VO and Quicksilver

[yvonne thomson]

Hi, all.

I've finally gotten settled into using Voiceover and the Mac, and  
I've mostly stopped thrashing around frantically downloading  
applications and whacking my head against the walls and ceiling and  
soforth of Voiceover, <grin>. I think I mostly know what it can do,  
what it can't do, and I've stopped cursing at it quite so much.

Having gotten that far, I think it's time to try to contribute  
something to the community, and in this case, since I don't have a  
blog and *I* at least, think what I'm about to describe is useful,  
I'm posting this message about how I'm working with the app launcher  
called Quicksilver using voiceover. If you're not interested, feel  
free to skip it, and if this is the wrong place to be posting this  
kind of thing, please let me know of a better location for any future  
ravings.

First, what is Quicksilver. Umm, the answer to        that's a little  
complicated. At its most basic level, it's an application launcher.  
press ctrl-space, which is the default activation key for  
Quicksilver, type an app name or at least the first few characters of  
one, hit enter, and it brings it up. For me, that alone would make it  
worth it. I'm sorry, but the dock absolutely drove me nuts, and I  
don't really want to have to assign a hotkey for every app I use, so  
this was what I initially used it for.

But if that's all there was to it, it wouldn't really be worth  
writing this message, now would it?

Basically, Quicksilver lets you select things, and then do things to  
those things. E.g. type the first few letters of a safari bookmark,  
hit enter, and it goes to it. enter the same few letters for that  
bookmark, hit tab, type cp or cop, and copy the URL to the clipboard.  
or type pa or paste to paste it into a document or email to email it  
to a friend. Take a look at http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/ 
overview for a proper introduction.

To get it, go to http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Still interested? Well ok, Now down to the hard part, how the heck do  
you use this thing with Voiceover? Answer, well it's a bit difficult.

I'd heard about Quicksilver quite a while before I ever got a Mac.  
People on half the weblogs I read seemed to be going on about it, so  
one of the first things I decided to do when I *got* the Mac was  
install it. And I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed. You see,  
it's not *really* very VO compatible.

If you've read the intro post I've pointed at, you'll know that  
quicksilver basically consists of two or three boxes, depending on  
what you're trying to do. *None* of those can be seen by VO. What  
you'll get, if you VO arrow through them, is a bunch of unlabelled  
buttons. Practically the only thing you *can* see is a progress  
indicator, numbers of items and actions, and an execute button.

the trick here is the default primer interface. Just to the left of  
the execute button, It puts, in a readable fashion, the action you're  
about to perform. To test this out for yourself first, turn off  
cursor tracking for now. Trust me, it's less confusing that way. Hit  
ctrl-space, type mail, and hit vo left arrow twice. What you should  
hear, is ""execute", followed by open mail."
Hit ctrl-space again to get out of Quicksilver. If you'd hit enter,  
it would either have run mail or, if it's already running, switched  
to it.

there you are, the most basic info on quicksilver. You mostly won't  
even need to *llook* at that info next to "execute" just to do that.  
For the more interesting stuff, well I hate to say it, but you really  
need to know what you're trying to do to make this efficient. Here's  
some examples.

Probably the next most common thing I use it for, moving and copying  
files. I know, I know, someone's already written a scrript for that,  
and if you assign a hotkey, no problem. But Quicksilver can do this too.

First, find a file, or more than one if you like, that you want to  
move or copy using the finder. Use select the same way you usually  
would. Hit ctrl-space to activate Quicksilver, and then hit cmd-g.  
Again, turn off cursor tracking if it isn't already, and hit vo left  
arrow twice. What you'll get is "open whatever the file's called.  
That's not what you're trying to do, so hit tab to get into the  
action box. It'll say "button, button". If you want to move, type mov  
or mv. If you want to copy the file, try cop or cp. Have another look  
at that message area, which you still should be sitting on since  
cursor tracking's turned off, maybe using vo a.

