Extending Vocola (More Commands)

One of the tricks to making the most out of voice dictation (and Vocola in particular, I think) is that you must be willing to continually improve upon the way you do things. The command you wrote three months ago and that has served you well since can likely be improved upon in response to a changing play style. This post explains three techniques I have recently introduced into my gameplay: using dynamically declared variables to heal your off-tank, issuing multiple commands at a time, and dragging and dropping.

Dynamic Variables

I have previously demonstrated how one can pre-define an array of values as an available variable for use in a macro, allowing you to write just one macro to handle all spells of a particular type (targeted, helpful; targeted, harmful; untargeted). This can be expanded further, however, by using the Variable Vocola extension:

This simple extension allows you to remember things between commands during the same session. For example, you could remember the current contents of the clipboard (obtained via Clipboard.Get()) for inserting later via a different command. By session, it is meant that all these variables are forgotten each time you exit Vocola or use the “load extensions” command.
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Getting Started with Voice Recognition

A vital component of playing hands-free is some form of voice recognition software. To fulfill this need, there are two major players in the market: Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Windows Speech Recognition. While the former promises greater accuracy, the latter is included free as part of the Accessibility Features of any recent Windows operating system. (Note that there is a version of Dragon for Mac, but I have no experience with it and can thus not give my recommendation.)

Dragon NaturallySpeaking

There are actually three different versions of Dragon 13 available: Home, Premium, and Professional. For a comparison of the three different versions, you can see this PDF from Nuance. At nearly $500, Dragon Professional has the most advanced features, including the ability to write complex macros and commands. However, thanks to the free third-party software, Vocola — which I will show you how to use in a future post — you can get away with a copy of Premium, possibly Home (which I have not tried — YMMV).

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