NatSpeak Hints

Read-Me Documentation

Welcome to Dragon NaturallySpeaking™, the first large-vocabulary, continuous-speech, general-purpose dictation system. This file contains last-minute information that is not included in the documentation.

It is STRONGLY recommended that you read the section Upgrading From a Different Version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, if you are doing so.

Contents

Getting Started with Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Upgrading From a Different Version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Availability of Dragon NaturalWord™ and Other Product Updates

What Is New in Version 2.0

Updating the Microsoftâ Comctl32.dll file

Universal Microphone Adapter

Recommended Sound Cards

Troubleshooting

Availability of DragonDictateâ for Windows Classic Edition 3.0

Known Limitations and Problems (by Feature)

Tips for DragonDictate Users

Note To ensure successful reinstallation, you should restart Microsoft Windowsâ after uninstalling Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Note When you upgrade from Dragon NaturallySpeaking 1.0, Dragon NaturallySpeaking creates a default user, named Customer, and saves all training and acoustic information from version 1.0. You can rename the default user if you want to.

o Dragon NaturalWord. You can now use Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe directly in Microsoft Word 97. To download NaturalWord, look for it on the Product Update Page at the Dragon Systems Web site. You can connect to the Product Update Page quickly by clicking Dragon Systems Product Updates on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe Programs menu. NaturalWord works only with Microsoft Word 97, and it works best on systems with at least 48 MB of RAM.

o Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe with other applications. Dragon NaturallySpeaking product updates, in addition to NaturalWord, will be available periodically. To look for up-to-date information at the Dragon Systems Web site, click Dragon Systems Product Updates on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe Programs menu.

o Multiple user support. More than one person can now use Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the same computer. Each person creates one or more "users." A "user" is a set of speech files that contains acoustic information gathered from training Dragon NaturallySpeaking, as well as vocabulary and word-usage (language model) information. User acoustic information cannot be shared with other people. You can change the currently active user while Dragon NaturallySpeaking is running.

o Multiple topic support. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe, each user can now have multiple topics. A topic is a set of active vocabulary words plus word-usage (language model) information. You create and maintain topics using Topic Builder (previously called Vocabulary Builder) and Topic Editor (previously called Vocabulary Editor).

o Larger vocabulary sizes. When creating new topics, you can choose the default 30,000-word vocabulary, or the new larger 45,000 and 55,000-word vocabularies. The 55,000-word vocabulary also contains additional language model information, making it somewhat more accurate at the expense of requiring additional memory.

o MouseGrid™ and mouse pointer voice commands. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe lets you position the mouse pointer anywhere on the screen using MouseGrid, a feature that was introduced in DragonDictate for Windows. There are also new commands that move the mouse pointer short distances without MouseGrid.

o Recorded speech. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe lets you record your speech as you dictate. You can play back a recording of what you actually said during the current session. In the Correction dialog box you can also play back the recorded speech for the text you are correcting.

o Text-to-speech. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe also includes a text-to-speech utility that lets you listen to a computer-generated voice reading a specified block of text on the screen.

o Command macros. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe lets you add your own command macros. Two new tools, the New Command Wizard and the Edit Command Wizard, let you create command macros that either type a series of keystrokes or execute a script whenever you say a particular voice command. The Dragon NaturallySpeaking scripting language is a subset of the DragonDictate for Windows scripting language.

o New options. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe expands the Options dialog box to allow more control over some product features.

o New commands. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe introduces a few new commands. These include commands to control playback of recorded speech (for example, Play That Back), text-to-speech (for example, Read Paragraph), and the mouse pointer, as well as Format that <action>, which makes text formatting easier.

o New General Training text. Dragon Systems is pleased to announce the addition of selections from Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook by Scott Adams.

o MMX™ support. Dragon NaturallySpeaking now takes advantage of MMX processors by using MMX-specific instructions to speed recognition when a MMX processor is detected. Running Dragon NaturallySpeaking on a MMX processor is not required, however.

