An AppleScript to highlight and dictate a document
Aug 30, '05 07:56:00AM
Contributed by: leenoble_uk
Here's a little AppleScript which will dictate and highlight a document as you read/type. You could use it to help learn to touch type, but that's not why I wrote it.
I wrote it because there are times when I need to take a lot of information from one document, and place it in an altered form in another document -- perhaps a supplied Word document which I'm entering into an Excel spreadsheet or SQL database. Depending on the exact structure of both, I may debate using the mouse to drag or copy and paste bits of text, or I may find it easier to just re-type it. If I choose to re-type it, I have the problem of keeping track of where I was in the original document without constant recourse to the mouse. This script makes it easy to see where you are so you can get on with typing at speed. Here's how to use it:
- Open your source document in TextEdit.
- Open your destination document in a different editor, or whatever app you're using (BBEdit, Excel, Word, Navicat).
- Arrange both the windows to they don't overlap.
- Launch the script from the script menu (assuming you saved the script to your user's Library/Scripts folder).
When you run the script, your source document will be reduced to the first paragraph, and each word will be read out aloud and highlighted. You can adjust the speed by changing the first line of the script. If you want to stop the script, you have to close the TextEdit document . When you do so, the script will return the original text to a new TextEdit document. You can, of course, always revert to your last save; the script is not destructive.
[robg adds: The author also submitted another version of this script. This modified version should work better, using the selected text as the basis for what gets spoken. However, in my testing, the speech bit didn't work, so I left the original script linked above. I don't think I'll need to use this script in its current form for any real-world work, but it's an interesting example of some of the things you can do with scripting.]
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Mac OS X Hints
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