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31 MacSpeech DictateChapter 5 — Dictation
is a free flow of air. When slumped in your chair, you work
harder to speak.
Don’t forget to breathe
It is easy to get into the bad habit of squeezing or blasting
out a phrase at a time, with insufficient breath to power your
voice. Try breathing from your diaphragm, not the upper chest
or throat.
Relax
If you are sitting tense and too rigid in your chair, chances are
your voice and vocal cords will be tense too. Make a conscious
effort to keep your shoulders and facial muscles loose.
Take Breaks
Overdoing it seems to be a common trait in almost all computer
related injuries. Dictating too long without a break is a great
way to get a sore throat or end up feeling hoarse. Try not to
dictate more than about 45 minutes without taking a short
break.
Get Professional Help
This last tip is not for everyone, but if you expect to do a lot
of dictation, consider taking a couple of hours of training from
a speech teacher. In a short time, a good vocal coach can
give you useful tips and exercises that will help protect your
voice.
Dictation Advanced Topics
Text Editing & the Purge Cache command
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, using a
combination of voice dictation and keyboard/mouse in other
applications can lead to strange behavior with your text.
If you combine dictation and typing to edit a document,
MacSpeech Dictate cannot always keep track of the typed
contents the same way it keeps track of dictated contents. The
dictated contents are tracked in Dictate’s cache (pronounced
“cash”).
In addition, changes made to a document through the common
text editing commands (Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo/Redo) are
tracked by the active application, not MacSpeech Dictate...
even if those commands are initiated by voice commands
through Dictate.
T hi s m ea ns yo u c a n s t i ll tr y to us e t he se te x t e d it in g c o m m a n d s
in a dictated document. However, if you want to attempt this
“mixed editing”, you will need to do editing in small batches,
and use a special command (Purge Cache) to commit edits
to the document each time edits are completed.
Text Editing Commands
What You Say What Happens
Cache Document
Prepares pasted text from other
applications for editing by dictation in
Note Pad.
Copy Selection Copies the selected text.
Cut Selection Cuts the selected text.
Paste From Clipboard Pastes text from clipboard.
Purge Cache
Commits dictated text to an existing
document.
Redo Last Action
Tells active application to perform most
recent action again.
Undo Last Action
Tells active application to undo most
recent action. Equal to Cmd-Z keyboard
shortcut in many applications.
Select All Selects all text.
The P u r g e Ca c h e command makes MacSpeech Dictate forget
about any dictated content in the document, so it considers all
the contents simply as typed text. After using Purge Cache,
the program will treat the document as though nothing has
been dictated. MacSpeech Dictate will then better handle
inserting new dictation into the existing text.
To make changes to an existing document, use the selection
commands and dictation to make a set of changes. Use the
Purge Cache command to purge the extra information that
MacSpeech Dictate stores about each dictation. Then you
may move on to the next set of changes.
Another use of this command is during navigation of a window
that has multiple fields, such as an email client, a database,
or a spreadsheet. After finishing dictating in a field, using the
Purge Cache command at the beginning of the next field will
ensure that prior dictation does not affect the contents of the
new field.
Cache Document Command
If you paste text from another application into MacSpeech
Dictate’s Note Pad, you can use the Cache Document
command to prepare that text for editing through dictation.
The Cache Document command only works with documents
in MacSpeech Dictate’s Note Pad. In addition, when you use
the Purge Cache command in Note Pad it automatically
performs a Cache Document command, so that Note Pad
will always know the contents of its own window.
Please check the MacSpeech Support web site for updates on
more advanced technical details for using these commands.