DragonConnect – Preview

This project is work in progress, and will probably be work in progress rather than finished for quite some time.

Right now, the purpose of this page is just to point out a few guidelines and directions for anyone interested in following the development of the project, as well as potentially participating in it, and perhaps even supporting it through crowdfunding.

DragonConnect will be intended to cater for end-user custom command creation and deployment, going far beyond the limits of any and all custom command integration currently provided through Dragon itself, as well as some other well-known third-party providers.

Just for reference:

DragonConnect will allow for optional words and alternate words in commands, similar to the Natural Language Commands built into Dragon, thus creating multiple ways of “saying the same thing” differently, as in:

Move to the beginning of the line
Move to the start of the line
Move to beginning of line
Move to start of line
Go to the beginning of the line
Go to the start of the line
Go to start of line

By defining one single command, like this:

( Move | Go ) to [ the ] ( beginning | start ) of [ the ] line

Note that alternate words are enclosed in parentheses and separated by the pipe symbol, and optional words are enclosed in square brackets.

As another example, the open-ended <dictation> variable to be used in commands coming with Dragon starting in version 13, but only at the end of the command, will be replaced by the <dgndictation> variable, which additionally allows for being used anywhere in the command, and more than once in a command. So you might create a command like this, for instance:

Replace <dgndictation> with <dgndictation>

To update any portion of the text in one go by simply dictating both the existing part and the replacement part in one command.

The things pointed out above are just the tip of the iceberg, and there will be a lot more to come.

In the early stage of the project, command execution will be restricted to DVC scripts, due to design decisions, and developing costs. DVC scripting already comes with Dragon, at no additional effort, and cost. A working prototype based on that decision has already been set up and gone around, successfully.

A more advanced version of the project would include WinWrap Basic support, as provided by Dragon starting with version 15.61. Unfortunately, this will involve enormous expenses on license fees, which can only be justified by successfully distributing the product, one way or the other, which is where preordering or crowdfunding comes in.

If anyone is interested in supporting the project, by whichever means, please let me know via the comment facility.

For anyone else interested in it, just stay tuned, as I am planning on updating this page accordingly.

Many thanks in advance.