Actually, you can access all of the VoiceOver commands, not just 20 or so. One
of the commands, can't remember exactly at the moment, is called PerformCommand
or similar. You can pass this command the English text name of any VoiceOver
command that you'd like it to perform.
You also can control the VoiceOver voice in non-obvious ways. For example, the
VoiceOver scripting suite doesn't contain a lot of commands for adjusting
speech options. However, it does have an Output command that will cause the
script to say some text through the VoiceOver default voice. This looks rather
sparse, until you realize that this text string is sent by VoiceOver through
the Mac speech manager, and the speech manager accepts embedded commands in
text for controlling the voice. So, you can send out speech through VoiceOver
with emphasized words, direct VoiceOver to spell a word or phrase character by
character, have it speak part of a sentence louder, softer, faster, slower,
etc. You also have the option of sending phonemes directly to the synthesizer,
and for controlling the tuning/intonation of the text. This is possible, with
embedded commands, all through that single output command.
The approach is elegant. However, since you must piece the operation together
from several sources: AppleScript programming Guide, Speech Manager guide,
VoiceOver command reference, manually opening other programs' AppleScript
dictionaries, etc, it is difficult to get started. There needs to be a
scripting guide for VoiceOver that is structured like some of the other
technology overview documents on ADC. Would be a lot of work to pull it all
together with examples, though. I'd like people to have it, but I don't think I
could give up that much spare time. Apple should write it, or contract for
someone to write it. *smile*
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Yuma Antoine Decaux
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 4:14 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: voiceover script dictionary
Hi,
If you try opening the voice over dictionary in the applescript editor *command
shift o*, you will find approximately 22 commands which are voice over
specific. These are for now quite sufficient to do what you want, though
external sources on the net are sparse. I believe this is because not many
people have looked much into it since the voice over suite has only been
implemented since snow leopard.
I believe that so far, voice over's commands can either be emulated via GUI
scripting, or that by itself is not really the solution when wanting to script
something.
Remember that your logic in applescript will lead you to more places than just
the standard voice over script dictionary as applescript's strength is in the
combination of commands coming from the standard suite as well as the other
suites available from either default or installed programs, commercial and not.
Take for instance the one command defined in the skype suite. It calls all the
functions in the skype API, which in itself is already a handful if you give it
the right time to file through the possibilities.
best
Yuma
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
