Hall of Fame/HallofFameCDROM.cdr/game4/flipper.lzh/HELP.TAB

Text File | 1988-09-29 | 22KB | 502 lines

SECTION 5.0 COMMAND REFERENCE

This is the command reference for Flipper.

Section 5.1 This index.

Section 5.2 General information.

Section 5.3 Quick commands.

Section 5.4 Using Flipper's review mode.

Section 5.5 Advanced review mode features.

Section 5.6 Searching for a word or pattern on the screen.

Section 5.7 Advanced searching tables.

Section 5.8 Customizing Flipper, choosing configurations.

Section 5.9 Choosing symbol sets and punctuation.

Section 5.10 Some technical information about Flipper.

*

Section 5.2

General information.

None of the things you type during the help mode affect the
program which is running, and it can be used at any time to find
a key on the keyboard.  Whenever alt space bar is pressed, if
Flipper is speaking, it stops. Alt space bar stops any mode and
silences the voice.  The automatic output is silenced only until
you strike another key, such as the shift key.  The computer
continues to execute the program, even if you silence the voice.

You can stop any output from Flipper and get back to the regular
mode by pressing alt space bar at any time.  In the review mode,
you can just press the space bar to silence Flipper while
staying in the review mode.  The help messages can also be
stopped without leaving the help mode, by pressing any key on
the keyboard.

You will interact with Flipper in four main ways.  First of all,
Flipper will echo what you type so you can catch typing
mistakes.  Next, Flipper will read what is being printed to the
screen automatically.  Both of these features can be turned off
if you desire.  If you move around the screen with the
arrow keys, Flipper will read the material you are moving over.
For example, if you move line by line up or down, Flipper will
read the lines as you move onto them.  If you move left or
right a character at a time, Flipper reads the character.  If
you move a word at a time using control left or right arrows,
Flipper reads a word at a time.  You can also move a sentence at
a time, forwards or backwards right in your word processor or
editor, using the alt left and right keys.  Refer to section 5.3,
quick keyboard commands, for further information.


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

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

Flipper keeps two complete configurations.  These include the
current search string, defined blocks, margin settings, symbol
sets, option choices, etc.  To switch back and forth between
them, you press the f key (for flip) during the review mode, or
alt f outside the review mode.  You can also save the
configuration on disk by executing the command:

"flipsave filename.flp"

at the MS-DOS prompt.  To reload the configuration later, type
the command:

"flipload filename.flp"

at the MS-DOS prompt, where filename in both cases can be any
name 8 or fewer characters long.  If you follow the "flipload"
command with two filenames, the two configuration files will
be loaded into Flipper's primary and secondary configurations.

*

Section 5.3

Quick keyboard commands. The quick commands are accessed by
holding down the alt key with your left hand and pressing one of
the keys near the right hand home row.  Since your hands do not
have to leave the home row, you can check something quickly
while you are typing without losing your place on the keyboard.
If you need to use one of these keys for a program, you can use
the alt n command which is described at the end of this section.
There is also an option (control alt function key 2) which will
switch to the use of control instead of alt for the quick keys.

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

Flipper will read a sentence at a time if you use alt left arrow
or alt right arrow.  It will actually scroll through the text in
your word processor.  Flipper can also read continuously,
sentence by sentence.  Continuous reading is started by alt down
arrow.  You can stop it at any time with an alt spacebar, and
you will be at the end of the current sentence.  After you
are done making changes or reviewing that section, you can start
Flipper reading your text from that point on with an alt down
arrow.

Alt semicolon will start the review mode.  See section 5.4 for
documentation of the review mode.

Alt h starts the help mode.

Alt number key reads a selected block.  Blocks are defined in
review mode.  Start definition by pressing d during the review
mode.  Flipper will then ask you for additional information.

Alt p reads the page meaning read the whole screen.

Alt f flips between the primary and secondary options.

Alt space bar stops any mode and silences the voice.

If you need to use one of the above keys for a program, you can
just press alt n.  Flipper will then say "normal", meaning that
the next key press will be treated normally instead of being
captured as a command to Flipper.

*

Section 5.4

Review mode:

Flipper's review mode is started by pressing alt semicolon.  When
it is active, the following functions are available.  Review
mode is extensively self documenting.  If you hold down control
while pressing a letter key, the instructions for that key are read.

