The action mechanism

Also see section on Vocola and Unimacro when using Unimacro Shorthand Commands and/or meta actions in Vocola

Actions and Keystrokes

These can be compared with keystroke dvc commands and script dvc commands. They can be exploited in user defined grammars. Also Vocola can make use of these features, see next section.

Actions

The actions as called in a user grammar or in a ini file (see below) can be:

• Keystrokes: a keystroke sequence eg. {alt+f4} for close window
• a shorthand command in capitals, like HW (for HeardWord), SSK (for SendSystemKeys). See the full list of them.
• an ExecScript command, being one of the official NatSpeak commands, like "ClearDesktop". Capitalisation of these words should be exactly as in the NatSpeak manual.
• a meta action, like <<file save as>>
• any combination of above possibilities, separated by ";" (semi colon) or a new line.

If parts of an action are separated with a ";" or a newline, a short pause is done. So there is a subtle difference between the keystroke sequences abc and a; b; c.

Keystrokes

This seems to be identical to NatLink.playString(). But there is more: through the ini file keystroke behaviour can be defined. Keys that need "hard" keystrokes (SendSystemKeys) can be defined, or it can be defined that ALL keystrokes in a specific application must be "hard". Also can be defined they optional pause between keystrokes. In current window applications this seems to be not necessary any more.

Using actions in a user defined grammar

The actions can be called from any user defined grammar. If you extensively use actions and/or a keystrokes it is easiest to import from the action module like

from actions import doAction as action
from actions import doKeystroke as keystroke

If you want to execute a action simply call action("..."). If you only want to do some keystroke combination calling keystroke("...") has the same result as the call to action (but is slightly faster).