SECTION FOUR
INTRODUCING THE VOCAL-EYES VOICE CONTROL PANEL

4.1:  INTRODUCTION

One of Vocal-Eyes' strongest features is the ability it gives you to
customize your PC's voice response in an almost infinite variety of
combinations.  This lets you fulfill your individual needs and preferences. 
In this section of your Vocal-Eyes user's guide we're going to introduce
you to the Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel.  We'll show you how to
access the control panel via the CTRL-\ key combination and take you on
a brief tour of its main menus.  Finally you will learn how to use a couple
of them to set how your PC's screen and keyboard speak.

4.2:  ACCESSING THE CONTROL PANEL

Accessing Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel is as easy as pressing CTRL-\. 
First, press and hold down the CTRL key.  If your keyboard has two CTRL
keys, you can press either of them.  Now, while holding down the CTRL
key, press the "\" key.  Release them both together.

Did you hear the ascending tone, followed by the words "1 Screen?"  You
have just popped up the main menu of Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel. 
This menu not only voices but is also displayed on the screen for sighted
users.

Press the DOWN ARROW key.  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes voice "2
Keyboard?"  Press DOWN ARROW several more times.  You should hear: 
"3 Hot Keys, 4 Cursoring, 5 General, 6 Files, 7 Help, 8 Exit."

Press DOWN ARROW one more time.  Vocal-Eyes rotored back to the top
of the main pull-down menu and voiced "1 Screen" again.  Try pressing
the UP ARROW key.  What happened?  Press UP ARROW several more
times.  This is used to move backwards through the menu options.

You can also use the LEFT and RIGHT arrows to move around in the
menus.  

Once again for those of you who do not like to move your hands off of
the home row, you can use the BACKSPACE and SPACE BAR to move
from entry to entry.  The BACKSPACE will move to the previous entry
and the SPACE BAR will advance to the next entry.  A bit later in this
section, you will learn how to jump directly to any entry in the menu. 
This allows you extremely fast access to any of the many useful features.

Press the ESCAPE key.  Did you hear the descending tone.  Use one of
your ALT-0 through ALT-9 Read Window hot keys to read your PC's
screen.  The Control Panel is no longer displayed on the screen.

The Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel, like Vocal-Eyes itself, is tucked away
in a corner of your PC's memory.  It doesn't interfere with DOS or any
applications program you may be running.  Unless, of course, you want it
to.  The Vocal-Eyes Voice Control Panel can be accessed at any time
during your PC work session.  DOS or your applications software will be
placed into a computerized version of suspended animation and remain so
for the entire time you're inside the control panel's easy-to-use pull-down
menus.  Then, when you use the ESCAPE key to exit the control panel,
DOS, or your applications program, is wakened and allowed to resume
functioning.  Neither your program nor its data has been affected in any
way.  Your program doesn't even know it was suspended.

Does all of this sound familiar?  That is because it works very much like
the Review Mode.  There is one important difference however.  When
Review Mode is requested, it is activated immediately.  The menus
however, are not popped up until DOS is not busy.  The reason for this
will become clear later on, however, the main reason is because of a
function in the menus which requires the use of DOS.  If DOS is busy, the
function could not be used.  Most of the time, the menus will pop up
instantly and this will never be a problem.  A very good example of this
can be shown as follows.  If you have a directory which contains several
files, use the DIR command to list all the entries.  While it is displaying the
entries, press the ALT key to enter review.  You will notice review mode
was entered immediately.  Go ahead and exit review.  Now issue the DIR
command again but this time, try and enter the menus.  You will notice
the menu does not pop up until the directory is completed.  The reason
again is because DOS was busy listing the entries to the screen.  The
menus waited patiently until DOS was finished and then popped up.

If you are in Review, as we said before, you can also enter the menus. 
Even if DOS is busy, the menus will pop up.  However, when you try and
issue the command which requires DOS, you may get the error "Unable to
access disk, DOS is busy."  If Vocal-Eyes let you access the Control Panel
at the wrong time, the results would be disastrous.  Don't worry too
much about all of this.  It is simply mentioned here to let you know how
Vocal-Eyes is watching out for you at all times.  Many times, you will not
even realize the trouble it is going to...and of course that is the way it
should be.

4.3:  THE HELP OPTION

If you ever have any questions about any of the Voice Control Panel
options, you can either refer to Appendix D or better yet, why not select
the "7 HELP" option.  This menu option will bring up a submenu of five
choices, Menu, Review, VE Cursor, Command Line, and Serial number. 
The Review option will display exactly the  same help information as did
pressing F1 in Review mode.  Feel free to request Review help in either
location.

The VE Cursor has not been discussed as of yet.  Suffice it to say, the VE
cursor is simply another way of reviewing your screen,  similar to Review
mode.  The main difference however is the VE cursor is interactive
whereas Review will suspend your underlying application.  Much more will
be discussed about the VE cursor in section 10.  

The Command Line option lists and briefly explains the parameters, or
specifications, that can be used when Vocal-Eyes is run from the DOS
prompt.  These are explained in detail in Appendix E.

The first option on the Help menu deals directly with each and every
menu option.  This can be a great way to get fast information about a
particular option.

Regardless of which help option you choose, the information is displayed
in the same format.  You can press Page Down to display the next
screenful of information or Page Up to display the previous page. 
Pressing the space bar will re-read the current page.  Pressing Escape will
cancel help and return you to the help submenu.

As with the Review help, if you have interruptability enabled, you can
very quickly get to the screen which contains the information you are
concerned with.  Please use this help information as needed.  It should
answer all your basic questions regarding all the menu options.  If you still
require assistance, you may refer to this users' guide.

Also Like the Review help, the information displayed is loaded from a disk
file called "VE.HLP".  Only if this file is in the original drive and directory
from which Vocal-Eyes was loaded will this feature work.  Since there is
such a large amount of information, we decided to read the help
information from disk when you request it instead of allocating a large
amount of your RAM.

If the file is not available or DOS is busy, Vocal-Eyes will speak "Help is
unavailable" and beep.  Make sure the VE.HLP file is in the correct
location and try the help option again.  

