by the letter "S." ASAP confirms your adjustment by saying "Speed Set" at the new speed. Don't forget that once you're a little more accustomed with speech synthesis, you'll want to take advantage of ASAP's ability to make the speech start at any speed, volume, or pitch you wish. If you want to start ASAP with speed 8, for example, just change the command that starts ASAP from "asap" to "asap 8s". Of course, you'll probably want to do this in your autoexec.bat file. Get complete details about this capability in the section called "Setting Options from the Command Line." Volume Adjustment: 1 to 9 V ASAP supports 9 volume levels. The program starts out with the volume set at level 5, but you may change it at any time or instruct the program to start with a different volume level. Just press a number from 1 to 9 followed by the letter "V." ASAP responds with a message saying "Volume Set" at the new volume level. Windows ASAP supports the use of windows to help monitor screen activity. Windows let you restrict the amount of information on complicated screens so you focus on the areas you are interested in. 40 Window commands are preceded with the window number. To work with window 1, for instance, press 1. At that point, you can either set that as the primary window, announce the contents of the window without changing the current setting, or set new definitions for the window. Before you can announce or zoom in on a window, though, you need to define it. See more about window definitions in "Setting the Top Left of a Window" and "Setting the Bottom Right of a Window" later in this section. When you define windows, it doesn't matter what order you use to set the top left edge or the bottom right edge. It doesn't even matter if you follow one definition with the other. Before you can properly use the window, though, you must have set the top left and bottom right edges of the window. Setting the Top Left of a Window: [window] T Windows range from 1 to 9. Since windows must be defined before use, you'll want to use the commands to tell ASAP what part of the screen it should consider as a window. To define a window, move your reading position to the top left of the prospective window and decide which window you want to call this area. For the sake of an example, call your first one 1. Once you've decided which window number to assign to an area of the screen, press that number, then press "T" to define the top left edge of window 1 at your current position. ASAP responds with "top left set at" and then announces the row and column you assigned to the top left edge. Defining the Bottom Right of a Window: [window] B Having already defined the top left corner of the window, move to the place you want to define as the bottom right corner of the window, press the window number again, and press "B" for "bottom." Again, ASAP confirms your action by announcing "Bottom right set at" followed by the position. Note that you don't necessarily have to define the top and bottom of the window in that order. Zooming in on a Window: [window] Z Once you've defined windows for a particular application, use the "Z" key to zoom in on and make the window active. You zoom in on a window by pressing the window number followed by the letter "z". To make the window named 1 active, you'd enter the control panel (or use 0 on the keypad), press "1" then press "z". ASAP responds by announcing the text on the line you were last on in that window. If this is the first time you zoom in on a 41 particular window, the top line of that window is announced instead. When you zoom in on a window, your attention is focused on that section of the screen. You may still use the control panel to see any other part of the screen, but all monitoring and activity checking is confined to the active window. When you zoom back in on a previously used window, ASAP puts your reading position in the exact spot in that window where it was when you first left the window. In other words, if your reading position were at line 5, column 3 in window 1, and you zoomed in on window 2, then returned to window 1, your reading position is returned to row 5, column 3. Closing a Window and Returning to a Full Screen View: 0 While the numbers 1 through 9 prepare you to work with a window with the number you type, the number 0 closes any active window and returns you to a full screen view. When you press 0, ASAP says, "Full Screen" and makes the entire screen the active window. Note that even though you close a window, you may still zoom in on it later, announce the contents of the window, or perform any of the other window-related commands. Closing a window doesn't effect its definition, it merely changes your focus to the full screen. Don't confuse the 0 used for resetting your view to the full screen with the 0 (on the numeric keypad) used for the one-shot control panel commands. Remember, the numbers at the top of your keyboard are used for window-related activities, and resetting your view to the full screen is a window-related action. Announcing a Window's Contents: [window] A It is possible to announce a window's contents without selecting the window. To do so, press the window number of interest, then press "A" for "announce". The announce has no effect on the currently active window nor does it effect the reading position. It simply announces the contents of one of the other windows. Memorize: [window] M There are a lot of times when you'll see a phone number on the screen that you'd like to jot down. ASAP lets you memorize nine different little pieces of information for recall later. ASAP stores the information in "Memory Banks." There are nine different memory banks you may use to store bits of information, and each memory bank holds 16 characters of text. 42 To memorize information, set a window corresponding to the text to memorize. Use the window number of the memory bank you want to store the information in. Once you set the window for the information to memorize, press the memory bank number that corresponds to the window and then press "M". ASAP responds by announcing the text in that window as it memorizes it. See also, Set Top Left; Set Bottom Right; Recall Recall: [memory bank] R Once you've memorized a little jot of information, ASAP remains ready to recall the information when you ask for it. It types out the information just as if you had typed it out on the keyboard. You won't want to use the recall command, in fact, unless the application you're using is ready to take such information. You wouldn't want, for example, to use the recall command while in the help screen of some program. Instead, use it either in an editor when you're ready for that specific piece of information or when some program asks for the information. To recall the information, follow these easy steps: 1. Press "0" on the keypad. Remember, this lets you use a control panel command without actually going into the control panel. the recall command, in fact, cannot be used from within the control panel. If you were in the control panel when you issued the recall command, the control panel would interpret all the characters from the memory bank as if they were control panel commands, and this is not what you want. 2. Press the number of the memory bank where you stored the information. 3. Press the letter "R". See also Memorize. Using a Software Cursor: [window] U Sometimes, an application uses two cursors. One of them to edit and the other to provide additional information about the material to edit. Often, the second cursor is not a cursor in the real sense of the word, but instead, the position is marked by displaying some special attribute on the text of interest. WordPerfect is an example of an application that uses this technique in the "reveal codes" mode. In this mode, the screen is split into two sections. The upper part of the screen appears normally and uses the real cursor. The bottom section, however, shows the text with the hidden formatting codes. Word Perfect 43 uses a software cursor to indicate the editing position in this window. If you have a color monitor, the cursor is shown, for example, as a character with a red background. Note: if an application uses only a software cursor and not the real cursor, ASAP is smart enough to realize this and automatically switches to software cursor tracking for that application. The only time you need to manually specify the use of software cursor tracking is when the application uses both cursor techniques and you prefer focusing on the software cursor. ASAP lets you use the software cursor as your editing cursor. To use a software cursor, you must follow these steps. 1. Define a window to use as the section of the screen that contains the software cursor. If the software cursor can appear anywhere on the screen, define a window as the entire screen. (Restricting software cursor tracking to a window is necessary in case the application uses the same attribute to display other kinds of information other places on the screen.) 2. Move to the character that represents the attribute of the software cursor. In other words, if the software cursor is represented by a letter displayed in red with a white background, move to that character. 3. Press the window number you set up in step 1 followed by the letter "U." When you complete step 3, ASAP announces the attributes of the cursor you've selected and offers to turn it on. It might say, "white on red. Use cursor color = no." If the information is correct, press "Y" for "Yes." In addition to turning the cursor color on, ASAP lets you turn it off and to use a previously set color. If you come up on a situation where the cursor can be one of two different colors, use a second window with the same boundaries as the first, and identify the secondary color in the second window. ASAP looks for software cursors in all the windows you've specified in the order from lowest to highest. If you've already set up a cursor color for a section of the screen and later turned it off, use the "P" (for previous) command to use the previously selected colors. This prevents you from actually moving your reading cursor to the color of interest before turning on the software cursor again. 44 Monitoring Screen Activity While ASAP performs admirably at anticipating what you want to hear with screen activity, it can't cover every possible situation. For those rare exceptions, there is a wide range of powerful tools to help customize the information you get from an application. Monitor Character and Read Line: 1 to 9 L ASAP lets you monitor up to 9 different characters on the screen. When the character at the monitored position changes, ASAP reads the entire line where that character is located. (See the following sections for other types of monitoring functions.) To set up a monitor for line reading, get your cursor to the position on the screen to monitor and press the number you wish to assign to the monitored character. Numbers, again, range from 1 to 9. Next, press "L" for "line." ASAP lets you confirm your selection or cancel the command if you pressed the command sequence by mistake. You may also turn off previously set monitored positions by pressing the number assigned to the monitor, pressing "L", and then