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An alternative to the Dragon Naturally Speaking "mouse grid".

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Mouse Plot

Mouse Plot is an alternative to the Dragon Naturally Speaking (NatSpeak) "mouse grid".

For anyone who has used NatSpeak's mouse-grid control, it becomes obvious – very quickly – that it has a number of shortcomings, most notably:

  • the mouse grid closes when things like menus are opened (like the start menu/screen)
  • there can be a lot of steps just to click on what you're trying to click on. (e.g. "mouse grid, 3, 9, 5, 5, 7, click, dammit!")
  • doesn't work properly with multiple monitors

MousePlot tries to overcome these shortcomings, and it also tries to improve the experience in general. At least, I found it to be better when I needed it! :D

How it Works

I'm working on it...


Grid that splits the screen. Refer to cells by name, like three six, to position the mouse, and "select" the cell.

grid

Zooms for a closer view when a cell is selected. Gives fine-grained sub-cell selection. Refer to sub-cells by name, like two four, to position the mouse. Use commands like up, down, left, and right to move the mouse a pixel at a time. Use commands like left 3 to move left by 3 pixels (for example).

zoomed

Status

This project is an offshoot of another in-progress project of mine: Project Renfrew (which has its roots in NatLink code). Project Renfrew has a much larger scope than MousePlot has alone, so I forked off MousePlot into its own project with the hopes that I can actually release it at some point soon!

Compatibility

Currently, I have only tested this project against NatSpeak 12, and 15.

Can I use MousePlot at the same time as NatLink?

Yes, MousePlot can be installed alongside NatLink. As long as none of your NatLink grammars use "plot" as a command, then you should not have any issues!

Some Background

Several years ago, I developed a chronic pain condition in both of my arms which made it impossible to use the computer, and thus, do my job. Without the help of a number of tools, I would not have been able to continue to work!

One of these tools, which was an absolute lifesaver for me, was NatLink / Unimacro (maintained by Quintijn Hoogenboom). NatSpeak, on its own, really sucks for writing code by voice, and some actions are downright maddening. NatLink helped save a lot of frustration.

As someone who was unable to lift his arms out of his lap, let alone use a mouse, I was dependent on software (i.e. NatSpeak) to do my pointing and clickling. And unfortunately, NatLink did not provide a good solution to this problem.

NatLink allowed me to write a utility to work as a replacement for NatSpeak's mouse grid control using a combination of Python (for responding to voice commands), and C# (for front-end GUI work). This worked really well, and I wanted to share it but it was such a pain in the ass to set up, was buggy (but within my own tolerances), and kind of a mess internally.

Happily, I have since regained the use of my arms, but I wanted to work on a replacement for my old MousePlot implementation that I could share with others, and that would be easy for people to install and set up!

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An alternative to the Dragon Naturally Speaking "mouse grid".

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