The last option on the HELP menu, "Serial Number," simply displays and
reads your unique serial number.  This number has been registered to you. 
There are times when you will need to know this serial number.  If you
choose this option, Vocal-Eyes will say "Vocal-Eyes serial number"
followed by the actual serial number in the form: VE x.x-xxxxxxxxx.

4.4:  THE "SCREEN" MENU

Use the CTRL-\ key to call up the Voice Control Panel.  Where are you in
the main pull-down menu?  Notice that it's the same place you were
when you exited the control panel.  If you're not at the "1 Screen" option,
use your arrows, space bar or Backspace keys to move there now.

Press ENTER.  What happened?  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes voice "1 Voice
= On?"  You've just entered the Screen submenu.  Press UP, DOWN,
LEFT, RIGHT, BACKSPACE or SPACE BAR several times to examine the
many options in the submenu.  We'll discuss the nineteen menu choices
in turn.

4.4.1:  SCREEN VOICE ON/OFF

Use your cursor keys to move to option 1: "Voice On."  Press ENTER. 
What happened?  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes announce "1 Voice = Off?" 
Press ENTER a second time.

Turning the Voice option to "Off" does exactly what it says:  it turns your
PC's screen voice off.  Perhaps you're using a program that already sends
screen output to your synthesizer.  Or maybe you're more interested in
getting your data typed in quickly than you are in listening to a program
that wants to talk your ears off.  In either of these instances you might
want to turn the screen voice off.  Of course if you do turn screen voice
off you will still hear the characters you type.  Also, all of your speech hot
keys--read character, word, line, sentence, paragraph, etc.--will still voice
normally.  You can always use ALT-0 through ALT-9 to read your screen.  

If you have the screen voice set to off, all you need to do is access the
Screen submenu, locate option "1 voice off" and press ENTER.  The voice
will switch immediately back to the "on" position.  Pressing ENTER
repeatedly at this submenu prompt will toggle you back and forth
between the "on" and "off" settings.

The default value, which is to say the value this feature has been set to,
is "On."

4.4.2:  SPEECH RATE

Most speech synthesizers offer at least two different rates of speech. 
Some synthesizers, such as the Sounding Board, offer as many as ten. 
Using Option #2 on the Screen submenu you can set the rate at which
your synthesizer voices text written to your PC's screen.

Use your cursor keys to select option 2 on the Screen submenu.  Press
ENTER to change the rate at which screen text will be voiced.  You will
be prompted to enter a new speech rate from zero to nine.  Rate zero is
the slowest rate, whereas Rate nine is the fastest.  Users of the Sounding
Board and other synthesizers which support 10 speech rates can select
from among all 10 rates by typing in a number from 0 through 9.  If your
synthesizer only offers two different speech rates, however, consider the
numbers zero through four to be the slow setting and five through nine
the fast.  Three-speed synthesizers can consider zero through three as the
slow setting, four through six the medium setting and seven through nine
the fastest.  For a complete list of what your particular synthesizer offers,
refer to Appendix F: Speech Synthesizers.

At the "Rate (0-9): x" prompt, simply press the desired rate number
followed by ENTER.  If you type the number incorrectly and have not
pressed ENTER, you can press the BACKSPACE key, retype the number
and then press ENTER to accept the correct value.  You can cancel the
entire process with a press of the ESCAPE key.  If you press ENTER
before typing a number, the previous setting is used.

When you make a change to the screen voice rate you'll hear the change
immediately as Vocal-Eyes reads the new rate setting and then the current
menu selection, "2 Rate = x" where x is the current rate setting.  If
you're not happy with the change, simply press ENTER and type the new
setting.  Experiment with the screen rate setting until you find the speech
rate that is most comfortable for you.  Soon we'll show you how you can
save your new setting so that it will be there every time you run Vocal-
Eyes.

4.4.3:  SCREEN PITCH AND VOLUME

Cursor through options 3, 4 and 5 of the Screen submenu.  Notice how
they offer you the ability to alter the pitch, tone and/or the volume of text
which appears on your PC's screen.  We'll discuss pitch and volume first.

The Sounding Board, and certain other speech synthesizers, support ten
different levels of both pitch and volume.  Would you like to change either
the pitch or the volume of your screen text?  If so, cursor down to the
appropriate menu choice and press ENTER.  As was the case with the
screen rate option, you will be prompted to enter a number from zero to
nine.  The number zero represents the lowest pitch, or the quietest
volume, your synthesizer is capable of producing.  The number nine
represents the highest pitch, or loudest volume.  Again, your synthesizer
may not support all ten levels of volume or pitch.

4.4.4:  SCREEN TONE

Along with 10 different levels of pitch, volume and rate, the Sounding
Board is capable of voicing text in 26 different levels of tonality, ranging
from a needle-thin "robot-like" voice to a deep-throated growl.  These
different levels are represented by the letters A to Z, with A being the
deep-throated growl and Z the thin nasal sound.

DECtalk users will notice that the Tone setting can be used to switch
between the possible nine voices.

Cursor down to the Tone menu option and press ENTER.  Notice that here
you are prompted to enter a letter from A to Z.  The default value for this
setting is a moderate "I."  If this setting is not to your liking, try supplying
a different letter value and then pressing ENTER.

As was the case with the other screen voice settings we've discussed
thus far, your synthesizer may not offer the full 26 tone settings.  Many
offer no tone control at all.

4.4.5:  THE PUNCTUATION SUBMENU

Cursor down to option 6.  Press Enter.  You have now entered the
Punctuation Submenu.  The first thing you will hear is: "1 Textual = Off." 
Cursor down, if you like, and examine the other options in this submenu. 
Each option will be discussed in turn.

1 Textual On/Off/Dictionary Only

This option controls the voicing of the standard, textual punctuation set,
including the comma, the period, question mark, exclamation point,
semicolon and colon.  By default all of these punctuation marks will not
be voiced.  Set this option to on by pressing ENTER twice if you want
these punctuation marks to be voiced.

