Chapter 3

Launching and Controlling Dragon

In This Chapter

Launching NaturallySpeaking

Choosing or switching users

Using the NaturallySpeaking DragonPad

Customizing options

Understanding the tools and menus

Okay, you’re at the point where you are deciding whether to skip this chapter and jump into dictating or to read this chapter and feel more prepared. Why not take the time to learn how to take control?

In this chapter, I show you the different ways to launch and control NaturallySpeaking. I also tell you what tools you can use to get better performance and behavior, and where to find those tools. I refer you to other chapters in this book for the details. If NaturallySpeaking is already up and running and you simply can’t wait any longer, go and dictate! (See Chapter 4.)

Launching NaturallySpeaking

To get started with NaturallySpeaking, launch the product in one of the following ways:

• Double-click the Dragon icon on your desktop.
• On the Windows taskbar, choose Start⇒Programs⇒Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
• You can also use the system tray (set by the Tray Icon Only option). Right-click the microphone icon and you’ll see all the same menu options you have in the DragonBar. (More on the DragonBar later in this chapter.)

On the Windows 8 Start screen, you may see many Dragon-related icons; make sure to pick Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

By choosing one of these options, you launch the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar and the Dragon Learning Center. You can dictate documents and control how NaturallySpeaking works. You can customize this to suit your preferences.

Choosing or Switching Users

When you launch NaturallySpeaking, it may ask you to choose a user. If it doesn’t ask, don’t worry. You probably have only one user: you.

Remember that when you first set up NaturallySpeaking, you created and named a User Profile and then showed NaturallySpeaking how that user (you) sounded. Now, when you launch NaturallySpeaking, you must choose that user so that NaturallySpeaking can recognize you.

After launching, NaturallySpeaking displays the Open User dialog box. Click the User Profile name you created when you set up NaturallySpeaking, and then click the Open button. You’re ready to roll.

If other people use this same copy of NaturallySpeaking (or if you have multiple users for yourself), each person must have his or her own User Profile. If you need to add a user, go to the DragonBar and choose Profile⇒New User Profile. This launches the same New User Wizard you used to set up NaturallySpeaking for yourself. See Chapter 2 for details on that wizard. For more about multiple users and their vocabularies, see Chapter 19.

You can switch users without restarting NaturallySpeaking. Follow these steps:

1. From the DragonBar, choose Profile⇒Open User Profile.

   NaturallySpeaking may ask whether you want to save your speech files. Unless for some reason you don’t want to save any corrections you have made to NaturallySpeaking’s behavior, choose Yes. NaturallySpeaking then displays the Open User dialog box.

2. Click the username from the User list and then click the Open button.

Meeting the Face of Your NaturallySpeaking Assistant

As anyone who has ever used software knows, its value is most often determined by the design of the user interface. If it’s hard to find menus, options, and features, most people give up before they ever find out if the product actually works. If you want simple, think Google Search Box. It doesn’t get any easier than that!

Happily, the folks who develop the Dragon software have given a lot of careful attention to its user interface over the years. With version 13, they’ve hit it out of the park. They have a newly designed DragonBar and a Dragon Learning Center. Both are set by default to open when you launch NaturallySpeaking. You can customize them to suit your needs.

When you first launch NaturallySpeaking, you see the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar and the Dragon Learning Center, as shown in Figure 3-1:

• What can you do with the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar? You can use the menu bar to access various tools for customizing and improving the performance of your NaturallySpeaking assistant and you can click the microphone icon here to turn your microphone on and off. I consider it the base of operations.
• What is the Dragon Learning Center? It’s a nice, controlled environment where you can get to know all the major commands used with NaturallySpeaking. You don’t have to wonder about commands. All you have to do is say, “What can I say?” The Learning Center pops up if it’s closed. The Dragon Learning Center window is context sensitive so it displays commands about the application you are working on at the time. For instance, if you’re in Microsoft Word, the Learning Center shows you the commands you need to use for Word. This makes learning application-specific commands much easier. It has a Word tab and a MyCommands tab, which allows you to create your own Custom Commands. Customize your commands to make dictating even easier. See Chapters 20 and 21 for more about the Dragon Learning Center.