During installation, the Setup wizard displays a warning if it detects an old version of Comctl32.dll, a Microsoft Windows 95 or a Microsoft Windows NT™ system file. If you see this warning, you should update the file before starting Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe or running General Training.

o Search the Microsoft technical support Web site for the Com32upd.exe file. Install this file to update to the current version. At this time the Web address is: http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads. From the Downloads page select Microsoft Windows, then Windows 95, Updates and Utilities, and finally Com32upd.exe.

o Contact Microsoft directly for a free copy of Com32upd.exe. (At this time, Dragon Systems does not have legal authority to distribute the file.)

Connecting the Universal Adapter

1. Open the adapter box and insert two AA alkaline batteries (not provided). Alkaline batteries should last for six to nine months.

2. Plug the microphone into the microphone jack on your computer or sound system.

3. If the universal adapter box has a Test button, press the button. If the batteries are okay, the LED will light up.

4. Make sure the adapter output switch is set to high. (Later, if you experience audio problems, you can try setting this switch to low.)

o Audiotrix™ Pro (MediaTrix Peripherals, Inc.)

o Ensoniq™ Audio PCI (32-bit) (Ensoniq Corp.)

o Ensoniq™ SoundScape™ VIVO 90 (must be purchased directly from Ensoniq, Corp.)

o ExpertMedia Med 3240 with OPTi chip set (Expert Media)

o Hi-VAL SounTastic™ 16 PnP (Hi-VAL, Inc.)

o Sound Blaster 16â PnP (Creative Labs, Inc.)

o Sound Blasterâ AWE32™ PnP (Creative Labs, Inc.)

o Sound Blaster AWE64™ PnP (Creative Labs, Inc.)

o Sound Blaster AWE64™ Gold PnP (Creative Labs, Inc.)

o TerraTecâ ProMedia Soundsystem Base 1 (TerraTecâ Electronic, GmbH)

o Turtle Beach™ Tropez Plus (Turtle Beach Systems)

o Micron Millennia™ Transport™ XPE. (This portable computer is available from Micron Technology, Inc. See the Micron Technology Web site [http://www.micron.com] for more information.)

o Toshiba Tecra™ 740 CDT

o MetroBook™ II (This portable computer is available from Metropolitan Technical Services through Roy Fletcher [703-968-7855].)

Command Recognition

o When the microphone is on and dictation is not active, Dragon NaturallySpeaking sometimes interprets random (nonspeech) noise as a command.

Correction

o When you select a specified number of characters and then select additional characters in the opposite direction, Dragon NaturallySpeaking selects one less character than you said. For example, if you say "Select Next 5 Characters" and then say "Select Previous 3 Characters", two (not three) characters are selected. This is standard Windows behavior. In WordPad you can see this behavior when using the keyboard to select text. (Try pressing Shift+Right Arrow five times. Then press Shift+Left Arrow three times.)

o When you correct text that is next to nonalphabetic characters, the spacing may be wrong after the corrected text is inserted.

o When you close the Correction dialog box, Dragon NaturallySpeaking can sometimes take 10-15 seconds to adapt, during which time you should not dictate. This behavior is normal and will not affect performance in any other way.

o Sometimes both OK and Cancel are highlighted as default buttons in the Correction dialog box. To activate the OK button, you can click OK using the mouse, say "Click OK", or press the Tab key until the OK button is active. (Do not press Enter.)

o When you open Train Words from the Correction dialog box to train a phrase, Dragon NaturallySpeaking warns you that training did not succeed if it did not recognize what you said. In this event you should train each word in the phrase.

o If you say "Correct That" after closing the Correction dialog box, the Correction dialog box will reappear but it will not contain any text. You can close the dialog box, select the text you want to correct, and then say "Correct That".

o When you correct part of an utterance using the Correction dialog box and then correct a different part of the same utterance, the Play Back button plays back the whole utterance, not just the section that you corrected.