Pressing ENTER the first time calls up the "Dictionary Only" option.  You
can use this setting to have any group of general punctuation spoken
without voicing the entire set.  You could, for example, instruct Vocal-
Eyes to voice the period and the comma, but not the colon, semicolon or
any of the others.  You could also, if you desired, alter the pronunciation
of the punctuation marks.  You could, say, use the "Dictionary Only"
setting to instruct Vocal-Eyes to voice "Full Stop" whenever it encounters
a period, or "Wow" in place of each and every exclamation point.

We'll be talking a lot about creating and installing dictionaries in section
11.

2 Math On/Off/Dictionary Only

This rotor selection is similar to the one described above, only instead of
general punctuation this switch controls the mathematical operators:  the
+, -, *, /, (, ), %, ^, <, >, and =.  Leave this setting in the default "on"
position to hear all of these marks spoken when read from your PC's
screen.  Set it to "Off" to silence voicing of these marks.  Again,
dictionaries will be discussed in a later section of the manual.

3 Miscellaneous On/Off/Dictionary Only

This setting controls the rest of your PC's standard punctuation:  the @,
#, $, &, ', ", ~, \, |, _, `, {, }, [ and ].  Once again, leave this setting in
the default "On" position to hear these marks voiced and "Off" to silence
their voicing whenever text is being read from the screen.

4 Spacing On/Off/Dictionary Only

This setting controls whether or not spaces which appear on your PC's
screen will be voiced.  Probably you will want to leave this setting in the
default "Off" setting to avoid a lot of unnecessary chatter, but give the
"On" setting a try if you like.

5 Control Off/Dictionary Only/ASCII/Describe/Say "Control"

This setting controls how Vocal-Eyes voices the ASCII control characters
from ASCII 1 to ASCII 26.  Notice that besides the default setting of "Off"
and the "Dictionary Only" setting which we shall discuss later, there are
three other settings for you to choose from:  "ASCII," "Describe," and
"Say Control."

Each of these settings does exactly what it says.  The "ASCII" setting
reports the numeric ASCII value of any control characters that appear on
your PC's screen.  "ASCII 12," for example, or "ASCII 21."  With the
"Describe" setting enabled, Vocal-Eyes will describe these ASCII
characters as they appear on your screen.  ASCII 12, for example, would
be described as "Female symbol," and ASCII 21 as "Marker."

Setting this value to "Say Control" would cause Vocal-Eyes to announce
the ASCII character as a control character.  ASCII 12, in this case would
be announced Control-L, and ASCII 21 as Control-U.

6 Enhanced Off/Dictionary Only/ASCII/Describe

This setting controls how Vocal-Eyes voices the extended ASCII graphic
character set from ASCII 127 to ASCII 255 as well as ASCII 0 and ASCII
27 to ASCII 31.  If you leave this setting in the default "Off" position,
none of these characters will be voiced.  Setting it to "ASCII" will instruct
Vocal-Eyes to announce the ASCII value for each and every extended
ASCII graphic character it encounters.

A far more useful option, especially when you first begin working with a
new program and want to see how things are laid out on the screen, is
the "Describe" setting.  Rotoring the Enhanced Punctuation switch to this
setting will cause Vocal-Eyes to describe each extended graphic character
it encounters.  Thus, when Vocal-Eyes encounters the upper right-hand
corner of a box, instead of keeping silent about it-- the "Off" setting-- or
voicing "ASCII 218"-- the "ASCII setting--it will go ahead and tell you,
"Upper right corner."

Mix and match these and all the other screen settings as desired.  Press
ESCAPE until you hear the descending tone that lets you know you've
returned to DOS or to your applications software program.  Or,
alternatively, you can always use the ALT-X "Quick Escape" key
combination for a fast exit from this or any Voice Control Panel submenu.

4.4.6:  A SPECIAL NOTE TO SOUNDING BOARD USERS

Sounding Board users will notice how much more powerful the Vocal-
Eyes punctuation features are than the ones that come standard with the
Sounding Board software.  Consequently, Vocal-Eyes will automatically
disable the Sounding Board punctuation hot key.  As a result, your
Sounding Board punctuation rotor controls will not work with Vocal-Eyes. 
Your rate, pitch and volume controls will work just fine.  You can use
either the Voice Control Panel or your Sounding Board hot keys to modify
any of these settings.

While on the subject of the Sounding Board hot keys, lets talk about how
they effect Vocal-Eyes.  The Time/Date hot key will voice the time and
date using the screen voice of Vocal-Eyes.  The Voice On/Off hot key will
still shut the synthesizer speech on or off.  Vocal-Eyes does not even
realize you have shut the voice off.  The Rate Up and Rate Down hot keys
will toggle the screen voice rate up and down on the fly.  For example,
you can be listening to some text and press the Sounding Board Rate Up
or Rate Down hot keys causing the speech to be affected immediately.  If
you pop up Vocal-Eyes' menu and look at the current screen voice rate,
you will notice it has been effected accordingly.  The same is true for the
Sounding Board Volume Up and Volume Down hot keys.  They, too, will
effect the Screen voice volume.  As we already said, the Sounding Board
Punctuation hot key will be disabled by Vocal-Eyes.  The Hyperscan hot
key works as expected.  Vocal-Eyes does not care if hyperscan is on or
off.  The same is true for Rewind and Fast forward.  Feel free to use these
keys as needed.  The Pause hot key and the Enable/Disable hot keys also
will work just fine.

4.4.7:  NUMBERS ON/OFF

Going down the Screen submenu, option 7 reads "7 Numbers = On."  By
default, Vocal-Eyes reads any number on your PC's screen as you might
speak them in conversation.  The number 123, for example, would be
voiced "one hundred twenty three."  Pressing Enter at the "7 Numbers"
prompt will toggle Vocal-Eyes' number read feature to off.  With Numbers
set to "off" Vocal-Eyes will read numbers one digit at a time.  In our
previous example, instead of speaking one hundred twenty three, Vocal-
Eyes will speak "one two three."  If the numbers option is on, it will also
read $2.98 as two dollars and ninety-eight cents, and 3:30 as three-thirty
as well as 1990 as nineteen ninety.

