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Gmail Is Driving Me Crazy
Submitted by Roy on Sun, 06/15/2008 - 12:07.
There are a lot of things I love about Gmail. But using it by voice is beginning to drive me a little nuts. If I use Standard View, I haven't found an easy way to open up the most recent unread e-mail except by using the mouse. You can't easily label an e-mail by voice (it's doable, but it's pretty painful). And sometimes NaturallySpeaking gets confused when composing an e-mail and starts to produce garbage.
I tried using basic HTML view for a while, but it's just too limited. For example, when composing an e-mail choosing a contact is pretty irritating.
Has anyone had a different experience? Am I missing something? If not, what e-mail system do you use for your personal e-mail that's easy to run by voice?
P.S. I'm using DNS9 on WinXP
We prefer Outlook
Simply put, even when using Internet
Explorer, free browser-based e-mail like Yahoo and Gmail are going to be
extremely limited. We find them to be a joke. The mere fact that they are only
accessible from the Internet drastically limits their functionality. E-mail is
a major portion of our business and we
added around 1800 Outlook commands to KnowBrainer
2007 (third-party DNS command utility) to make it even more efficient
because in our business, time is money. Our advice is to forget about
browser-based e-mail programs and go with a dedicated fully Select-&-Say
enabled program that can be run locally on your computer. Gmail can't remotely
offer the advanced or anti-spam capabilities of a dedicated e-mail program
(which is just the tip the iceberg) but it's important to make sure that your
e-mail program is also fully Select-&-Say enabled. There are 3 reasons why
we recommend Microsoft Outlook:
1. If you own a copy of Microsoft Office you already own a copy of Outlook (not
to be confused with Outlook Express which is fairly limited)
2. Outlook is fully Select-&-Say enabled through e-mail, tasks, notes,
contacts and appointments.
3. Outlook is fully automated via KnowBrainer which works in DNS Preferred on up.
We can say something like ‘Schedule an appointment on August 20 4th at 2:15
p.m.’ or ‘E-mail Bob Jones’ and a new message to Bob Jones will appear with
Bob's name, with a comma and a new paragraph in the message box. When we wish
to respond to a message we can say ‘Send and Delete’ to send our message and
delete the original message. Try that in Gmail
Lunis
Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer
&
Host of the
http://www.thevoicerecognitionstore.com
A Nuance Gold Certified Endorsed Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Vendor/Trainer
ALWAYS Ask If Your Speech Recognition Vendor Is
Nuance Certified
But what about when Outlook isn't an option?
I appreciate your thoughts on Outlook, but that doesn't really answer my needs. At work we are allowed to check our personal e-mail, but using Outlook for personal e-mail isn't an option (quite understandably from the organization's point of view as well as my own). So, for my personal e-mail I need on online e-mail system.
Also, there's no reason why a well-designed online e-mail system couldn't be close to fully automated. As it is now, I'm already able to say 'e-mail David' and produce the effect you mention in #3. The problem is that Gmail is missing a few of the accessibility features I need to fully use it.
Roy wrote: The problem is
The problem is that Gmail is missing a few of the accessibility features I need to fully use it.
Perhaps writing to the Gmail team would make them aware of the issues you are having? They may not be able to implement them immediately but they might in a future version.
Gmail has the ability to
Gmail has the ability to enable keyboard shortcuts. I have not tried these for myself using voice, but they are one option. I would think they are DNS macro candidates.
To turn these case-sensitive shortcuts on or off, log into Gmail then click Settings, and pick an option next to Keyboard shortcuts. Be sure to save it.
Another option is to enable Gmail's POP3 access and use Outlook as Lunis has suggested. Gmail also has the ability to use IMAP but I'm unsure if Outlook will support that.
The one thing I do see missing is any easy way to categorize the messages with keyboard shortcuts. They do show a period as dropping down the more actions menu with categories in it.
From: Gmail Help Page for Keyboard Shortcuts
<Ctrl> + s
Holding the <Ctrl> key while pressing s when composing a message will save the current text as a draft. Make sure your cursor is in one of the text fields -- either the composition pane, or any of the To, CC, BCC, or Subject fields -- when using this shortcut.
#
Moves the conversation to Trash.
- From 'Inbox,' 'y' means Archive
- From 'Starred,' 'y' means Unstar
- From 'Trash,' 'y' means Move to inbox
- From any label, 'y' means Remove the label
* 'y' has no effect if you're in 'Spam,' 'Sent,' or 'All Mail.'I use the keyboard
I use the keyboard shortcuts, but they don't quite do the trick. For example, as I mentioned in my post, labeling e-mails is a real pain -- although it is doable.
Bizarrely enough, I just tried using the 'o' command, and it now works! For whatever reason, it wasn't working in the past. So just by reposting the list of keys, you helped solve a major problem!
Garbage
And sometimes NaturallySpeaking gets confused when composing an e-mail and starts to produce garbage.
I use Yahoo Mail with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7. When I am composing a long e-mail, or an e-mail I am likely to have to make corrections in, I draft the e-mail in a real editor such as WordPad, DragonPad, etc. and then copy and paste the text into a Yahoo Mail message.
Say 'Show Dictation Box'
Don
brings up another good point but unfortunately Don is using an older version of
NaturallySpeaking which lacks a fabulous new feature that was introduced in
Ver. 8 and polished in Ver. 9. Rather than switching to DragonPad, which is
still effective, just say “show Dictation Box” to pop up what will look
something like a stripped-down version of Notepad that includes a number of
options including preserving your dictation to the clipboard when clicking the
Transcribe button to transfer your text into your e-mail program. The Dictation
Box will automatically lock itself into whatever application you are working
in. You can even adjust the size of your text and Dictation Box dimensions.