Dictation

o Dragon NaturallySpeaking may take longer than usual to recognize the first phrase you dictate after starting the program. To minimize this behavior, try closing one or more applications before starting Dragon NaturallySpeaking or add more physical memory to your computer.

o If extra small words (for example, "and", "in", and "the") are frequently inserted in your document when you pause, Dragon NaturallySpeaking may be interpreting the sound of your breath as speech. Try moving the microphone slightly farther from your mouth and to the side. If this helps, running General Training again with the microphone in the new position may further improve performance.

o When text is selected, Dragon NaturallySpeaking may interpret the sound of your breath or other noises as speech and replace the selection with new text. If this happens, say "Undo That" right away to reverse the action.

o Sometimes Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognizes what you say and displays the results of recognition processing in the Results box, but does not display the results as text in the document window. If this happens, try dictating a word and then saying "Scratch That" to correct the problem. You can also try saving the current document and then reopening it in a new document window.

o If text is selected and you say "All-Caps-On" (or a different inline dictation command), the selected text is deleted.

o To dictate a phrase that begins with the word "select" or "correct," you may have to hold down the Shift key to force the word to be recognized as dictation. (You can say the word "select" in the middle of a phrase and it will be recognized as dictation.)

o If you are having trouble because voice commands are mistaken for dictation, try holding down the Ctrl key while you say a command to temporarily disable dictation.

o Dragon NaturallySpeaking delays recognition of words you say while moving or resizing the window until you are done.

Documentation

o When you right-click a dialog box control, the What's This popup menu does not provide online Help.

o The online Help does not document two new options, Enable double-click to correct and Recognize only dictation, in the Options dialog box (Miscellaneous tab). When you turn on the Enable double-click to correct option, you can select up to three words in the Dragon NaturallySpeaking window and double-click on the selection to open the Correction dialog box. When you turn on the Recognize only dictation option, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will disable all commands and will recognize only dictation.

o The online Help for the Text-to-Speech tab (Options dialog box) documents the Unload button, which is not available in Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

o The Quick Tour introduction refers to the Personal rather than Deluxe edition. The content of the Quick Tour is correct otherwise.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Scripting Language

o The commandLine argument for the AppBringUp command does not support long file names that contain spaces.

o Long scripts containing more than one SendKeys command (for typing text in Dragon NaturallySpeaking) may not execute correctly if the microphone detects noise while the keystrokes are generated. If you are writing a long script that contains several SendKeys commands, try starting the script with a SetMicrophone 0 command to turn off the microphone. Then end the script with the SetMicrophone 1 command to turn on the microphone.

Dynamic Commands

o While Dragon NaturallySpeaking is running, you can use dynamic commands to control other Windows applications by voice. (In the active Windows application, say "Click" and then the name of a menu, menu command, option, or button in a dialog box.) However, dynamic commands do not work in all Windows applications.

File Management

o Do not open or modify any of the files in the NatSpeak Users folder, and do not add files to this folder. Modifying the contents of this folder will adversely affect saving your speech files. Any files that you add may be deleted when you save your speech files and will be deleted when you back up your speech files.

General Training

o You may have to repeat the very first sentence.

o If General Training does not recognize a word, you can click Skip Word to continue reading aloud.

o Clicking the Skip Word button may not seem to work before a punctuation mark. Try clicking Skip Word again.

o Sometimes screen savers can interfere with General Training and the Quick Tour. If you use a screen saver, you may want to turn it off while you run General Training and the Quick Tour.

o When you create a new user, you must complete all of the initial training for the user before you can save the user speech files. If you cancel General Training before completing the training for the new user and then try to save the speech files while running Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you will be informed that you must complete General Training first. You can start General Training and complete the training during the current session or you can close Dragon NaturallySpeaking and complete the training when you open the user during another session.

o Under Windows NT, General Training may not finish properly if the minimum setting for virtual memory on your computer is too low. To increase the default setting, open the Control Panel, double-click the System icon, and click the Performance tab. Then click the Virtual Memory button and choose the option that lets you specify your own virtual memory settings. Change the minimum virtual memory setting to 75 and click OK.

Hot Keys

o If the hot key that you set to turn the microphone on/off stops working, try opening the Options dialog box (Hot Keys tab) and resetting this hot key to the same value again.

Microphone

o Depending on the screen resolution, when you first start Dragon NaturallySpeaking the microphone button may be cut off at the right edge of the window. To display the microphone button properly, you can resize the window.