4.4.8: Capitalization Alert Tone/Say CAP/Pitch/Off

You may want to know which words in a document or on the screen are
capitalized. In some cases, upper case versus lower case might carry
some meaning.  Other times, you may be proofreading a letter or paper
and would like to know whether you capitalized words the way you
intended.  This feature gives you four possibilities.  Using the arrow keys
or space bar, move to option eight, "Capitalization Alert = off."  Press
ENTER.  You will hear "8 Capitalization Alert=Tone.  Did your voice
synthesizer emit a short tone before the words Capitalization and Tone? 
If you are using a synthesizer such as the Sounding Board or DECTalk PC,
you should have heard it.  If your synthesizer supports the tone feature,
you will hear a short tone before words which have the first letter
capitalized and a higher-pitched tone before words which are in all caps. 
The highest pitch is placed before words with mixed capitalization, such
as many software brand names or an error on the typist's part.  Type a
few words and try this out.

Returning to option eight of the Screen menu and pressing ENTER will
rotor you to the next setting.  You will hear "8 Capitalization Alert = Say
CAP," pronounced, "8 cap Capitalization alert equals cap Say cap cap
CAP."  If you read Braille, this will make some sense to you.  If the first
letter of a word is capitalized, Vocal-Eyes will say "cap" before it speaks
the word.  If all of the letters in the word are upper case, Vocal-Eyes will
say "cap cap" before it says the words.  If the capitalization of the word
is mixed, however, Vocal-Eyes says "cap cap cap" to indicate this.  Try
this on the words you typed earlier.

Go back to option eight and press ENTER again.  This time Vocal-Eyes
says, "8 Capitalization = Pitch."  This is similar to the "Capitalization
Alert = Tone" option described above, but this time Vocal-Eyes indicates
the capitalization of a word by using three different pitches.  Nearly all
synthesizers support this feature.

4.4.9:  Format Alert Off/On

Have you ever made errors in the number of spaces between two words
or between the end of one sentence and the beginning of another?  
Perhaps you've meant to indent text but have gotten a line or two out of
alignment.  This is nearly impossible to detect, but the people who read
your printed document will notice it right away.  

If you'd like to proofread your documents before printing them, try option
nine on the Screen menu.  When on, this feature announces "two spaces"
where you've put them after end punctuation and "indented four" where
you have four spaces (or any other number) at the beginning of a line. 
Try moving text around with the tab key or space bar and see how Vocal-
Eyes keeps you posted as you read.  You will hear XX spaces where there
are two spaces or more and indented xxx where there are  any spaces at
all at the beginning of the line.

4.4.10:  Visual Tracking

If you cursor down to option ten on the Screen menu, Visual Tracking,
and press ENTER, you will enter a submenu as you did when you looked
at the Punctuation submenu.   Your options here are "1 Visual Tracking =
OFF," "2 Foreground = Black," and "3 Background = White."  

The purpose of this feature is to "highlight" each word as it is being
spoken.  This means that when you press the read line, read paragraph,
read x window, or any other read hot key, each word Vocal-Eyes speaks
will be indicated with a different color than the original word.  This
feature, by the way, can only be used with synthesizers which support
the indexing feature.  If your synthesizer does not support indexing,
Vocal-Eyes will treat Visual Tracking as if you had turned it off in the
Screen menu.

This feature defaults to off.  However, if you have low vision or have a
learning disability, it is strongly recommended you enable this feature. 
This was actually added for learning disabilities.  With the visual and
audable feedback Vocal-Eyes provides an individual with a learning
disability can overcome their normal dificulties.  We believe you will be
very pleased with this feature.

When you first enter the submenu, your cursor is on the number one
selection.  The default is "off."  If you press ENTER you will hear "1
Visual Tracking = User defined."  This means that you, the user, get to
determine what color the highlight will be.  You might use this if you can
see certain colors better than others or if the text is displayed in many
colors and you'd like to have the highlighted words all match.  To set the
color to, let's say, red on white, move down to the second menu item and
press ENTER.  You'll hear "Select foreground 1 Black."  You can use your
up and down arrow keys to find the foreground color you like.  By the
way, if you are using a monochrome system, you'll find only black and
white combinations.  In any case, once you find the color you want, in
our example red, press ENTER.  Now you'll hear "2 Foreground = Red." 
Arrow down to option number three and press ENTER to select the
background color, white, in the same way.  Later we'll talk about how to
save these settings for later use.

Finally, press ENTER again on option 1.  You will rotor the option to
"Inverse."  This means that the normal background color becomes the
foreground color and vice versa.  For example, if the text on the screen is
white on blue, the highlighted word will show up as blue on white.  If you
have a setting of inverse, options two and three below will be ignored.

Note:  If you are performing a function such as a file transfer, visual
tracking may cause your transfer to fail.  It's a good idea to turn this
feature off before you perform the transfer.  Because the highlight
tracking requires the total attention of the machine, while words are being
highlighted, your underlying application program will be suspended.  If the
underlying program and can not be suspended, make sure you leave this
option off.

4.4.11:  THE REPEAT FILTER

Cursor down to the eleventh option in the Screen submenu.  This option
allows you to set Vocal-Eyes' repeat filter.  Often, programs will repeat
long strings of characters in order to decorate the screen, break text into
pages, etc.  It can be quite annoying, for instance, having to listen to
Vocal-Eyes read out an entire 80-column screen line worth of dashes, or
15 or 20 equal signs in a row which have been placed above a list of
menu selections.   This is where Vocal-Eyes' repeat filter comes in handy.

There are  three settings to the repeat filter:  "Off," "Say Repeats," and
"Ignore."

With the filter in the "Say Repeats" position, Vocal-Eyes will "look ahead"
at text it is about to voice.  Whenever it sees an occurrence of several like
characters in a row, instead of reading them all, it will voice the character
a few times only and then announce the number of times the character is
repeated.  A line of dashes extending all the way across your PC's screen,
for instance, may be voiced as follows:

dash dash dash repeats 80 times

The next option, "Ignore," would have instructed Vocal-Eyes not to voice
the string of dashes at all.

Leaving the repeat filter in the "Off" position would instruct Vocal-Eyes to
leave all repeating characters alone--in which case the above string of 80
dashes would have been voiced dash by dash from beginning to end.

