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Voice Activation & Speech

As of version 0.59, Mentations allows you to use voice commands to facilitate hands-free interaction with the software.  In order to enable this functionality, right-click on the background and then click on the Options | Enable Speech/Voice Activation menu selection.  If you find that this option is grayed out, then that means that you do not have the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI) installed.  You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/speech/download/sdk51/ - select the Speech 5.1 SDK Redistributables: All file hyperlink from there.  Once you have downloaded and installed SAPI, restart Mentations and the Enable Speech/Voice Activation menu option should now be enabled.

 

You should note that SAPI installs a speech menu option on your main Windows control panel.  You can tweak the voice settings there and also "train" the OS to better recognize your voice.  Further, you can download and install various 3rd party voices if higher quality is desired and select one of them as your default system voice under the Text to Speech tab.  Some affordable, high quality voices we recommend include the David and Diane voices on the Cepstral web site (http://www.cepstral.com/demos/).

 

Please note that the voice recognition is much better in a quiet environment.

 

Mentations recognizes the following voice commands:

  1. "Mentations Read Background" - Mentations reads the labels associated with the categories shown on the background;
  2. "Mentations Read [Category]" - Mentations reads the constituent names associated with the category name provided.  For example, "Mentations Read News";
  3. "Mentations Read [Category] [Constituent]" - Mentations reads the constituent data feed associated with the constituent name provided.  For example, "Mentations Read News BBC News";
  4. "Mentations Read [Category] [Constituent] New" - Mentations reads any new items (i.e., ones you haven't already viewed) found in the constituent data feed associated with the constituent name provided.  For example, "Mentations Read News BBC News New";
  5. "Mentations Read Mini-browser" - Mentations reads the current content shown within the mini-browser;
  6. "Mentations Skip Lines [1-10]", which instructs Mentations to skip reading the next 1-10 lines of content in the mini-browser;
  7. "Mentations Pause Reading" - Mentations pauses reading;
  8. "Mentations Resume Reading" - Mentations resumes reading;
  9. "Mentations Stop Reading" - Mentations will stop reading (you can also double-click the Mentations background to stop reading);
  10. "Mentations View Background" - Mentations closes all open windows in order to provide an unobstructed view of the background;
  11. "Mentations View [Category]" - Mentations opens the category balloon window associated with the category name provided.  For example, "Mentations View News";
  12. "Mentations View [Category] [Constituent]" - Mentations opens the category balloon window and the child constituent tooltip associated with the category-constituent name combination provided.  For example, "Mentations View News BBC News".  Mentations will then begin cycling through and selecting (highlighting) each of the data feed entries, providing you the opportunity to instruct Mentations to drill into any of them (see #17 & #18 below);
  13. "Mentations View Map" - Mentations will open the Vicinity Map in the Mentations mini-browser;
  14. "Mentations Pause Selecting" - Mentations pauses selecting data feed items;
  15. "Mentations Resume Selecting" - Mentations resumes selecting data feed items;
  16. "Mentations Stop Selecting" - Mentations will stop selecting data feed items;
  17. "Mentations Drill Current" - Mentations will drill down into the current data feed item being read or selected by opening the associated web page in the Mentations mini-browser and will also pause reading/selecting data feed items;
  18. "Mentations Drill Previous" - Mentations will drill down into the immediately previous data feed item read or selected by opening the associated web page in the Mentations mini-browser and will also pause reading/selecting data feed items;
  19. "Mentations Page Down" - Mentations will page down on the currently selected balloon window or mini-browser window;
  20. "Mentations Page Up" - Mentations will page up on the currently selected balloon window or mini-browser window;
  21. "Mentations Go Back" - Mentations will go back one web page in the mini-browser's cache history;
  22. "Mentations Go Forward" - Mentations will go forward one web page in the mini-browser's cache history;
  23. "Mentations Minimize" - Mentations will minimize itself;
  24. "Mentations Maximize" - Mentations will maximize itself;
  25. "Mentations Close Mini-browser" - Mentations will close the mini-browser window if open;
  26. "Mentations Close Program" - Mentations will close its main window, exiting the application.

 

 

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