Lunis
Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer
&
Host of the
http://www.thevoicerecognitionstore.com
A Nuance Gold Certified Endorsed Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Vendor/Trainer
I follow Don's dictum of
I follow Don's dictum of pasting into e-mails. It is much easier. I do this with both VV and DNS 9.5.
As regards short cuts, I found that you can get all the keyboard shortcuts for Internet Explorer 7 from http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Hel... . You can also get these for Firefox in Firefox Help. You can then create your own macros for these. This is particularly useful for ViaVoice users.
I gave up using Gmail and Yahoo for e-mails as I found them too slow, and my preferred method is using Outlook Express where the e-mails are always available off-line. Provided one is using a good anti-virus and firewall, there is little or no risk.
Linus might think this is old fashioned, like using Word Pad instead of Word, but sometimes older methods are quicker. I always found that Outlook is too cumbersome for just e-mail usage.
Hotmail, which I still use, is still slow compared to Outlook Express, with the disadvantage of having to go online every time I want to re-look at older e-mails.
Quentin
Waiting on the Nehalem chip
Actually I'm a big fan of WordPad. I prefer it over DragonPad because it has multiple undo capability. Admittedly, I'm an Outlook fan but I'm using a relatively fast (but slightly dated) quad core computer and I have to work with Word or Outlook in order to utilize embedded hyperlinks which are not possible in WordPad. However, I like WordPad and use it for a lot of other quick down and dirty notes so I don't really consider WordPad to be old-fashioned. On a slightly slower computer, WordPad can be faster and in some situations, even more DNS accurate. When the new Nehalem chip is released this will hopefully all change but we will have to wait and see…
Lunis Orcutt
Dragon seven has a dictation box
I did not recommend "show dictation box" because I didn't appreciate the fact that the contents of the dictation box are put into the clipboard when you use it. I will use it more often, now.
I had a couple bad experiences. I dictated and edited and corrected in a dictation box, said OK but the dictation box contents failed to paste into the Yahoo edit box. I assumed that I had lost my work. If I had realized that the dictation box uses the clipboard, I could have recovered easily by pasting the clipboard contents myself.
The version 7 dictation box appears to be more rudimentary than what you described for versions 8 and 9, but it is adequate.
The Clipboard Option Is the Ver. 9 Exclusive
Unfortunately, only the Ver. 9 Dictation Box has an option (which is not turned on by default) to pass the contents of the Dictation Box into the clipboard. This feature isn't available in Ver. 7 or 8.
Lunis Orcutt - Developer of KnowBrainer &
Host of the Http://www.TheMicrophoneStore.com
Actually, The Clipboard Is the Device That Version 7 Uses
It seems that rather than being an optional feature, the Clipboard simply is the device that Dragon uses to get the Dictation Box contents into the target application, at least in version 7.
Whenever I use the Dictation Box in version 7, the contents of the Dictation Box also appear in the Clipboard.
The Dictation Box commands use CTRL+a to select all text, CTRL+c to copy, and CTRL+v to paste, so they can be used in any application that supports these keystrokes.
The Dictation Box works for all applications that can accept standard shortcuts for Windows Clipboard operations. On some applications that do not accept these commands, the your text may be lost when you say "OK." '
The text however is not lost. The paste operation may fail but the text is still in the clipboard.
For example, pasting text into the Windows XP Command Prompt window requires the use of the right mouse button to trigger a pop-up menu. The window does not accept the keystrokes for the Windows Clipboard. The Dictation Box does not successfully put text into this window. After the Dictation Box 's paste attempt fails, you can click the right mouse button in the Command Prompt window and successfully paste into the Command Prompt whatever you previously dictated into the Dictation Box .
The Version 8 Dictation Box help page is identical to the Version 7 page. Presumably Version 8 works identically to Version 7.
Based on the Version 9 help pages, new features have been added to the Dictation Box . Some of these features appear to offer alternate methods for getting the text from the Dictation Box to the target window.
Settings for application
You can define how the Dictation Box copies and pastes text in each application where it's used. For example, you can have different settings for AOL Instant Messenger and Microsoft PowerPoint.
The Dictation Box works for all applications that can accept standard shortcuts for Windows Clipboard operations. For some applications that do not accept these commands, your text may be lost or changed when transferring text in and out of the Dictation Box . If this happens, try changing the Copy and Paste settings.
Copy
Do not copy: Does not copy any text from the application when the Dictation Box is started.
Type keys : Uses Ctrl+C to copy text from the application.
Use Windows Copy Command: Uses the Windows copy command to copy text from the application.
Paste
Type keys : Uses Ctrl+V to copy text from the Dictation Box to the application.
Use Windows Paste Command: Uses the Windows Paste Command to copy text from the Dictation Box to the application.
Simulate keystrokes: Sends keystrokes from the Dictation Box to the application. Use "Simulate keystrokes" if the other methods of pasting text do not work.
Perhaps this is where some of the confusion is coming from. I wouldn't be surprised to find the contents of the Dictation Box in the Clipboard no matter what option you chose, but I don't have a copy of version 9 to play with to confirm my suspicions. Also, I don't know what the "Windows Copy Command" and "Windows Paste Command" are.
-Don
Don Nicklas wrote: I don't
I don't know what the "Windows Copy Command" and "Windows Paste Command" are.
-Don
Usually on an application's Edit Menu or the pop-up menu when you right-click a selection -- at least that's where I find them.
Bruce