telling the program "no". Monitoring Characters and Announcing Windows: 1 to 9 C In addition to monitoring characters to hear the line that the character appears on, you can have ASAP announce one of the windows when the monitored character changes. To turn on monitoring with windows announced, move your cursor to the position on the screen where you are interested, then type the number of the window to read. Next, type "C" for "character." Again, you may, at this point, either turn on the monitoring, cancel the action, or turn off a previously set monitor. Monitoring Entire Windows: 1 to 9 W In addition to monitoring characters to hear lines and windows, ASAP lets you monitor an entire window. When a character in the window changes, ASAP announces the line within the window of the character that changed. To turn on monitoring of windows, press the number of the window to monitor followed with the letter "W" for "window." As usual, ASAP announces the current status of that window's monitoring (either "yes" or "no") and lets you change the status by turning it on with the "Y" key or turning it off with the "N" key. 45 Extended Monitoring: [window] E Sometimes, you want to watch a section of the screen yet announce another part of the screen when the section being watched changes. You can do that with extended monitoring. Here's how it works: First, set up the window to monitor in the usual way. Second, define a second window that will be the window to announce when the first window changes. Finally, press the number of the first window (the one to watch) followed with the letter "E." ASAP tells you what is the current extended window (the one to be announced when the first window changes) and tells you to press another number to indicate the window to announce. If, for example, you chose to monitor window 1 and announce window 2, you'd press 1e. ASAP announces, "Nothing is announced. Enter the window to announce or 0 to turn it off." You would then press "2" to announce the contents of window 2 when window 1 changes. Extra Action: [setting] x ASAP lets you watch a part of the screen for an exact match. When the match comes up on the screen, ASAP automatically loads up a whole new batch of settings. Anything you can set in the control panel is fair game for this feature. Here's how it works: Get the text you're interested in up on the screen. Next, move the reading cursor to that text. Pick a number from 1 to 9 to use as the set file that gets loaded when the text is matched, then press the number you picked followed with the letter "X." When you press the number followed with "X," ASAP says, "Extra Action" and the current setting--either "color," "set," or "no." To trigger the loading of a new set file with a match of just the text, press "S." You can also further restrict the action by specifying that you require a match of both the color and the text by using "C." Use "N" to turn off a previously set action window. When you press either "S" or "C," ASAP records the text (and the attributes if "C" is used). When that text appears on the screen, ASAP loads up a new set file. The file that gets loaded corresponds to the number you used to identify the action window. Since that text already appears on the screen, the new set file gets loaded up immediately--but not before ASAP saves off the previously used settings file. Take a look at the supplied WordPerfect settings files for an example of how this works. The documentation to these settings is contained in the file called WP.TXT in your ASAP directory. While those settings are already 46 created, you might want to follow the discussion below for hints and tips for creating set files for other applications. When you first start WordPerfect, ASAP automatically loads up a settings file called WP.SET from the ASAP directory. This particular settings file doesn't do much except for watch for certain key words that identify WordPerfect screens or modes that don't work perfectly with speech. One of these key words is "Reveal" which appears at position Y 7. When you press Alt-F3 to bring up the Reveal Codes screen, WordPerfect splits the screen into two parts. The top half of the screen contains normal text and a normal cursor. The bottom part of the screen, on the other hand, contains text with codes in it. What's more, the cursor used to mark the place you're editing in the bottom part of the screen is identified by a color different from the rest of that part of the screen. Normally, ASAP can handle the use of this kind of cursor (called a software cursor). Unfortunately, when there are both types of cursors on the screen, ASAP wants to use the more traditional, system cursor. It is cases like this that ASAP's software cursor facility is used. Follow these steps to setup ASAP to handle this situation. First, press Alt-F3 to bring up the Reveal Codes screen. Notice that the word "Reveal" appears at line Y column 7. Use the reading cursor movement commands (on the numeric keypad to move your reading cursor to that position. Next, decide on which set file to use when this word appears on the screen as it is now. For the sake of this example, use 1 as the set file to load. Having selected 1 as the desired set file to load, press keypad 0 followed with 1 (at the top of the keyboard). As with the rest of the numeric functions, ASAP responds, "Option" and waits for you to tell it what to do next. Press "X" to tell ASAP to use the Extra Action function. When you press the "X," ASAP says, "Extra Action=No." It says, "No" because there's no extra action currently defined. That's what you're about to do now. To set the extra action window, press "S" (for "Set." When you press "S," ASAP records the cursor position and the text then it saves the set file currently in use. This is WP.SET in this case. You'll hear ASAP announce its actions as they occur. ASAP says, "Set Reveal at Y 7" while it records, then it says, "Saving WP.SET" as it saves the current settings. Next, since the text appears on the screen now, ASAP loads up a new set file that corresponds to the number you indicated with the action window number. 