Here is a new utility program which should solve a lot of problems that people have been complaining about.  The program is called VocEdit, and it allows you to perform advanced editing of words in your vocabulary.

VocEdit allows you to change the behavior of words (like always capitalizing the word following a colon) and also delete words from your vocabulary which were previously marked as un-deletable.

You can download it as VocEdit.zip.  Extract VocEdit.exe and put it into your c:\NatSpeak\Program directory.

When you run VocEdit, you will see a screen that looks like this:

To add a new word to the vocabulary, type in the word name and then click Add Word.  (The Add Word button will be disabled if the word already exists in the vocabulary or if the word name you type in is invalid.)

If you type in the name of existing word, then the Add Word button will be disabled, but the Delete Word button will be enabled.  VocEdit will allow you to delete any word in the vocabulary, even those words which cannot be deleted using the Vocabulary Editor built into Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  

If you try to delete a word which Dragon NaturallySpeaking marks as "do not delete", then you will get a stern warning.  However, VocEdit will still allow you to delete the word.

I do not recommend the deleting a lot of words which are marked as "do not delete".  Dragon NaturallySpeaking marks the most common words as "do not delete", because if you delete to many common words, the accuracy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking may suffer.  However, it is safety delete a couple of words if they're giving a trouble.  Avoid, however, deleting words like "the" or ".\period" which would really degrade your performance.

(Note: because of a bug in version 2.02, VocEdit will not allow you to change the behavior of an existing word as described.  This works fine in version 3.0, however.)

To change the behavior of an existing word, type in the word name and then click Edit Properties.  This will display properties dialog which looks like this:


The most useful section of the properties dialog is the field labeled "this word behaves like".  For example, if you would like to make a colon behave like a period, then you would enter the word name ":\colon", click Edit Properties, and then select ".\period" from the drop-down list.

The list box in the properties dialog list all of the different individual properties which can be assigned to a word.  Properties which are assigned to the current word will be checked.  When you select something from the drop-down list, then the flags in the list box will be updated to reflect the behavior of the word is selected.

You can also individually turn on and off properties in the list box to fine tune the behavior of any vocabulary word.  The best way to understand the various properties, is to view the settings for known words and compare them to the behavior that you want.

Here are some examples of the powerful things that you can do with VocEdit.  Many of these are based on requests which I have received from various users.

Deleting words which give you trouble

The word WWW is in the vocabulary and marked as "do not delete".  This particular word drives me crazy because when I spell a web page, I want the string "WWW" to come out in lowercase.  To fix this, you can add the word "www" your vocabulary, but when you say it you still they get the upper case form.

With VocEdit, however, you can enter the word WWW and press the Delete Word button.  VocEdit will then allow you to delete this word from your vocabulary.  This is a perfectly save operation as long as you do not delete too many words.

Changing the spacing properties of new words

I have added words to my vocabulary which represent file extensions.  For example, have the word ".dvc" which is pronounced "dot d v c".  However, if I add this word to my vocabulary using the built-in Vocabulary Editor of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, then whenever I say "dot d v c", Dragon NaturallySpeaking will insert a space before it types".dvc".

With VocEdit I can get around this problem.  Using VocEdit I add the word spelled ".dvc\dot d v c".  (Notice that I list both the written form and the spoken form separated with a backslash character).  Then, I click Edit Properties, and select ",\comma" from the drop-down list which is the word that most resembles the behavior that I want.  Then when I click OK, and click Add Word, my new word will be added to the vocabulary and it will work like a comma.

Adding a synonym for backslash

One user of Dragon NaturallySpeaking asked if there was a way to change the word "backslash" to be the word "slash".  Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking's built in Vocabulary Editor, this is not possible.  However, using VocEdit, it is relatively easy to create a word named "slash" which behaves like a "backslash".  

To do this, I would use the following procedure.  First, see what the properties for the existing backslash are.  To do this, type in the word "\\backslash" and click Edit Properties.  According to the properties dialog, and "backslash" behaves like the word ".\dot".

Now, type in the word "\\slash" and click Edit Properties.  Then select ".\dot" from the drop-down list.  Click OK, and then click Add Word, and you will have created a synonym for backslash.

Creating a word which types nothing

It is possible to create a word which types nothing using VocEdit.  This was not possible using the Vocabulary Editor which was built in to Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  To create a word which types nothing, you want to have a written form which is empty, and a spoken form which represents the thing you will say that you want Dragon NaturallySpeaking to ignore.

For example, using VocEdit create the word "\um", and in the word properties dialog, select "word which does nothing" from the drop-down list.  Then add this word to your vocabulary. Once you do this, when you say "um", assuming that Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognizes this, nothing will be typed.

I have played with creating words which type nothing and have found that the complete solution is not as robust is I would like.  When you create the word "\um", you will probably have to train it in order for it to be recognized all.  You can train it by using the Vocabulary Editor in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, selecting your new word, and then clicking Train Word.  (Warning: because your word has no written form, it will be listed near the top of the list box above the word which is normally listed first.)

However, although you can train your new word from the Vocabulary Editor, you will not be able to train your new word using the Correction Dialog if a misrecognition occurs.  This is a limitation of the current version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking where it will not parse your new word correctly during a correction.

Change the behavior of New Line to mimic the behavior of New Paragraph

(Note: because of a bug in version 2.02, VocEdit will not allow you to change the behavior of an existing word as described.  This works fine in version 3.0, however.)

One user asked if they could change the behavior of the word "New Line" so that it always capitalized the next word like "New Paragraph".  You can make this change using VocEdit. (You knew that was going to be the answer :-).)

Enter the word "\New-Line" into VocEdit, and click Edit Properties.  Then select "\New-Paragraph" from the drop-down list.  If you click OK at this point, then the word "New Line" will behave exactly like "New Paragraph".  But if you want "New Line" to continue to type only a single enter key, then you can also change the properties in the list box.  Click "Follow this word with one new line characters", to turn on that option.  Then click "Follow this word with two new line characters" to turn off the new paragraph behavior.

Notice that it is easy to get yourself into trouble using this advanced feature.  For example, I do not know what the behavior of Dragon NaturallySpeaking will be if you select both the "... one new line characters" and "... two new line characters" options together.  But the worst that you can do (I think) is to break the behavior of the word that you modify.

VocEdit has not been tested with Version 1 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  I recommend that you only use it with Version 2.  Also, VocEdit has not been tested with international versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

IMPORTANT: VocEdit was developed at Dragon Systems as utility for users of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  The program is (c) Copyright Dragon Systems, 1998.   There is no support for VocEdit.  Use this program at your own risk.  VocEdit may not be sold or distributed for commercial purposes.