Many of the functions of the review mode are similar to the alt
keys in the regular mode.  j, k, and l read the previous, current
or next word.  The difference between using the review mode and
the alt keys is that you also move to the corresponding place.
For example, if you continue to press the l key in the review
mode, you will advance a word at a time, reading out each word.
Similarly, the u, i, and o keys will take you to the last line,
read the current line, and take you to the next line.  The m,
comma, and period keys do the same one character at a time.

Additionally, there are keys in the review mode which do
functions which are unique to the review mode.  For example, the
t key will announce the time of day.  The d key allows you to set
what blocks are read by the alt number keys in the regular mode.
After you press d, you are asked what key you want to define,
and then what the borders of the block are.  The b key will
take you back to where you were the last time you were in the
review mode.

The c key will take you out of the review mode, and move the
cursor to the present position.  The s key will allow you to
enter a search pattern as described in section 5.6. The
semicolon key moves your position back to the cursor.

The p key will read the current page, or screen.

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

You can also use the cursor keys, left, right, up, and down.
The left and right keys move a character at a time in each
direction and read that character.  The up and down keys move a
line at a time, and the lines are read.  These same keys, with
control, move words to the right or left, and single lines up or
down, and read off the word at that position.

Pressing w sets the width for the area of the screen which is read.
Any command that reads a line will then only read between the
defined margins which you are asked to enter.  This is useful to
read columns of information or to eliminate unwanted information
at the edge of the screen, or allows you to select one column of
a menu.  There is also an option key to allow you to turn the
margins on or off without having to reenter the left and right
columns.

*


Section 5.5

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

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

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

Holding down the alt key while pressing m, comma, or period will
pronounce the military alphabet word for the appropriate
character.  It will also read the ascii number for any other
symbol.

The g command lets you change the right margin gong position.

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

The f command allows you to flip between two configurations, a
primary one and a secondary one.  This allows you to configure
Flipper two different ways, and then easily switch between them.
You can also load an unlimited number of configurations into the
computer's memory using the "FLIPEXT" command and then load them
using the f command.  To retrieve the third configuration that
you loaded with the FLIPEXT command, for example, you would
type "3f".

The x command is used to mark a location on the screen.  You can
use the marked location in several different ways.  You can move
to the marked location with a shift x.  If you type x when you
are being asked a row or column number, the row or column of the
mark is used.  Additional marks can be used by preceeding x with
a number up to nine.  For example, 2 x sets the second mark.  2
shift x jumps to the second mark.  Whenever you are asked for a
row or column number, you can reply with the c key, to use the
cursor position, or x, to use the marker position, or number x,
to use another marker.

You can also read from where you are to the mark
using the r command.

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

The insert and delete keys are used in the review mode to insert
or delete characters into Flipper's spoken set.  They are
documented more completely in section 5.9.

The q command, for quiet, allows you to select areas of the
screen which are not automatically read.  Up to ten quiet
windows can be defined at a time.  They are separate from the
defined blocks of the d command.  When you are defining a quiet
window, you can respond d instead of picking a window, to
deactivate all quiet windows.  Or, once you have selected a
particular window, you can press d to deactivate that quiet
window.  Quiet windows are useful, for example, if a clock is
on the screen and is being read every second.  You can just
put a quiet window over the clock to silence it.

You can use the alt underscore key just like the alt number
keys, defining its margins, top, bottom, left and right.
However, it also has an additional feature.  It will either read
areas within its borders which are enhanced in a particular
way, or everything but the areas which are enhanced in a
particular way.  You select the special enhancement by moving to
a position on the screen which is enhanced in the desired way
and then pressing shift underscore.  It will also read out the
number of the enhancement, which you can use to refer to that
enhancement later.  To select an enhancement where you know the
number of the enhancement, type the number followed by the shift
underscore.

The backslash command allows you to tell Flipper to watch a portion
of a row, and either beep or read something when it changes.  The option
toggles shift function key 5 and 6 turn the beep on and off and selects
whether a block is read.  The area to be read is changed the same way
a number key block is defined, using d, to start the definition, selecting
the backslash when you are asked for the number key that you want to define,
and from there the procedure is the same.