If you're lucky, it'll say "copy to" or "move to". If it doesn't,  
press down arrow and read it again until it does.

Then press tab again. Now you're in the third box, which only appears  
when whatever command you've chosen needs more information to  
complete it. Type the path you want to move or copy tåhe file to.

Have another look at that message area, and it should say something  
like "filename, copy to destdir." or "filename, move to destdir."

If you hit enter here, it'll either copy or move the file. If you  
don't want to bother, just hit ctrl-space again to get out of  
Quicksilver.

Now, this looks incredibly obnoxious going through it like this, and,  
initially, it probably will be. But there are a couple of hints to  
make it quicker. You really don't need to check this until you've  
finished the command. ctrl-space, cmd-g, tab. cp, tab, folder name.  
The trick with copy and move is, well, if you hit tab the second  
time, and it says, "execute", you've got the wrong command, possibly  
something like "move to trash" or "copy to clipboard." Simply shift- 
tab back, press down arrow, and hit tab, and you're probably fine. To  
be honest, I still do check copy or move commands, since if you  
mistype the path, finding where the heck you've moved or coppied the  
file to could be a bit of a pain, but that's just me, but that's  
still only reading it once, not three times.

Another thing to notice about this is, when you're typing the  
filename in the 3rd box, you're technically in what's called "browse  
mode". If Quicksilver was more VO friendly, this would be yet another  
way to browse your hard drive. here's another example for you.

Hit ctrl-space, type a "~" character which, if you don't know, takes  
you to the root of your home folder.. Have a look at the message  
area. It'll say "open home."

If you hit either the right arrow key or the slash key, That message  
should change to whatever the first entry in your home folderis.  
Pressing down arrow goes to the next entry, and so on. If you're  
looking at a folder, right arrow or slash will drill down into that  
folder, and left arrow or ? gets you back out. As I said, though,  
this isn't very efficient using Voiceover, since there's no command  
or setting that lets you watch and read an area of the screen every  
time it changes, so you have to read it manually every time you want  
to know what's there, but this  way of navigating gets used for a  
bunch of other things in Quicksilver, so it's useful to know about it.

But that's not how you selected a path to move your files to, is it?  
You were typing it. That's right. The *other* feature of this file  
browsing system is, typing the first few characters of a file name  
takes you to that file or folder. In other words, typing "~/ 
Documents" will highlight the Documents folder in browse mode. And if  
you're *really* knowledgable about your file system, you don't even  
need to type that. In my case, "~/Do" will get me there. In other  
words, if I'm in my safari downloads folder, which is called  
incoming, and I want to move something to my Documents folder, the  
sequence is "ctrl-space cmd-g tab mv tab ~/Do enter". Basically, it's  
filename completion in the terminal, if you've ever used that,  
without hitting tab.

This is nearly over I promise. Just a quick rundown of other things I  
use it for to give you an idea what's possible.

Browsing a history of the last 25 things I've added to my clipboard.
Appending quick notes to the end of text files.
Quickly emailing files to people without going into mail.
easily running shell/ruby/perl/python scripts.
Doing a web search without switching to safari.
Bringing up the finder in a certain folder
copying selected text from a web page to the end of a document.

None of this looks incredibly useful at the outset, and none of it's  
impossible to do without Quicksilver, but the thing I find most  
useful about it is, it lets you keep the same context. In other  
words, if you want to do something quickly, and you know exactly what  
it is, you can just do it from wherever you are, instead of having to  
switch from whatever you're doing to another application. If I'm  
typing this, and my husband wants me to email him a file, and I know  
exactly where that file is, I can just type its path, hit tab, type  
something as short as em, hit tab again, type the first few letters  
of his name, and hit enter, and it's sent. No mail compose windows,  
no app switching, no nothing. And I'm back to typing in a few seconds.
This was incredibly longwinded, and I've probably sent the entire  
list to sleep already. Drop me a note either as a reply to this or  
directly, if this proves to have been completely inappropriate to  
send to the list, with any comments or questions about all this.