A closer look at the DragonBar

The newly designed DragonBar in version 13 is docked at the top of the screen. If you prefer, you can change the placement by dragging the cross-hatched rectangle (called the Grabber bar) on the left, as shown in Figure 3-2.

The DragonBar button has links to the following:

• Classis DragonBar: This link lets you go back to the DragonBar design used in version 12 and previous versions. Although you may be tempted to do this if you are a long-time user of Dragon, I recommend trying the new one. When you get used to the new design, you will find you are more productive. Also, at some point, you will no longer have the option to switch, so best to start using it now.
• Tray Icon Only: This minimizes the DragonBar and places a microphone icon in your system tray. Right-click the icon to see all the menu options that were available to you when the DragonBar was visible.
• Auto-collapse: If you prefer to have the DragonBar showing all options at all times, you can select not to auto-collapse the bar by clicking the Auto-Collapse link. You can also collapse the DragonBar by clicking the –/+ sign on the left.
• Exit: This is how you exit Dragon. When exiting, you may be asked to run maintenance on your profile. I recommended that you do this whenever possible to make your profile more accurate. Just make sure you have some time because the program will take slightly longer to close.

To set the option to have QuickStart launch when Windows starts up, go to Tools⇒Options⇒Miscellaneous and select the check box for Launch Dragon in QuickStart mode when Windows starts.

If you want to reference the Classic DragonBar from previous versions, it is shown in Figure 3-3. Even though the new DragonBar looks different, all the menu items you know and love are there.

Here are the items on the new NaturallySpeaking toolbar shown in Figure 3-4:

• The Microphone On/Off button: This is the most critical item, for obvious reasons. If your microphone is off, you’ll be doing nothing more than talking to yourself. Your assistant will be waiting to hear from you. The microphone icon is color-coded and tells you the status of your microphone. Red is off, green is on, and blue is asleep.
• Volume display: The volume display is located within the microphone area. It displays increasingly large circles alongside the icon when the volume is up and smaller ones when it’s down. Adjust your voice accordingly.
• Full Text Control indicator: If you see a small green circle at the end of the DragonBar, you know that all the Full Text Control functions of the application you are in are available and working.
• Profile menu: This is where you manage all the functions related to User Profiles, such as adding new users and backing up a User Profile.
• Tools menu: The Tools menu has several important items, including the DragonPad (discussed later in this chapter) and the administrative settings.
• Vocabulary menu: This menu contains the all-important Vocabulary Editor and is the place where you go when you want to have your NaturallySpeaking assistant learn more from your documents and e-mails.
• Audio menu: Here you will be able to launch accuracy training along with Playback and Read.
• Help menu: This is chock-full of helpful resources and tips. It also includes a link to Nuance.com on the web, where you’ll find more training.
• Mode menu: This is found at the end of the DragonBar where you see Now Listening for … . You use several modes when dictating, including Dictation mode and Command mode. When you want to move from one to another, you make the switch by using the pull-down menu.
• Start Playback and Stop Playback: To make this function work, select the text you want to play back by highlighting it or saying, “Select <xyz>.” Then choose Command mode in the pull-down menu. Choose Audio⇒Read That, and the text will be read.

Choosing options

Now that you’re in charge, you can order NaturallySpeaking to work your way. It’s time to choose some options! From the DragonBar, choose Tools⇒Options to open the Options dialog box. There are seven different category options. Take time to check them out and configure your assistant exactly the way you want it to behave.

Five options you may want to try right off the bat are as follows:

• Trade-off speed for accuracy: Miscellaneous tab
• Automatically back up User Profile every fifth time: Data tab
• Change microphone on/off, correction hotkeys: Hot Keys tab
• Double-click to correct in NaturallySpeaking window: Correction tab
• Automatic playback on correction: Correction tab

Each tab has a Restore Defaults button. Hurray! Click it if you feel you changed something in error and want to put things back the way they were when you first launched NaturallySpeaking.