By default, this setting has been left in the "Off" position.  Would you like
to change it now?  Use your UP or DOWN ARROW key to move you to
the Repeat Filter prompt.  Notice that Vocal-Eyes voices the current
setting.  Now, press ENTER.  Did you hear Vocal-Eyes advance your
repeat filter selection one setting?  Press ENTER again if you'd prefer
Vocal-Eyes to ignore all repeating characters entirely and yet again to
return yourself to the default "Off" setting.

The repeat filter is a rotary setting.  What this means is that every time
you press ENTER at the repeat filter prompt Vocal-Eyes will advance, or
rotor, you one notch through the various settings until you've seen them
all.  Then it will circle, or rotor, back around to the first selection and
begin again.

4.4.12:  THE REPEAT VALUE

In the previous topic we mentioned that whenever the repeat filter is in
one of the enabled modes, Vocal-Eyes will look ahead in your text and
perform the appropriate filtering action after a character has repeated
itself a certain number of times.  Using the Repeat Value setting you can
adjust the number of times a character must repeat before Vocal-Eyes
jumps in and says "repeats" or decides to ignore the string completely. 
By default Vocal-Eyes will allow a character to repeat three times before
filtering remaining similar characters.  However you can reset this value to
any number from 1 to 9.  We recommend you do not set this value less
than 3 since it is possible for two of the same letters to be placed
together in one word.  This would cause the word to be split up.

Whatever you set this option to, also tells Vocal-Eyes how many times to
actually speak the repeated character before saying "Repeats x Times."  If
you have eighty dashes and the Repeat Value is set at 7, you will hear:

dash dash dash dash dash dash dash repeats 80 times

Use your UP or DOWN ARROW key to move you to the "Repeat Value"
selection.  Press ENTER.  You will be prompted for the number of times
from 1 to 9 that you would like the character to repeat before Vocal-Eyes'
repeat filter steps in.   Naturally, if you have set the repeat filter to "Off"
this setting will have no effect whatsoever.

4.4.13:  BLANK LINES

Would you like Vocal-Eyes to say "Blank" every time it encounters a blank
line when voicing your PC's screen display?  Perhaps you've got a
document on screen and you need to make sure you've skipped a line
between each paragraph.  Or maybe you are just checking out the screen
layout of a new or unfamiliar program.

In any case, to instruct Vocal-Eyes to say "Blank" whenever it encounters
a blank line on your screen display, simply enter the Screen submenu and
cursor down to option thirteen.  Press ENTER to toggle this feature to the
"Say Blank" option.  Press ENTER a second time to toggle it back off
again.

4.4.14:  Signal Cursor Position

Turning this option on will cause Vocal-Eyes to say "CURSOR" whenever
it is reading something which contains the cursor position.  The default is
off.  For example, if you asked Vocal-Eyes to read this line:

Mary had a little lamb.

and the cursor was on the first "l" of little, Vocal-Eyes would say:

Mary had a cursor little lamb.

Notice the word "cursor" thrown in before the word little.  This tells you
the cursor is sitting on the "l" of "little."  With this feature enabled, you
can tell exactly where your cursor currently resides.  If your cursor is
sitting in the middle of a word, Vocal-Eyes will break the word at the
cursor position and speak the first part followed by the word "cursor" and
finally the second part of the word.  For example, if the cursor is sitting
on the "p" of "computer", Vocal-Eyes would say "com cursor puter." 
Although you may not want this feature enabled all the time, feel free to
turn it on and off as needed.

Pressing ENTER on this option will toggle between on and off.

4.4.15 Attribute changes

With this option enabled, Vocal-Eyes will speak color changes as it reads
the text displayed on the screen.  A hot key can also be assigned to
perform the same function.  More will be discussed about this option in
section 8.  Pressing ENTER will toggle between on and off.  The default is
off.

4.4.16 Auto box read

This is a very powerful feature.  Many programs like to display
information on the screen in boxes.  Visually this is very appealing and
easy to follow.  However, because the information is printed over the top
of existing data, it can be difficult to only read the box's contents.

As you will see in section 8, you could press the read box hot key located
in the hot key menu.  This is good if you know a box is on the screen and
even if you do, it still requires that you press an additional keystroke.

If you enable this feature, Vocal-Eyes will automatically watch the full
screen for any boxes which pop up on the screen.  If more than one box
is currently on the screen, Vocal-Eyes will attempt to search out the box
of most interest.  Once a box has been detected, Vocal-Eyes will
automatically read its contents.  Error messages, dialog boxes, status
messages, anything which pops up in a box can be set to automatically
be read by enabling this feature.

Once a box appears on the screen, Vocal-Eyes will read the box only
once, even if the information within the box changes.  However, if
another box pops up on top of the original, Vocal-Eyes will read the new
one.  Once the new box disappears, the original box will be reread,
assuming it is still displayed on the screen.

More on this feature and the read box hot key will be discussed in section
8.

Feel free to give the auto box read a try.  We are sure you will find it
handy, especially for new and unfamiliar programs.

4.4.17 Screen activity tone

The screen activity tone will let you know if your screen is changing when
the voice has been silenced.

Lets say you are downloading a file through a modem and your
communications program is constantly updating the screen as the data is
being received.  Allowing this data to be spoken could cause your
download to take more time or even abort the download.  Therefore, you
should silence the speech.  But with the speech silenced, you don't know
how the status of your download is going.  Actually, there is a way to
know.  If you enable the screen activity tone, Vocal-Eyes will emit a small
tone about once a second if the voice has been silenced.  If the voice has
not been silenced, the tone will not be sounded.  This way if you hear the
tone, you know your screen is changing thereby giving you confidence
your download is working correctly without hearing each little detail
through the speech synthesizer.

This is a handy way of giving you confidence your machine has not
locked up but is truly doing something to the screen.  Feel free to enable
and disable this feature as desired.

