Well, it's called a scripting language because that's exactly what it is.
And just like when we learned to read, write, and speak, the bottom line
was drilling it into our heads until we could do it without even thinking
about it. So naturally the beginner is going to have to reference
documentation and examples a lot and keep at it in a consistent enough
manner to learn it. And feeling that writing in a text editor is
monotonous is only normal, just as the repetitive nature of learning
anything is.
Some of us have been discussing a tutorial just recently and naturally
everyone has their own ideas regarding the best way to go about it. And
of
course there's no one size fits all method that's going to work for
everyone. So while everyone's thinking about it I just started fiddling
around with writing a tutorial. Of course things seem easy when you've
been doing it for 20 years, but when you try to start explaining it you
discover that this has to be explained in order to explain that and
you've
got to at least touch on that in order to explain the concept of this
which is necessary in order to explain the point you started out with. So
again, it gets back to how we learned our language. It wasn't in a week,
and it wasn't all at once.
And while I was working on that I pondered the audio option as well,
basically only because a human voice is a nice break from our endless use
of speech synthesizers. But that too slams us right back into the nature
of language. The equivalent of correct grammar and punctuation is
referred
to as syntax in a programming language. And the problem is that you don't
have two points taken off for a misspelling or a missing comma. Your
script throws an error and stops working. Luckily, most of the time,
syntax error messages will point you right at the source of the problem
so
you can correct it quickly. Even seasoned programmers make a type-o now
and again. So I'm not sure a strictly audio tutorial would work. I
suppose
it might because you can reference the audio as much as is needed. But I
suspect a combination of an audio tutorial with text file examples would
probably work better. Listening to the audio can instill the concepts
while having an easily accessible set of example files to really examine
would probably be more helpful once you get down to actually working on
writing scripts. Of course these are already available in VBScript help
files as well as the Window-Eyes scripting manual. But I imagine they
could be augmented with a more cohesive tutorial to begin with. It might
give the beginner a more gentle learning curve to help them tackle
scripting without the intimidation factor overloading them right from the
get-go; which I believe is the reason why so few people script. Even in
Jaws land, as long as scripting has been around, there's still very few
users who are scripting.
Regarding the scripting framework? That's probably a good place to start.
I don't actually remember how it works because I just took a look at it
when it came out. But I think that's what it was designed for. And if you
really want to dive right in, download the immediate mode window script.
It allows you to pop up a window and write single lines of code that are
executed as soon as you press ENTER. And VBScript uses the colon (:) as a
virtual line separator so you can actually write more than one line on
one
line. For example, if you want to write the following For/Next loop to
tell your synthesizer to count from 1 to 5 and pause for one second
between each number, you'd normally write it in a more structured form in
your script, such as in the following.
For i = 1 To 5
Speak i
Sleep 1000
Next
But you can do the same thing in the immediate mode window or even in
your
script if you want to by using colons as in the following.
For i = 1 To 5 : Speak i : Sleep 1000 : Next
In case your mailer wrapped that line and broke it up, it should be one
single line from For to Next.
And that's what I suggest focusing in on first, VBScript. Learn the
language first and just use the Window-Eyes "Speak" command without
worrying about how it works as it's pretty self-explanatory anyway. The
one thing to realize in the context of learning VBScript is that you can
use either variables or literals with the speak command, as in the
following.
Literal example.
Speak "Hello world!"
Note the quotes. That's what defines a literal string of text. Now here's
the same thing using a variable. I'll explicitly declare the variable
with
the "Dim" statement because I strongly advise doing so. You don't have
to,
but not doing so can send you off on wild goose chases due to nothing
more
than a type-o. For example, counter and ccounter is pronounced exactly
the
same with my synth so I wouldn't have a clue as to that error. But in
order to have this automatically checked and flagged in the event of an
error you must use the following as the first functional statement in
your
script.
Option Explicit
That's what forces "Dim" statements to be used and causes an error to be
thrown whenever a variable is found that hasn't been defined.
Dim helloString
helloString = "Hello world!"
Speak helloString
You can enter those lines individually in the immediate mode window or
put
it all on one line as in the following.
Dim helloString : helloString = "Hello world!" : Speak helloString
Okay. I better quit before I hit chapter two. So that's my 22 cents worth
on the matter.
Regards,
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hinton" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, August 21, 2010 10:44 AM
Subject: Window-Eyes Script Writing
Hi,
I learn best through audio examples mainly recordings, etc that
demonstrate tasks, even ones like Window-Eyes scripting.
I have a grasp not an extremely detailed grasp, I will be the first to
admit, but enough of a grasp on the visual basic scripting language to
write VBS scripts for Window-Eyes.
I have listened to a few audio files, such as the CSun files where
Aaron and Doug demonstrated in that four hour training session some of
the scripting concepts, including the beginnings of how to write one.
I had some trouble following along with it though due to the number of
computers talking all at once.
:)
Recently, while browsing through the scripting repository on GW
Micro's Script Central Platform, I noticed a Scripting framework
script.
I was curious if this would be a good starting point as it presents
dialog boxes to the user for writing scripts?
I find the idea of entering a text editor and typing out common blocks
of commands as if I were a computer, somewhat repetitive.
Any other suggestions?
I listened to Jeff Bishups ACB Radio presentation and thought that he
was going to do something on how to write scripts in an audio
form.wich I think that some well-known scriptor of Window-Eyes should
consider doing, as detailed as the Jim Snowbarger searies was on JAWS
for Windows scripting.
Maybe something that spans 5 or 6 episodes of MP3 recordings, wich
each going into more and more topics, ranging from the most basic
speak "Hello World" example, to the most difficult task possible with
Window-Eyes scripting as it stands today?
Curious on that one.
Let me know!
At any rait, I think that something like this should be created in an
MP3 format and the lessons archived on the web somewhere, even if
payment is requried to purchase such recordings.
Maybe someone at GW Micro or elsewhere would have an interest in
designing such a thing?
Jeff mentioned something about it, but I haven't seen anything.
Oh and Jeff..I attempted to send you an emial to your
[email protected] address with a few comments about your Skype
scripts, as well as on the Script Central page for those scripts, but
haven't seen anything.
Are you still around? :)
Thanks again to all!
--
Regards, --Keith
Skype: skypedude1234
MSN Messenger: [email protected]
Yahoo/AIM/Twitter: keithint1234
Facebook: http://facebook.com/keith.hinton1