47 In other words, if you used 1 X to identify the action window, ASAP loads the file WP.001 into its settings. Of course, if WP.001 doesn't yet exist, it inherits the settings passed to it from the settings in use when the trigger happens. You'll hear ASAP say, "Loading WP.001" as it loads up the new settings. Now that WP.001 is in use, it is time to define the window that contains the software cursor. Notice that the window goes from N 1 to X 80. Use the Set Top Left and Set Bottom Right commands to set up this area of the screen. In the set files supplied on the disk, window 1 was used, but you can select any window. After setting the window, move the reading cursor to the software cursor. If you're at the top of the file, this will be at position N 1. When you get the reading cursor to the software cursor, press 1 U to tell ASAP to use the software cursor in window 1 at the reading cursor. When you press 1 U, ASAP says the color of the character at the reading cursor and adds, "Use Software Cursor=No." Press "Y" to tell ASAP to use that as the software cursor. If you like, press Ctrl-S to save the current settings now. If you're using a monochrome screen, though, you've got another step to perform. The reason you have another step to perform is that in monochrome mode, WordPerfect displays the codes that the cursor rests on with yet another color. The solution here is to set up a second window with exactly the same boundaries as the first, move the cursor and the reading cursor to a code, then tell ASAP to use that color as another software cursor if the first one wasn't found. This happens because if ASAP doesn't find the specified software cursor in the first window, it looks through any other windows you've set up with software cursors until it finds one. If it finds no software cursors at all, it uses the system cursor. Once you've set up window 2 and told ASAP to use the software cursor that corresponds to the attribute WordPerfect uses for displaying codes with the cursor on them, press another Ctrl-S to save this set file again. Finally, you're ready to tell ASAP how to recover the original settings. This happens when you press another Alt-F3 to return to the normal editing screen. Go ahead and press Alt-F3 now and get the regular editing screen back. Notice that the word "Pos" appears at position y 70. Move your reading cursor to that position and press 9 X S. The action window 9 is used for a special purpose. It tells ASAP to reload the original set file when a match happens on that action window. When you press 9 X S, ASAP announces "Pos Set at Y 70" while it records the information. Next, ASAP says, "Saving WP.001" while it saves the old settings file that was just in use. Finally, since the action text appears in the action window, ASAP loads up 48 the new set file again. It announces, "Loading WP.SET" as it does. Notice that ASAP announces the fact that it is saving and loading set files while you're defining them. You'll usually want to know this while you're creating new settings. When you've perfected your work, though, you'll want to shut off this announcement. Actually, the next time you run ASAP, those announcements won't happen unless you want them. But, you can turn them off, too, if you like. To turn off the announcements, press 1 X Q (for Quiet.) Note that you can also turn on monitoring saving and loading by pressing 1 X M (for Monitor.) Hint: when you first create a set of files like those described here, it is a good idea to go ahead and set up trigger text number 9 right off. That way, when the new setting files inherit the characteristics of the original, they'll already be setup to recover the original settings. If you do this, though, be careful to save your new creations before switching back to a screen that contains the action text. This all sounds rather complicated, and it is. Fortunately, ASAP works fine for many programs without any settings files at all. Take rest in the fact that you can use these techniques to set up an environment to your exact taste, save it once, and use it from now on. More about Set Files Once you've created a masterpiece set file, you might be interested in sharing it with other ASAP users. They'd sure appreciate it, and you'd probably love to get some creations from other ASAP users. When you create a group of set files for an application, take the time to document your work. A good way to do this is to include a text file explaining how the set files work, what program they work with, and what versions of the program they've been tested with. By convention, you should give this a name that includes the set file's name with an extension of ".TXT". Take a look at the file called WP.TXT for an example of how you might document your work. Also please take the time to configure your set files to work with both monochrome and color displays if necessary. Look at the next section for details on this procedure. Switching from Color to Mono: Ctrl-T 49 ASAP's set files work with both monochrome and color displays. It takes some effort on your part, though, to insure this. The Ctrl-T command is used to