Following is a brief explanation about what’s in each tab:

• Correction: This tab is useful to explore if you want to have things like Spell commands bring up a Spelling Window. Take your time and go back to these options after you have worked in your documents for a while. As you might guess, corrections are a fact of life. At least they can be dealt with your way.
• Commands: In this section, you have a slider you can configure for the amount of time you want a pause before you dictate a command. It’s set on the shorter end. Try this first before you extend it to see what’s comfortable. Remember that you’ll be dictating both speech and commands, and you want Dragon to understand how you like to do this.
• View: In this tab, you can set your placement of the DragonBar in addition to the way shown in Figure 3-2. Additionally, you can set the Results Box that was displayed in previous versions of NaturallySpeaking.
• Playback/Text-to-speech: Text-to-speech is a fun and functional feature of NaturallySpeaking. It uses a computer-synthesized voice to read text aloud. This will be the voice of your assistant, so choose accordingly. (In the English version, you can choose American English Samantha or British English Serena.) It can sound a bit comical until you get used to it. Adjust the up-arrow and down-arrow keys for volume and speed.
• Miscellaneous: This tab includes lots of useful stuff. Most important is the Speed versus Accuracy slider. Move this to the right for fewer recognition errors, or to the left for a quicker, if less accurate, job. The choice is yours.
• Data: Here you can change the amount of disk space reserved for playback. The default is 100MB. I don’t recommend using less than that, but if you need the space you can set it to use less. If you need more space for playback, you can set it to use more. If you are using Dragon Professional, choose Never for the Save Recorded Dictation with Document option so your files don’t become large and unwieldy.
• Hotkeys: You’re either a devoted hotkey user or you aren’t. There’s no middle ground. If you like hotkeys, here’s where you change them. Why change? You may have trouble pressing the key. Or you may need to use the key for something else (like using the numeric keypad + and – [minus] keys for calculations).

  All the buttons on the Hot Keys tab work the same way: Click the Edit button, and a Set Hot Key dialog box pops up. When it does, don’t try to type the names of the keys; just press them. For instance, press the Ctrl key, and {Ctrl} appears. Click OK when you’re done.

  On the Hot Keys tab, you see the following options you may want to set:

  • Microphone On/Off: If you choose a regular keyboard key (like a letter), you must use Ctrl or Alt with it. Otherwise, function keys, arrow keys, and other non-typewriter keys are all fair game either by themselves or in combination with Ctrl or Alt.
  • Correction: This key pops up the Correction dialog box to correct the last phrase you spoke or the highlighted text. The rules are the same as for Microphone On/Off.
  • Force Command Recognition: Hold this key down to try to make NaturallySpeaking interpret what you say as a command, not text. It can be only Ctrl, Alt, Shift, or some combination of them.
  • Force Dictation Recognition: This does the opposite of Force Command Recognition (makes what you say come out as text). Rules for keys are the same as Force Command Recognition.

Previous versions of NaturallySpeaking had a Results Box that showed what Dragon thought you said as you dictated. In versions 12 and higher, this has been streamlined to a results display. As you dictate, you will notice a little Dragon icon displayed near your text. When you pause dictation, the words show up in your document. Nuance made this change after discovering that users were distracted by following the Results Box.

I think this is a great improvement and I recommend you do not switch back to the Results Box option if you are new to NaturallySpeaking. If, however, you are used to seeing the Results Box and want to display it, do the following:

1. Go to Tools⇒Options⇒View tab.

   Look at the section toward the bottom called Results Box.

2. Click the pull-down arrow under Auto-hide Delay and select Never Hide or some amount of time it will display.

   You can also choose whether you want it to stay in one place by selecting the anchor check box or whether you want to show preliminary results.

“Okay, so I have familiarized myself with the controls. Now how do I dictate?” you may be asking. Easy: Plug in your microphone, put it on, click the Microphone On/Off button (also duplicated on the Windows taskbar’s system tray), and talk! But wait… .

Why Use the NaturallySpeaking DragonPad?