*

Section 5.6

Searching:

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

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

In addition to searching for simple words, you can also search
for enhancements and other types of things on the screen.  They
are entered into the search pattern by pressing control and a
letter.  The items that can be searched for are tabulated in
section 5.7.  The option keys also allow you to choose whether
capital letters will match small letters during a search.  For
example, if you want to search for changes in the video
enhancements on the screen, you would press s, to start the
search, control e, for enhancement, and then return, to show
that you have finished the string, and then alt j or l as many
times as you wish to find wherever the enhancements are
changed on the screen.  To find, for example, a regular,
non-enhanced character followed by an inverse video character,
you would press s, to start the search, control r, for regular,
control a, for anything, control i, for inverse, and then
return, and the search string is defined.  You can then press
alt j or l as desired to find that on the screen as many times
as it occurs.  The search string is saved until you change it or
restart Flipper when you boot the system.  The search string is
also saved and reloaded with the configurations.

*

Section 5.7

These are the advanced search pattern characters.  They are used
as described in the previous section.

control return matches any end or beginning of a line.
control d matches any digit.
control l matches any letter.
control s matches any non-alphabetic symbol.
control a matches anything.
control c matches any capital letter.
control f matches any form symbol.
control left square bracket matches any upper left corner form symbol.
control right square bracket matches any lower right corner form symbol.

The following control characters can be used before any other
symbol, to specify a particular enhancement.

control e matches any change in enhancement.
control i matches any inverse video.
control u matches any underline.
control h matches any high intensity video.
control b matches any blinking.
control r for regular matches only non enhanced areas.

*

Section 5.8

Flipper's characteristics can be modified either temporarily or
permanently, to match your changing needs.  Many of these can be
changed by pressing the function keys during the review mode,
and others are changed by holding down alt and pressing function
keys.  All of them alternate on and off, so the best way to use
them is not to memorize where they are, but to just try them
until you find the one you want.  After you have Flipper set the
way you want, there are two programs, called "flipsave" and
"flipload" , that you can run from the dos prompt that will save
the configuration in a file that you specify on the command
line.  Flipload is automatically run with the file "start.flp",
so you can change this file to make Flipper start up in your
favorite configuration.  Section 6.0 of the instructions
describes the available options.

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

*

Section 5.9

Flipper can read any character or symbol that appears in the
IBM character set.  This includes the letters and symbols
which appear on your keyboard, but also includes such things
as forms drawing characters and shaded boxes.  These additional
symbols are off by default, but you can turn them all on by
using the override all symbols on option (function key 6 during
the review mode).  You can tell Flipper which selected symbols
to read by pressing insert during the review mode and then
pressing the function keys.  The symbols are divided into
descriptive sets such as forms drawing symbols, mathematical
symbols and foreign symbols.  You can also turn on symbols from
the keyboard by typing them.  If you want to turn on specific
special symbols, Flipper can read through a list of them and you
can tell it to read them or not one at a time.  To get the list
of symbols which are to be turned on or off, press insert, then
control f, control m, control d, or control a, and you will be
given a list of form symbols, math symbols, decorative symbols
or accent and other foreign symbols, respectively, and asked to
select the ones you want.

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

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

If you are spelling or moving one character at a time in the
review mode, all symbols will be read whether or not they are
turned on.

*

Section 5.10

Some technical information.


Flipper takes the following parameters when it is starting up.

Small l--do not load the lexicon exception table for the Artic card.

Small h--do not load these help messages.

d followed by a number.  Use the dectalk for output at the
serial port given by the number.

e followed by a number.  Use the echo for output at the
serial port given by the number.

v followed by a number.  Use the votrax for output at the
serial port given by the number.

m-- use the aicom accent mini for output.

The h and l options save quite a bit of memory.  When Flipper
is started, it checks the default disk drive for an exception
table named vocab.lex, and if it is present, loads it for use
during the operation of Flipper with the Artic card.  The
documentation supplied with the sonix board and software explain
how to create and edit lex files.  This is used to correct the
pronunciation of some words.  The "autoexec.bat" file also
usually includes a command to load the starting configuration
called start.flp.  The help messages are loaded from the file
help.tab, which contains straight ascii text with the sections
separated by asterisks, so it can be edited any way you want.

END OF INSTRUCTIONS.