New Command Wizard

o The Select Target Application page sometimes omits an active 32-bit application from the list of target applications. Try closing and then restarting the application.

o In Windows NT, the New Command wizard does not support creating commands to use with 16-bit applications and certain secure programs. The wizard cannot detect and display 16-bit applications, and if you type the name of a 16-bit application, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will not know when the application is active.

Printing

o Sometimes the document window does not keep the original margin settings when you print. You can verify the margin settings before printing a document by opening Page Setup from the File menu.

Processor Compatibility

o If you are running the first version of Windows 95 (version 4.00.950) on an IBM Cyrix processor, you may not be able to start Dragon NaturallySpeaking. (The first version of Windows 95 was designed to run on Intel processors.) In this event you can find information about working around the problem at the Dragons Systems Web site or you can contact Dragon Systems Technical Support. Upgrading the Windows 95 software also corrects the problem.

Product Updates on the Web

o If your default Web browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0, the browser will stop responding when you try to access Dragon Systems Product Update information on the Web. Later versions of Internet Explorer and all versions of Netscape Navigator™ work fine.

Running Dragon NaturallySpeaking and DragonDictate for Windows at the Same Time

o The default hot keys for turning the microphone on or off (the plus [+] key on the numeric keypad) and for opening the Correction dialog box (the minus [-] key on the numeric keypad) are the same in both Dragon NaturallySpeaking and DragonDictate for Windows. To avoid conflict when running both products at the same time, for one of the applications change the hot keys assigned to these functions. It is recommended that you use the following settings: to turn on or off the microphone, change the hot key to F11; to open the Correction dialog box, change the hot key to F10.

o You must update the DragonDictate voice macro [Switch to NaturallySpeaking] to work properly under Windows NT. To import the updated version of this macro from your Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe CD-ROM, follow these steps:

1. From DragonDictate, open the Vocabulary Manager and choose Import from the Vocabulary menu.

2. From the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Deluxe CD-ROM, find the Micswap.ddx file in the root directory. Select this file, and click OK.

3. When the Vocabulary Manager asks whether or not to preserve existing words, click No.

4. To save your user with the updated [Switch to NaturallySpeaking] macro, open the Voice menu and choose Save User.

5. Repeat the preceding steps for each DragonDictate user.

Running Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Microsoft Word 6.0 at the Same Time

o When Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Word 6.0 are running at the same time, Word 6.0 will stop responding if you open the Help contents from the Word Help menu. This is a known Windows 95 problem. Try closing Dragon NaturallySpeaking or upgrading to Word 7.0.

Text-to-Speech

o If you open the Text-to-Speech tab (Options dialog box) more than once during a Dragon NaturallySpeaking session, the Read Text button may not reset automatically after reading back the text. Try clicking Stop Reading to reset the button to Read Text.

Vocabulary Tools

o Topic Builder treats special characters, for example @ and #, as nonprinting characters. If Topic Builder finds special characters when processing documents, the words that contain these characters appear as new words in the New Words dialog box. You should not add any new words to your vocabulary that contain nonprinting characters (usually shown as vertical bars or boxes).

o The Correction dialog box does not add new words that contain punctuation marks other than those in the standard spelling alphabet (letters, digits, Cap, space bar, and apostrophe). To add words that contain other punctuation marks or symbols, for example, VX/950C or Employee#, you can use Topic Editor.

o When you add a password-protected Microsoft Word document and click Begin to process the list of documents, Topic Builder should prompt you to enter the password for the Word document. Sometimes the Password dialog box may not appear, which may cause Topic Builder to stop responding. You can press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to close Topic Builder and try again, or select a different document to process.

o When you run Topic Builder, select new words to add to the vocabulary, and then click Train and Build, the words are added immediately. It is not possible to remove the words from the vocabulary by clicking Cancel when the Train Words dialog box appears. If you click Cancel, the word-usage (language model) information is built, even if you did not train the words.

Dragon Systems is a registered trademark and NaturallySpeaking is a trademark of Dragon Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are of their respective companies. ã 1997 Dragon Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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