mattioli@took.dec.com (John R. Mattioli) (07/04/90)
Index Number: 9025 In article <12473@bunker.UUCP>, Gary Campbell writes: > >Has anyone been successful with getting DeskView, or any other >similar program to work with speech? I played around with DeskView >last summer for an evening and got less than acceptable results. I >was able to get a program to run in a window set up for a program >doing direct screen access, but the speech would sometimes mumble >something periodically without any provocation. Also, when in the >DeskView menus the cursor locater information was totally strange, >like row 64, column 205, and the speech control keys worked >strangely, i.e. doing two consecutive "say current line"s would >yield different results. This was done with Artic Vision 2.1 (or >whatever the current version is). > I haven't actually used desqview with speech or anything else, but I want to use it with a braillex some day soon so I have an interest in this. First of all, it doesn't hurt to contact Quarterdeck (the makers of desqview) and ask them for some information. They may not be able to help you (you've got a rather specific question) but then again they might. Which desqview are you running? If it's not desqview 386, I'd suggest running your speech software in each partition. There's a big difference between programming in a single process world (like that of dos) and programming in a multiprocess world (like that of desqview). If it's desqview 386 I almost think you'd absolutely have to run your speech software in each partition. The 386 virtual mode is a very interesting feature of the chip and, from what I've read, can allow multiple dos programs to run without any of them knowing about each other. Unfortunately, having multiple programs accessing the speech hardware at the same time could be bad so you might want to be absolutely sure that programs in the background are inactive and are only activated when you bring them into the foreground. I strongly suggest you test out the software carasel before you buy it. It could easily have the same problems as desqview. ----------------------------------------------------------------- John Mattioli Most improved skier (american blind skiers association 1989) and humble to! (DEC E-NET) TOOK::MATTIOLI (UUCP) {decvax, ucbvax, allegra}!decwrl!TOOK.dec.com!MATTIOLI (ARPA) MATTIOLI@TOOK.dec.com MATTIOLI%TOOK.dec.com@decwrl.dec.com (US MAIL) John Mattioli 550 King St. LKG2-2/BB9 Littleton, Ma. 01460
covici@well.sf.ca.us (John Covici) (07/24/90)
Index Number: 9399 In article <12610@bunker.UUCP> mattioli@took.dec.com (John R. Mattioli) writes: >In article <12473@bunker.UUCP>, Gary Campbell writes: >> >>Has anyone been successful with getting DeskView, or any other >>similar program to work with speech? I played around with DeskView >>last summer for an evening and got less than acceptable results. Well, I have had problems with DESQview because although if you loaded the speech in each partition it would work, you can't load the speech both before DESQview to get the menues and after DESQview to have it work properly in each partition. I have however found a much more well-behaved program called Omniview, by Sunnyhill software and the folks were nice enough to add an option that would give you BIOS output for a task in the foreground. It's not perfect, mostly because the speech software gets very confused sometimes, but its much better than not having such facilities. The main problem is that when the speech software reads the screen it stops all other tasks. Also, hardware screen virtualization confuses the speech software and review functions don't work. Therefore, any background task which writes directly to the screen while you are in foreground, will bleed through to the foreground screen. Call 800 3670651 and ask for V4.2 or V4.14 if they'll give you that. I am using Artic vision; I don't know if others would work better in this environment. One more thing, the pass key doesn't work at all; we have no idea why. John