toggle what ASAP considers as your screen display for the purpose of setting up a monochrome setting if you have a color display or setting up a color setting if you have a monochrome display. In addition to switching ASAP's identity, you have to tell your applications program to switch to another mode, too. Most applications provide this capability, but you'll have to consult that program's documentation for specifics on how it is accomplished. In WordPerfect, for instance, you can start up the application in monochrome mode by adding "/mono" to the command line along with the "WP". Please indicate if you weren't able to create the configuration that you don't have when documenting your set files. If you'd like to share your set files, feel free to upload them to the MicroTalk BBS. Use an archiving program like PKZIP.EXE to pack all the files into one file for downloading. If you don't have a modem or you're just unfamiliar with telecommunications, mail them to MicroTalk. The staff will be glad to place them on the board for you. Setting Granularity: 1 to 9 G You'll notice that some programs, especially those with extremely complex screen displays, seem like they give more information than is necessary. You can restrict the amount of information provided by adjusting the granularity. Granularity refers to the amount of activity ASAP informs you about. Normally, ASAP lets you know about every change that occurs on the screen. This can result in problems, for instance, with a program that announces both the item you move to and the item you leave when using the arrow keys to select a menu option. This happens because ASAP informs you about what changes on the screen. Sometimes, that change is merely the change as a menu selection goes back to its normal state. If this happens, try increasing the granularity by 1 at a time until the duplicate announcements cease. When ASAP starts, the granularity level is set to 1. The higher you make the number, the less speech you'll hear. Note: there are some programs that use DOS output to print menus. Changing the granularity will not affect such programs. You can try turning off DOS output to help in these situations. 50 Dialing with a Modem: [com port] D ASAP supports the use of a modem to dial phone numbers on the screen. To dial a number, move your cursor to the first digit of the number, then press the number of the com port where your modem is connected followed by the letter "D" (for "dial.") When you use the dial command, ASAP dials the number and tells you to press the space bar to release the line from the modem. You should pick up the phone's handset, then press the space bar to make the modem hang up. Redial Last Number: 9D Since there is no com port 9, ASAP uses the command 9d for a special purpose--it redials the last number you dialed with the [com port] D command. Once the number is dialed, the redial command behaves exactly like the dial command--that is, it tells you to pick up the phone and press space to release the line from the modem. Printer Interception: [printer port] I ASAP lets you intercept the text that normally goes to a parallel printer port. This is often useful for programs that insist on being difficult about getting speech access in an acceptable manner. If the program you are trying to use offers a way to print the progress of the program, you can turn on printer interception, and tell the program to print. If your telecommunications software doesn't offer a way to send its text through BIOS, you'll want to use printer interception and then instruct the software to print what is received over the modem. The printer interception feature respects the state of noisy DOS output, so, even though the text isn't really going through DOS, you can still benefit from the clicking with each character that goes to the printer (or the speech in this case). Recall that noisy DOS output provides a convenient means of monitoring modem activity. Turn on printer interception from the control panel by pressing the number of the printer port followed with the letter "I". ASAP shows you the current status of printer interception for that port and allows you to alter it. As with all such status messages, ASAP shows you the current state of printer interception for that port and lets you change it with "y" for "yes" or "n" for "no." Any other key cancels the operation without effecting the status indicated. 51 Saving Settings: CTRL-S While extensive changes to ASAP's operating environment are rarely necessary, they are possible. More often, though, you'll make very minor changes to a program's operating characteristics. The Telix telecommunications program, for instance, is used with DOS output set to noisy. This gives a clicking sound as characters come in. Another example is when using the DOS command line. Most users prefer to leave the punctuation set to "off." There may be an editor, though, that you always use with punctuation set to "on." Once you've set up the way ASAP operates with a specific program, use CTRL-S to save those settings. (Don't forget to precede the Ctrl-S with keypad 0 if you're not already in the Control Panel.) The next time you use that program, ASAP automatically uses the settings you just saved. You can also save the settings you prefer for general use from the DOS command line or a shell program to make ASAP revert back to those settings whenever you return to the command line or to the shell program. When you use a program that you haven't saved settings for, ASAP maintains the settings in effect when you start that program. ASAP saves its settings in the directory where