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On Using Natlink Systems for the first time - frustration
Submitted by Quintijn on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 09:22.
(This was moved to a new topic from the Admin blog entry on frustration - Admin)
I have been attempting to use Unimacro and Vocola this morning. I have really met with a lot of frustration in doing so.
Thanks for trying, sorry to hear about the trouble...
From what I have seen thus far it seems the documentation is too segmented to make this a real viable option (in my mind). Perhaps I'm too spoiled and far away from my programming days. Perhaps commercial programming has taken its toll on my mind.
Other tools did not work for me either, despite Knowbrainer: unimacro and vocola can be made to fit for non english user profiles as well.
There are lots of experiments with natlink, unimacro, vocola and voicecode, with the risk of making duplicates, and that makes things more tricky at times. But natlink offers more possibilities at some places than advancedscript macros do. And I believe the other systems (Knowbrainer, voicepower) rely on advancedscript. But I admit I did not try them yet.
It took me years of hesitation before I tried to delve into voicecode, and have still lots of trouble with it. It is a long way!
One of the things I've been trying to do is to get Unimacro to do a test just to see if it will work. You should see the words that it prints out-even with training! I guess I have problems saying the word.
I do not understand this, please clarify. The unittests of unimacro are not easy. If you tell your experiences, I can improve either them or the instructions about them...
I know it is a highly successful system. And the price is right! I'll just have to knuckle down and study harder on what to do to get it to work. I would imagine that is what all of you had to do!
Now to find the time and location of the apparent volumes of documentation needed to make this work.
Skip
They are opensource projects: help with (to start with for example) improving the documentation, is welcome. Please ask questions and do your proposals.
The website source of unimacro is on sourceforge subversion (SVN) now, I will shortly write instructions how you could contribute. For the moment, suggestions or questions about text or ordering of pages of the unimacro website can be mailed to me, by clicking the e-mail button at the bottom of each page of that website.
Greetings, Quintijn
Quintijn wrote: admin
I have been attempting to use Unimacro and Vocola this morning. I have really met with a lot of frustration in doing so.
Thanks for trying, sorry to hear about the trouble...
I was really tired yesterday, so perhaps I can get something going today with.
From what I have seen thus far it seems the documentation is too segmented to make this a real viable option (in my mind). Perhaps I'm too spoiled and far away from my programming days. Perhaps commercial programming has taken its toll on my mind.
Other tools did not work for me either, despite Knowbrainer: unimacro and vocola can be made to fit for non english user profiles as well.
I'm beginning to believe that I have been spoiled by commercial programs. I used to be able to dig up documentation from all over, read and use it without problem. Perhaps its old age setting in!
There are lots of experiments with natlink, unimacro, vocola and voicecode, with the risk of making duplicates, and that makes things more tricky at times. But natlink offers more possibilities at some places than advancedscript macros do. And I believe the other systems (Knowbrainer, voicepower) rely on advancedscript. But I admit I did not try them yet.
It took me years of hesitation before I tried to delve into voicecode, and have still lots of trouble with it. It is a long way!
We have so many options it can get dizzying! We have commercially available the KnowBrainer scripts, VoicePower , and who knows what else! In the freeware realm we have natlink-based systems: Unimacro and Vocola and I believe VoiceCode is included with that group. The learning curve on the commercial programs seem less although still daunting.
Perhaps we need to work on getting documentation for the NatLink-based systems arranged so that a raw beginner (me!) can get the programs installed, working and usable in a shorter period of time. We have this website as a resource that we can use to do whatever we need. It seems that we have lost the SpeechWiki site, at least for now.
One of the things I've been trying to do is to get Unimacro to do a test just to see if it will work. You should see the words that it prints out-even with training! I guess I have problems saying the word.
I do not understand this, please clarify. The unittests of unimacro are not easy. If you tell your experiences, I can improve either them or the instructions about them...
It actually seems that for some reason I cannot say Unimacro correctly. When I try to say the Unimacro test all that I saw in the documentation it does nothing because the recognition is horrible for the word Unimacro. What I was thinking was that it would be a good thing to have a commandline testing ability. Perhaps it's already somewhere and I just don't know how to do it yet.
I know it is a highly successful system. And the price is right! I'll just have to knuckle down and study harder on what to do to get it to work. I would imagine that is what all of you had to do!
Now to find the time and location of the apparent volumes of documentation needed to make this work.