4.4.18 Port intercept

This option allows you to tell Vocal-Eyes to intercept information which
would have gone out any of the four COM ports or any of the three LPT
ports.  The available options are off, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, LPT1,
LPT2 and LPT3.  If you have this enabled for any of the seven ports and
data is sent to the port by any applications program, Vocal-Eyes will steal
the data and send it to your voice synthesizer using the voice settings for
the screen voice.  The data will not be allowed to pass to the actual serial
or parallel port.

You may be using an applications program which does not speak very
well on its own but offers the ability to echo information to a serial port or
parallel port.  Normally the applications program believes there is a printer
attached to the selected port.  However, by instructing the applications
program to send its data through a specified port and having Vocal-Eyes
intercept the data through the same port, you now have the data speaking
to you as desired.

If you setup Vocal-Eyes to intercept LPT1 and you issue a print screen
command, Vocal-Eyes will speak the entire screen, even if you have your
printer attached to LPT1.

Pressing ENTER on this option will rotor between all seven ports as well
as a setting of off.

This option will not work for those programs which send the data directly
to the serial or parallel hardware.  Only those programs which send the
data to the ports through BIOS can be intercepted and spoken by Vocal-
Eyes.  Normally this is not a problem, but you should be aware of this. 

4.4.19 BIOS TTY Intercept

This option allows you to tell Vocal-Eyes if it should intercept the standard
BIOS TTY screen write function.  You may have noticed that Vocal-Eyes
does not require ANSI.SYS loaded on any computer system for the DOS
prompt to be voiced.  The reason for this is because Vocal-Eyes intercepts
this port for voicing by default.

You may be asking, "if this is so good, why would you ever want to
disable it?"  The reason is that certain application programs write
information to the screen twice.  Visually, this is never detected;
however, with Vocal-Eyes, this problem can be very destructive to the
voice.  Therefore, if you are using an applications program which sounds
like every letter is being doubled in a word, try setting this option to
ignore instead of intercept.

If you set this option to ignore on certain systems, your DOS prompt may
no longer speak unless you load the ANSI.SYS device driver.  Given a
choice, it is usually faster and requires less memory to enable this feature
and not load ANSI.SYS.  Even if you have this feature enabled, you can
still load ANSI.SYS but, unless it is required by your applications program,
save memory and don't load it.

Don't worry if you don't fully understand the technical reasons for this
feature.  Just remember, if you run an applications program and you can
not understand what is being spoken (it sounds like a strange language),
you may want to set this option to ignore.  It may make your program
speak properly.  There are very few programs which require this feature. 
However, if required, Vocal-Eyes supports it.

To return to the main menu while in the Screen submenu, press the
ESCAPE key.  The ESCAPE key will always return you to the previous
menu or if you are already at the main menu, a press of the ESCAPE key
will exit you completely out of the menus.

4.5:  THE "KEYBOARD" MENU

Here's something we think you'll find quite handy when using Vocal-Eyes: 
the ability to set voice output differently for your screen and keyboard. 
Let's say, for instance, that you would like to quiet the keys as you type
them but hear the information presented on the screen voiced at normal
volume.  Or you'd like to hear the spaces as you type them, but not as
they appear on the screen.  No problem for Vocal-Eyes!  Just use the
CTRL-\ key to call up the Voice Control Panel and then cursor over to the
"2 KEYBOARD" option.  Press ENTER.  

4.5.1:  KEYBOARD VOICE ON/OFF

When you enter the Keyboard submenu the first setting you will
encounter is the Voice On/Off option.  This is exactly the same as the
Voice On/Off setting you encountered back in the Screen submenu, only
instead of silencing the screen voice this setting will silence your
keyboard.  Sometimes you just don't want to here each letter, number or
mark of punctuation as you type them.  Press ENTER at the "Voice ="
prompt to set the keyboard voice to "off."  Nothing you type from this
point on will be sent to your synthesizer.  Your screen, however, will
speak normally, as will your interactive hot keys, such as the CTRL-L line
review and your ten ALT-0 through ALT-9 screen windows.

Are you ready to turn your keyboard voice back on?  It's as simple as
entering Vocal-Eyes' Voice Control Panel and pressing ENTER at the Voice
On/Off prompt in the keyboard submenu.

4.5.2:  SPEECH RATE, PITCH, TONE, VOLUME AND PUNCTUATION

Options 2 through 6 of the Keyboard submenu will undoubtedly look
familiar to you.  They are the same options that you worked with earlier in
the Screen submenu.  As you will recall, we mentioned then that Vocal-
Eyes offers the ability to set the screen and keyboard voices to different
rates of speech, pitch and volume, as well as to different levels of
punctuation voicing.

Notice that many of the punctuation settings have been preset to different
values than they were in the screen punctuation submenu.  You probably
won't want to hear every mark of punctuation that appears on your
screen.  You probably will want to hear them as you type them, however. 
With Vocal-Eyes' two separate screen and keyboard voices, you can hear
exactly what you want to hear when you want to hear it.  Feel free to set
these options to your liking.

4.5.3:  SPECIAL KEYS VOICING

There are many "special" keys that you may or may not want to hear
announced.  With Vocal-Eyes you can pick and choose as you like.

Cursor down to option 7 "Special Keys" in the Keyboard submenu.  Press
ENTER.  You will now be presented with a second, nested submenu
describing the various sets of special keys whose voicing you can turn on
or off.  Below is a list with descriptions.

1:  Function Keys - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to
voice the function keys F1 to F10 or from F1 to F12, depending on the
layout of your keyboard.  If this is on and you press the F5 key, Vocal-
Eyes will speak "F5."  The default is off.

2:  Toggle Keys - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to
voice the various toggle keys, including the CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK,
INSERT and SCROLL LOCK keys.  The default is on.  Although INSERT is
included in this group, Vocal-Eyes will not speak the current state of the
insert key.  Each program handles the status of the insert key differently. 
It is impossible for Vocal-Eyes to know if you are in insert or over type
with 100% certainty.  Therefore, Vocal-Eyes will simply say 'INSERT'
when the insert key is pressed assuming this option has been enabled.

3:  Cursor Movement - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not to
voice the cursor movement keys, including the UP, DOWN, LEFT and
RIGHT ARROW keys as well as HOME, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN, DELETE
and END keys.  The default is off.