ASAP resides. Usually, this is C:\ASAP, but it doesn't really matter. The settings are saved in a file whose name is derived from the name of the program in use when you save the settings. The name consists of the program's name followed with an extension of "SET". If, for example, you saved the settings while you were in a program called TESTER, the settings would be saved in a file called TESTER.SET in the ASAP directory. ASAP lets you know the name of the settings file, because when you press CTRL-S, it says, "Saving TESTER.SET." Once the file is safely placed on disk, ASAP says, "Done." If something happens where ASAP can't save the settings, it lets you know with the message, "Error" instead of "Done." When you start up the TESTER program, ASAP grabs those settings from TESTER.SET and leaves your operating environment just as you prefer it. If you save the settings from the primary shell, ASAP puts your preferences in a file called ASAP.SET. (The shell is what's responsible for launching your other programs--this is usually COMMAND.COM, but there are alternatives.) Each time you return to the shell, those settings are used. It is a good idea to keep the ASAP.SET file--this gives you "standard" operating settings that will probably work with most other applications. If you do need to make adjustments to an application, the primary settings are revived when you return to the shell. You might also want to copy ASAP.SET to COMMAND.SET. That way, if you use a program's "shell" command to get into the DOS environment, you'll get the settings you prefer for DOS automatically. 52 There are times you'll want to save settings from an application even when you don't really need to in normal circumstances. Think, for example, of using the "Edit" command from TELIX. As you'll recall from the TELIX documentation, pressing Alt-A starts up your editor. If you saved settings for TELIX and you don't have settings saved for your editor program, the TELIX settings get passed onto the editor. This isn't necessarily bad, it is just that you can have the settings exactly like you like them no matter how the application was started, and there's no reason not to do so. You may wish to save settings for little things. If you prefer to use the DOSSHELL or the command line with no punctuation and you like your favorite editor to be used with most punctuation, go ahead and save those settings--it's quick and easy. Be aware that ASAP sometimes waits before saving your settings until DOS tells ASAP that it is safe to do so. If ASAP doesn't say, "Saving," when you press CTRL-S, don't worry, your settings will get saved at the first safe opportunity. There are some programs that start and end so quickly that you might not have the chance to save settings. The PKUNZIP.EXE program, for instance, usually won't wait around for a keystroke from you to save the settings. You can make adjustments like you want for PKUNZIP.EXE from the DOS command prompt, and those settings are inherited when you start PKUNZIP, but unless you're fast on the keyboard, it is tough to get them saved for that program and others like it that don't wait for user input. One way to save settings for such programs is to make the adjustments from the DOS command line, then save the settings there. As usual, you'll hear ASAP say, "Saving ASAP Settings." Once the settings are saved, use the DOS copy command to copy the file ASAP.SET to PKUNZIP.SET. That way, when you start PKUNZIP, those settings will get used. If you do that, don't forget to return your ASAP settings back to the way you normally want them to be. There are some settings that ASAP doesn't save. In general, these are settings that are usually associated with global operations. In other words, they are the kind of settings that you like no matter what program you're using. The settings ASAP does not save are as follows: Pitch, Speed, User Function, Volume, Keystroke echoing, and memories. ASAP does not save the setting that defines a computer of yesteryear (Alt-Y) nor does it save the quite mode (Alt-Q).. By taking this approach, ASAP lets you share your favorite settings with other ASAP users without effecting that user's global preferences. Likewise, you can enjoy the benefit of other people's settings without having to fool around with your globally preferred settings. 53 To start ASAP with your preferred speech settings or other global settings, specify the options on the command line as discussed in the next section. The MicroTalk BBS offers settings that various users have designed for several applications. You may download these by contacting the MicroTalk BBS. Starting ASAP with a Different Speed, Pitch, or Volume While you can't save settings like pitch, speed, and volume with the save settings command, you can still start ASAP with your favorite speech settings. This is accomplished by specifying those settings right on the command line. The options you type on the command line are the exact same commands you use from the control panel. You don't, however, have to precede commands with the one-shot control panel command. ASAP assumes that if you're adding options from the command line, they'll be accepted as is. Notice that you can't put an Alt on the command line. To represent Alt on the command line, use the at sign (@). To represent Alt-K, use "@K". Don't forget the "Y" or "N" after the @K option. You'll want to use some of these command line options to specify global settings that don't get saved with the normal settings that vary from application to application. If you used the install program (as recommended), there's a small batch program