Before you start dictating, employing one of the myriad applications you can use with NaturallySpeaking, I want to introduce you to the DragonPad. To open it, go to the DragonBar and choose Tools⇒DragonPad.

DragonPad is a simple word processor into which you can dictate or type a document. You then can print the document, copy it to another program window, or save the document as a file that other programs can read.

NaturallySpeaking works with really robust word processors like Word and WordPerfect, so you may be wondering why I mention this simple NaturallySpeaking function.

Here are some of the reasons you may want or need to dictate into the NaturallySpeaking window:

• You don’t have Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect (or your version of those programs doesn’t work with NaturallySpeaking).
• You just need the basic word-processing functions and you’re in a hurry.
• Your PC is tight on memory. The NaturallySpeaking window uses less memory than some other applications.
• You see that the circle on the DragonBar is not green, which indicates that you need to open a Dictation Box.
• Your alternative is to use some application in which NaturallySpeaking offers only basic dictation and not other features.

Using the word-processor features of the NaturallySpeaking DragonPad

The NaturallySpeaking window’s menu and toolbar may seem familiar to you. They are, with the addition of speech features, the same as the menu and toolbar in WordPad (the small-scale word processor that comes with Windows).

If you’re already familiar with WordPad or similar word processors, you can skip this section and move right on to Chapter 4.

Choosing from the menu bar and toolbar

Even if you have never used DragonPad, if you have used any word processor, you’ll find all the choices on the DragonPad menus and toolbars so familiar (except for the speech-related choices) that you’ll hardly need this section. But just in case you aren’t familiar, following are the details, as shown in Figure 3-5.

Use the DragonPad menu bar and toolbar buttons as you would in any Windows program. As with most Windows toolbars, pause your mouse cursor over a button to see the button’s name or function.

Because you’re running NaturallySpeaking, you can also choose items on the menu bar by using voice commands (as you can in nearly any other application, too). To choose from the menu bar, follow these steps:

1. Use the verbal command, “Click <menu text>.”

   By <menu text>, I mean anything listed on the menu bar, such as File, Edit, or Format.

2. Choose an item from the menu that appears by saying its name.

   If you want consistency in your commands, you can instead say “Click” and then its name. For instance, you can say, “Click File” and then say, “Save.”

In version 13 (as with version 12) of NaturallySpeaking, you can have more control over when you need to say “Click”. To change your options, go to Tools⇒Options⇒Commands. In the check boxes Require Click to Select Menus and Require Click to Select Buttons and Other Controls, make your choices. If you’re just getting started and you aren’t sure how you want to use these controls, leave them selected. You can always return later.

Editing: Cut, paste, and the usual suspects

The Edit menu of NaturallySpeaking holds no surprises for anyone who has used a word processor in Windows. It has the usual suspects: Copy, Cut, and Paste using the Windows Clipboard, plus Undo, Select All, Find, and Replace.

If you add the Format bar to the NaturallySpeaking window, you can alternatively use the familiar Cut, Copy, and Paste buttons on that bar. The button with the binoculars icon is a shortcut to the Find dialog box.

Choosing Edit⇒Select All (hotkey: Ctrl+A) is useful when you want to copy all the text in the window in preparation for pasting it into a different program. See Chapter 5 if you want details about copying text from NaturallySpeaking by using voice commands.

Formatting: Fonts, indentations, alignments, bullets, and tabs

The Format menu is where all the formatting stuff hangs out. Like the Edit menu, the Format menu is straightforward if you have used a word processor before. Here are the menu choices that change the format:

• Font: Choose Format⇒Font to get a Font dialog box to make your typeface, style, size, and color choices. Or add the Format bar to your screen by choosing View⇒Format Bar and choose your font on that toolbar. You can set font styles of bold, italic, or underline in alternative ways, just as in many other programs. Click the B, I, or U button on the Format bar; or press Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, or Ctrl+U, respectively. You can choose font color from the Font dialog box or by clicking the Color button (the palette icon) on the Format bar.
• Indents and alignments: Choose Format⇒Paragraph to get a Paragraph dialog box. Type in an indentation for the left edge, right edge, or just the first line of the paragraph. (For hanging indents, set a left indent, like 0.5 inch, and then an equal but negative indent, like –0.5, for first line.) Click Alignment to choose from Left, Center, and Right alignment. Or if the Format bar is on your screen, click the Align Left, Center, or Align Right button.
• Tabs: To set tab stops (where the cursor stops when you press the Tab key), choose Format⇒Tabs. In the Tabs dialog box that appears, type a position (for example, 0.8 inch) in the Tab Stop Position box, and then click the Set button. Continue until you have set all your tabs, and then click OK. Click Clear All to restore tabs to the normal half-inch defaults.
• Bullets: NaturallySpeaking offers only one style of bullets. To turn bullets on, choose Format⇒Bullet Style (or click the Bullets button on the Format bar). Repeat that choice to turn bulleting off.

You can also set tab stops on the Ruler. (To put the Ruler bar on your screen, choose View⇒Ruler Bar.) Just click wherever you want a tab stop. A tiny L-shaped mark appears; you can drag it to any position you like. To remove it, drag it up or down off the ruler.

Saving and opening documents

You save a NaturallySpeaking document the old-school way: with a menu choice or toolbar button. As in any other application, you can use a voice command to make the menu choice, such as saying, “Click File,” and then saying “Save” or just saying “Press Control S.”

The New, Save, Save As, and Open commands in the NaturallySpeaking File menu work as they do in nearly every other Windows application. So do the New, Open, and Save buttons on the toolbar (the first three). In case you forget (or nobody ever told you), here’s what they do:

• To start a new, blank document, choose File⇒New (or click the New button).
• To open an existing document file, choose File⇒Open (or click the Open button).
• To save the document as a file, choose File⇒Save (or click the Save button).
• To save a new copy of the current document under a new name or in a new location, choose File⇒Save As.

NaturallySpeaking enables you to save your work in one of the following ways (file types), so you can pass your work along to others or save it for a fun day of editing later on:

• Plain text (.txt) files: Text files do not preserve formatting, only the text plus line or paragraph breaks and tabs. (Tab stop positions are not saved, however.) Most everything can open a .txt file.
• Rich Text Format (.rtf) files: Rich Text Format files are filled with all the formatting you can do in NaturallySpeaking. Nearly all major word processors can open these files, so your formatting survives the translation if you use .rtf.

When you choose File⇒Save the first time (or anytime you choose File⇒Save As), you have to choose which file type to use. A NaturallySpeaking dialog box appears, warning you that saving a text file will lose formatting. It presents you with two buttons to choose between: Rich Text Document or Text Document. (If you press the Enter key at this point, NaturallySpeaking will choose RTF.)

Choose Rich Text Format if you want to import your document into a word processor or some other application that enables character formatting (such as bold) and paragraph formatting (such as center-aligned). Choose Text if the application (such as a simple e-mail program) does not support formatting. When you click the button for your choice, NaturallySpeaking presents the typical Save As dialog box you will recognize from other Windows applications. Type a name for the file and choose a folder.

To open an RTF file in your word processor or other application, the usual menu choice is File⇒Open. In the Open dialog box that appears, click the box labeled Files of Type (or something like that) and look for Rich Text Format (RTF).

If you want to verbally edit documents, you need to load them into the NaturallySpeaking window. In addition to being able to open the RTF and TXT files it writes, NaturallySpeaking can read some Microsoft Word (.doc) files. Using your word processor, check the dialog box that appears when you use the File⇒Save As command. Click the Save As Type box there and choose a Word version (.doc or .docx), Text (.txt), or Rich Text (.rtf).

You don’t have to rely on DragonPad to edit your text. If your first choice is to edit in your favorite word processor or other supported application, choose that.

Customizing the window

In case you are wondering, you can change the appearance through the View menu in DragonPad. By “appearance,” I mean stuff like toolbars, text wrapping in the window, and units of measure on the ruler (metric, English, or typesetting).