4:  Key Enhancements - This switch instructs Vocal-Eyes whether or not
to voice the key enhancements, such as the SHIFT, ALT and CTRL keys. 
The default is off.

5:  Escape and 6: Enter - These switches instruct Vocal-Eyes whether or
not to voice the ESCAPE and ENTER keys respectively.  Both default to
off.

A NOTE ON THE CAPS LOCK KEY:  Whenever you have the CAPS LOCK
key enabled, you can disable it briefly in order to type a few lower case
letters by pressing either of the SHIFT keys.  Vocal-Eyes will alert you
whenever you press a SHIFT key with the CAPS LOCK key engaged by
sounding a brief tone for each character typed.  This should prevent you
from accidentally forgetting to disable the CAPS LOCK key and typing
words with lower case beginnings and upper case endings.  We are sure
this will save you at some point.  Feel free to try this to hear what the
tone sounds like.  You must exit the menus, make sure the CAPS LOCK
key is enabled and press a letter while holding the shift key down.

4.5.4:  VOICING OF CAPITAL LETTERS

Option 8 from the keyboard submenu allows you to select what to do
when an upper case letter is typed from the keyboard.

Vocal-Eyes offers three different ways of alerting you that a capital letter
has been typed:  Pitch, tone and "Say cap."

The default "Pitch" option causes Vocal-Eyes to voice capital letters in a
slightly higher pitch than normal text.  Select "Tone" and you will hear a
brief tone every time a capital letter is entered from your PC's keyboard. 
Selecting "Say Cap" will cause Vocal-Eyes to actually voice the word
"Cap" before any capital letter you type.  Of course you can always
choose not to be alerted about capital letters.  To do this, simply select
the "Undefined" option from the Capitals rotary menu.

4.5.5:  KEY CLICK OFF/ON

Let's say you've turned the keyboard voice off.  You don't want to hear
each letter, number or punctuation mark  as you type them.  Still, you'd
like some confirmation as you type along that the keys are being pressed
hard enough.  Here's where the Key Click option comes in handy.  Move
down to this option in the keyboard submenu and toggle it to the "On"
position.  Now, use the ESCAPE key or ALT-X to return you to your work. 
Notice that as you press each key a faint click is generated.  

4.5.6:  INTERRUPTABILITY

Now we come to one of the most useful of Vocal-Eyes' many keyboard
voice features:  Interruptability.  This is controlled by option 10 in the
keyboard submenu.

We first discussed interruptability back in SECTION 3 of this manual when
we got Vocal-Eyes up and running.  You will recall from our discussion
that this feature allows you to stop the voicing of any character, line,
sentence, paragraph or screen by simply pressing any key on your PC's
keyboard.  We showed  you how interruptability helped Vocal-Eyes to
keep up with fast typists, and how it helped you silence unwanted
speech.  unfortunately, however, not all speech synthesizers can handle
the heavy work load required by this feature.  Your synthesizer may not
handle interruptability well.  It may start to squawk or hiccup.  If this
happens, you may wish to use the Interruptability option on the Keyboard
menu to turn Interruptability off.

With Interruptability turned off, Vocal-Eyes will voice each and every
character you type in turn, and it will read any line, sentence, paragraph
or screen in its entirety before moving on to the next unit of text to be
voiced.  Vocal-Eyes will voice each textual unit in turn.  Pressing a key
will simply add more text into the cue of text to be voiced.

But what if, say, you've pressed one of your ALT-0 through ALT-9 read
screen hot keys.  You've got the information you want, but there's still a
lot of your screen waiting to be voiced.  Is there any way you can
"interrupt" the voicing the way you can by pressing any key with
Interruptability turned on?  Yes, as a matter of fact there is.  It's done via
the CTRL-X Momentary Silence hot key.

Try this.  Cursor down to the Interruptability option and press ENTER four
times to turn this feature off.  Now, press ESCAPE enough times to return
you to DOS or your applications program.  Or type ALT-ESCAPE or ALT-X
once to "express" exit the Voice Control Panel.  Use one of your ALT-0
through ALT-9 read screen hot keys to start the voicing of text.  Press the
CTRL-X momentary Silence hot key.  Did your text stop voicing?  How
fast did it stop?  Different synthesizers will respond differently to the
CTRL-X Momentary Silence hot key.  Some, such as the Sounding Board,
will respond immediately.  Others may take a character or two, or produce
a "hiccupping" sound when CTRL-X is pressed.

There are other times when Interruptability might actually get in your way. 
Say your working in your word processor, reading your text line by line
with the DOWN ARROW key.  You wouldn't want Vocal-Eyes to silence
the reading of each line if all you've done is press the DOWN ARROW key
to read the next line.  This is why you have been supplied with five
options at the Interruptability prompt:  Off, All Keys, Cursor Keys Off,
Cursor Keys only, and Control or ALT.

With a setting of Off, as we stated above, Vocal-Eyes' interruptability
feature is completely disabled.  No keys will interrupt, though of course
you can use the CTRL-X momentary silence key at any time to silence
voice output.

The "All Keys" option turns Interruptability on for all keys.  This is the
default setting.  If you wish to silence the voice without issuing a
keystroke to your application, press either the SHIFT or CONTROL keys. 
Since these keys do nothing by themselves, they make an excellent
choice for silencing the speech.  Once you use a system which does not
offer this easy silence, you will really appreciate what Vocal-Eyes takes
for granted.

The "Cursor Keys Off," selection, on the contrary, turns Interruptability on
for all keys except the four arrow keys.  These keys will not silence the
speech when they are pressed.  Thus you can cursor ahead in your text
without the fear of missing anything important.

The "Cursor Keys Only" is the opposite of the cursor keys off option. 
Cursor keys only means exactly that-- only the four arrow keys will
silence the voice.

The "Control or ALT" option gives you the ease of pressing a single key
to silence the speech.  These keys normally do nothing to the underlying
applications program.  Selecting this option will allow you to press either
control or ALT key to silence the speech.  The SHIFT key has purposely
been excluded from this option.  This is because as you type, the SHIFT
key is likely to be pressed as part of your normal text.  However, the
Control and ALT keys are normally only used for commands.