on your hard disk called S.BAT. You start up ASAP by typing "S" at the DOS command prompt. You can edit the S.BAT file to add settings that take effect when you start ASAP or you can add them when you type the "S" command. If you want the same settings all the time, it is best to edit the S.BAT file, but if you just want to change a setting once in a while, you're better off adding the commands to the "S" command when you type it. You can start up with speed 9, for instance, with the command "s 9s". In addition to editing the batch file or adding the options to the command line, you may use the INSTALL program to do this for you. If, however, you've already installed ASAP, you'll have to delete it from the hard disk before using the INSTALL program again. If you don't, INSTALL thinks you want to update to a newer version instead of doing a new install. Here's how to use the INSTALL program to add special speech settings to ASAP so it uses those settings every time you use your computer. Even if you specify global speech settings with the install command, you can still override them by specifying them on the command line. You can also, of course, use the control panel to change settings at any time. 54 1. Delete ASAP from your hard disk. You can do this by typing del c:\asap\*.*. When you do that, DOS asks if you're sure you want to delete all the files in the ASAP directory. Tell DOS yes by typing "Y" and pressing the Enter key. 2. Use the INSTALL command just as you did when you first installed ASAP except that instead of pressing Enter after the "Y" or "N" for computers of the XT class or older, add a space and the commands you want to use for your speech settings. Remember, those commands are the same keys you'd use in the control panel to adjust the speech. Look, for example, at the command below for an example of installing ASAP for use with a LiteTalk synthesizer in com1 on a newer computer with a speed selection of 7 and a volume setting of 4. ASAP LT COM1 N 7S4V If you don't want to go through the installation process again, it is a simple matter to edit the S.BAT file to add your speech preferences to the end of the line that gets ASAP started. The Lexicon ASAP supports the use of a lexicon to correct pronunciations that your synthesizer fouls up. The lexicon is a plain ASCII text file called asap.lex that gets loaded when you first start ASAP. The lexicon file gets loaded from the current directory, so you'll want to either keep it in the root directory or set the current directory to the directory that contains ASAP when you first start it. The lexicon contains a list of words, each on a separate line, that are considered exceptions. Anytime ASAP is about to say a word, it first checks its lexicon to see if you've made an exception for that word. As mentioned, the lexicon is a plain ASCII text file with a word entry on each line. The words must be in alphabetical order. This keeps the time for ASAP to find a word to a bare minimum. You modify the lexicon by using an editing program to add, modify, or delete words from the list. Each entry in the lexicon contains the word to find (in lower case letters,) an optional root word indicator (the "*" character,) a space to separate the word from its proper pronunciation, and a phonetic spelling of the word to make it sound like you want. A typical entry in the lexicon looks like this: irs i r s 55 Note that without this entry in the lexicon, your synthesizer would pronounce these three important letters together as if they were a word. The lexicon entry tells ASAP to send the letters i, r, and s all separated with a space. The root word indicator lets you inform ASAP that the word in question should be considered a root word and to accept any word that matches the part up to the "*" indicator. This is useful to cover a whole family of words with a single lexicon entry. The entry that follows tells ASAP to look for words that start with "psych" and change any word that begins with those letters to sound like "sike." psych* sike Many synthesizers have trouble with the letter "A." They don't seem to want to pronounce a long a sound. You can force your synthesizer to say a long a when one is required by spelling a word that sounds like the long a sound. Consider the following example: vga v g aye Your lexicon can be of any size up to the maximum amount of RAM in your computer. Of course, you'd never want to create one that big, but you do have room for lots of entries. Remember that when you modify the lexicon, you'll have to reboot your system to make those changes take effect. Technical Support In addition to its support during normal business hours (from 8:00 to 5:00 EST, ASAP help, information, and updates can be accessed via modem 24 hours per day seven days a week. The phone number is (502) 893-2269. Call the system at any baud rate from 300 to 9600. The Brand Program BRAND.COM is a program that contains your serial number. When you download an update from the MicroTalk BBS or get an update disk in the mail, you'll use the brand program to insert your serial number into the new version of ASAP. If you don't, ASAP will keep reminding you to do so. If you get an update, there will be a program called Install that will take care of all updating necessary and inserting your serial number, but if you're the type that likes to do things by hand, here's what to do. Make ASAP the current directory and type Brand, then press Enter. 56 The brand program explains its purpose, then it places your serial number into the ASAP program. When it is finished, it will announce, "Your ASAP was successfully branded." 57