To view all the toolbars in the DragonPad, click View to get a list of available toolbars. Click next to a toolbar in that list to put a check mark beside it to turn on whatever toolbar you check. Click again to clear any check mark. The default is set with all boxes selected.

To control how text wraps (continues onto the next line) on your screen, how your mouse selects text, or what units of measure you use, choose View⇒Settings. The Settings dialog box springs into action, where you can customize any of the following:

• Measurement units: NaturallySpeaking normally uses inches for measurement units (used on the ruler and in paragraph formatting). To change measurement units, click the Options tab of the Settings dialog box. You can then choose Inches, Centimeters, Points, or Picas.
• Selecting words: When you select with your mouse, NaturallySpeaking (like many Windows programs) normally selects entire words when you stretch the selection highlight to more than one word. If, instead, you want to be able to set the end point of your selections in midword, click the Options tab, then click to clear the check box labeled Automatic Word Selection.
• Text wrapping: To control how text wraps on your screen, click Rich Text. (Click Text, instead, if you intend to save your file as plain text.) Then click either Wrap to Window (to fill your window with text) or Wrap to Ruler (to force lines to break at the right margin on the ruler). No Wrap makes your text hard to read. Choose Wrap to Ruler if you intend to print from the NaturallySpeaking window and want to see exactly how your printed lines of text will break while you type.

None of the wrap settings affect how lines of text break when you print, copy, or save a document as a file. The DragonPad always prints according to the page margins you set up, regardless of wrap settings. It never puts line breaks in text that is saved as a file or copied to another program’s window. It always leaves the line breaks to that other program, and so avoids any ragged-right margin problems.

Tools and When to Use Them

I know you’re saying, “Let’s dictate, already!” (See Chapter 4.) But NaturallySpeaking will never get any better at its job if you don’t use the tools found in the DragonBar menus. They help you get the most accuracy from your NaturallySpeaking assistant. I give you the details of these tools throughout the book, but here’s the big picture.

Following are some of the tools that you most likely need:

• Correction menu box: Use this to educate NaturallySpeaking whenever it makes a recognition error. You may have to use it several times for the same error, but NaturallySpeaking will make the error less often. The Correction dialog box also appears in response to the “Correct That” voice command, the – (minus) key on the numeric keypad, and the Correct That icon on the toolbar. (See Chapters 4 and 5 for details.) You can also say, “Correct <xyz>, ” where “xyz” refers to the words you want to select for correction.
• Microphone check: Run the microphone check by choosing Audio⇒Check Microphone if NaturallySpeaking seems to be making more errors than it did previously. It adjusts the volume of the microphone input and ensures the correct microphone input is selected. (See Chapter 2.)
• Vocabulary Editor: Use this tool to add specific words to your vocabulary or to train NaturallySpeaking in your pronunciation. It’s also useful for creating shortcuts in which a single spoken phrase like “My Address” causes NaturallySpeaking to type some complex text. (See Chapter 17.)
• Audio training: Use audio tools to tell NaturallySpeaking how you pronounce a particular word or command. (See Chapter 17.)

Table 3-1 lists the Dragon tools or technologies to use in specific circumstances and where to read the full details about them.

If you are running NaturallySpeaking but can’t see its window, click the NaturallySpeaking microphone button on your Windows taskbar. Then you can access the tools from the NaturallySpeaking system tray icon menu.

Make sure to look at the Recognition modes that are available in NaturallySpeaking. To access them, go to the DragonBar and choose the mode you want at the end of the bar from the pull-down menu. Then select the one you need. The five available modes are as follows:

• Dictation & Commands mode: This is the default mode. In this mode, the program can discern the difference between commands, words, and numbers.
• Dictation mode: In this mode, most of what you say is interpreted as dictation, except for a few standard commands like “New line.”
• Command mode: Not surprisingly, this mode will only recognize commands. Use this one if you only want to move around in a document.
• Numbers mode: Can you guess this mode’s function? Yep, this one only recognizes numbers. This may be helpful when you are doing your monthly tally of something.
• Spell mode: In this mode, you can only spell things out. This can be useful for creating things like a household inventory of serial numbers.