Note:  The silence hot key, which defaults to CTRL-X, can only be used if
interruptability is set to off or Cursor Keys Only.  If you have it set to any
of the other options, the silence hot key will be completely undefined. 
This means if you press CTRL-X, it will go through to the application.  If
you think about this, it makes sense.  Why press CTRL-X to silence the
speech with interruptability when all you need to press is the CONTROL
key by itself.

Okay, lets say you are listening to a large file being displayed on the
screen.  You know what you really want to hear is not for a couple pages
yet.  Why not silence the speech?  You might be saying, "how do I turn it
back on?"  Well, the speech can be toggled on and off.  For example, lets
say you silenced the speech by pressing the CONTROL key assuming
interruptability is on.  Simply press the CONTROL key again and the voice
will start up at the new location,  skipping all text between the time you
silenced the voice and the instant you turned it back on.  The same is true
if you have interruptability turned off and you silenced the speech with
the silence hot key CTRL-X.  Simply press CTRL-X again and, as before,
the speech will start up again.  You can toggle the speech on and off as
many times as you like.  This can be a very handy way of skipping
through large passages of text.

Lets go through one more scenario.  Say you have issued the DOS DIR
(directory) command.  You heard the entry you were looking for so you
silenced the speech.  But now, how do you know when the directory has
been completed.  You could toggle the speech on and off every so often
but this might not be acceptable.  If you silence the speech, as soon as
DOS or your application program is ready for more keyboard input, Vocal-
Eyes will issue a blip tone indicating to you that the text is finished being
displayed so you can type your next command.  Give it a try.  Issue the
DOS DIR command and as soon as it starts to speak, silence the voice. 
Now listen for the blip tone.  As soon as you hear it, you can assume
DOS is finished displaying the directory to the screen and it is ready for
your next command.  

4.5.7:  WORD MODE OFF/ON

Perhaps you'd prefer to hear what you're typing word by word.  Easy
enough.  Simply enter the Keyboard submenu and cursor down to the
Word Mode option.  Press ENTER to toggle on the feature.  Press ESCAPE
several times or ALT-X once to return to DOS or your applications
program.  Notice that now when you type you don't hear anything until
you reach a space, a mark of punctuation, or until you press ENTER or
any of the various cursor keys.  Then you hear the word you've just
typed.  Try word processing with this feature enabled.  

When you enable Word Mode, you may also want to disable the space
from speaking in the keyboard punctuation menu.

Naturally, Interruptability has no affect on text voiced in word Mode. 
That is to say those keys on the standard keyboard will not silence the
speech.  However, all the other keys will act as they always did.  For
example, the shift key will not silence the speech since it is used in your
normal typing but the control key will silence the speech.  So will the
function keys and all cursoring keys.  You sort of have the best of both
worlds.  You can type as fast as you like.  Vocal-Eyes will say each word
without interruption.

4.6:  MOVING AROUND IN THE MENUS

As you already know, you can use the four arrow keys to move up and
down the menus.  Those of you who would rather leave your hands on
the home row, can use the SPACE BAR to switch to the next higher
selection or the BACKSPACE to switch to the previous selection.  This is
great, especially at first when you are learning all the options.  However,
as time goes on and you start remembering exactly where certain options
are located, you can jump directly to an entry.  For example from the main
menu, regardless of which option is currently under the cursor, you can
jump to the screen menu by typing the corresponding number followed by
ENTER.  This is why each entry has a number preceding its name.  You
can do this any time during your visit to the Voice Control Panel.  Just
type in the number of the menu option you want and then press ENTER. 
You will be moved directly to that option.  If the option is a toggle or rotor
option and you have moved to it by typing the number and pressing
ENTER, Vocal-Eyes will move you to the option but it will not change the
setting.  This way, you can very quickly move to an option to see how it
is currently set.  If the option is not a toggle or rotor option and you type
the entry number followed by ENTER, Vocal-Eyes will move to the option
and execute it as if you manually moved there and pressed ENTER.  For
example, from the main menu if you type 6ENTER, the files menu will be
displayed.  You could have also cursored to the option and pressed
ENTER.  The easiest way to remember if Vocal-Eyes will simply move to
the entry or move to and execute the entry is to consider whether or not
the entry contains an = (equal sign).  For example, the entry 'Voice =
On' contains an equal sign so Vocal-Eyes would not toggle the entry but it
would move to it and read the default setting.

Let's say you are at the main menu and you want to toggle the Key Click
option from Off to On.  First you would need to get into the Voice Control
Panel by pressing CTRL-\.  Then you need to get into the Keyboard
submenu by pressing 2ENTER.  Since option 9 is the Key Click option,
you need to press 9ENTER to move to the option and one more ENTER to
actually toggle the option.  At this point, the option will toggle to the next
state (On in our example.)

There is another handy feature which was mentioned briefly.  This is the
express exit command.  If you are in the menus and want to get out, you
could of course press ESCAPE the required number of times.  However,
why not simply press ALT-X?  You could for example be in the
punctuation submenu which is off of the Screen submenu which is off of
the main menu.  To exit the menus completely, it would require you to
press ESCAPE three times.  Why not press ALT-X and exit with one key
stroke?  Those of you who have the enhanced 101-key  Keyboard and
whose systems support its abilities can also press ALT-ESCAPE.  This
works exactly as ALT-X.  Use whichever keystroke you feel most
comfortable with.

4.7:  RESETTING MENU OPTIONS TO A KNOWN STATE

There is one more key which is handled specially while in the Voice
Control Panel.  This is the DELETE key.  If you press the DELETE key
while on a toggle or rotary option, it will reset it to a known state.  For
example, pressing DELETE while at the Interruptability option which is off
of the Keyboard submenu, will always set this option to All keys.  You
can simply give the DELETE a try to see what the value will be reset to. 
You can always use ENTER to toggle back to the original setting.

If you press DELETE on an option which is not a toggle or rotary, it will
act just as if you had pressed the ENTER key.  The ability to set a toggle
option to a known state is very important if you plan on using macros
with Vocal-Eyes.