Skip
They are opensource projects: help with (to start with for example) improving the documentation, is welcome. Please ask questions and do your proposals.
The website source of unimacro is on sourceforge subversion (SVN) now, I will shortly write instructions how you could contribute. For the moment, suggestions or questions about text or ordering of pages of the unimacro website can be mailed to me, by clicking the e-mail button at the bottom of each page of that website.
I will do what I can to help with this. Right now I have several other projects that need my attention before I can get to help with this. I've never used the subversion system (or any other)at all. We will see what we can come up with to improve the system over time!
Skip
One remark for the moment:
One remark for the moment: if the "Messages from Python Macros" windows shows up, natlink is running.
The initial text tells you if _vocola_main started (vocola is (probably) running) and which unimacro grammars are running.
More later when you have the time and attention and more questions.
Quintijn
Quintijn wrote: One remark
One remark for the moment: if the "Messages from Python Macros" windows shows up, natlink is running.
The initial text tells you if _vocola_main started (vocola is (probably) running) and which unimacro grammars are running.
More later when you have the time and attention and more questions.
Quintijn
The window shows up and has this in it when DNS starts:
getUserDirectory: F:\natlink\unimacrogetLanguage: enx
getUser: Skip
IniGrammar switched on: tasks
initializing/loading DictGrammar!!
messageDictGrammar initialized
_general, files in wordsFolder F:\natlink\unimacro\enx_words\Skip: []
IniGrammar switched on: general
fillInstantVariables for <inigr: lines>
IniGrammar switched on: lines
warning _folders, virtualdrive "nl" does not exist: d:\natlink
warning _folders, folder "unimacro" does not exist: "nl:\unimacro"
warning _folders, folder "natlink system" does not exist: "F:\Program Files\natlink\macrosystem\core"
warning _folders, file "python natlinkmain" does not exist: "F:\Program Files\natlink\macrosystem\core\natlinkmain.py"
IniGrammar switched on: folders
natlinkmain started (imported)
My main windows drive is F: and Natlink installed into F:\Natlink. I have no Drive C for windows.
Any idea why I'm getting the warnings? I'm on Windows XP SP2 here.
Skip
Skip, FWIW, I was never able
Skip,
FWIW, I was never able to get any of the free systems running either, largely (I guess) because I couldn't get Python/NatLink functional on my system. While that was years ago, it looks like the situation hasn't improved much for those of us without programming backgrounds. It seem to me most of the people who show up as users are either programmers or folks with allied technical chops.
In any case, I'm watching your efforts with interest. Maybe this is YouTube-able
Bruce
Bruce, your statement is out
Bruce, your statement is out of date, since the new natlink/unimacro/vocola installer (version 3.2) is only a matter of installing python (3 or 4 exectutables) and the natlink/unimacro/vocola package. Some extra instructions for Vista regrettably though.
Some tuning needed of course, but no programming effort at all.
There have been 58 downloads of the 3.2 version, and one message of problems did reach me, and that problem has been solved (soon in release 3.3).
So complain only - if you have reason to - about this last version and not about years ago experiences...
See for example: the dragon related pages on this forum for links.
Quintijn
Fair enough re: the
Fair enough re: the relevance of my past experience, but it is enough to discourage me from investing any more of my time vis-a-vis available options. Hell, I've paid for some commercial softwares that were so aggravating that I just pitched them rather than finagle with tech support, e.g., the otherwise highly praised Spyware Doctor, whose more recent instantiations constipate my PC's bowels, or LightRoom 1.x, which scarcely manifests beta-ware status and runs on my four-processor system like it too had a severe bowel blockage.
While these free systems represent potential value for many users, my time is more important to me than money, so I'm content with DNS Pro. If I get an itch for alternatives, I'm more likely to turn to the KnowBrainer or VoicePower systems. But what I would do probably doesn't mean much to most potential adopters.
OTOH, if Skip can get it going, maybe he can help me.
Bruce
BruceCyr wrote: Fair enough
Fair enough re: the relevance of my past experience, but it is enough to discourage me from investing any more of my time vis-a-vis available options. Hell, I've paid for some commercial softwares that were so aggravating that I just pitched them rather than finagle with tech support, e.g., the otherwise highly praised Spyware Doctor, whose more recent instantiations constipate my PC's bowels, or LightRoom 1.x, which scarcely manifests beta-ware status and runs on my four-processor system like it too had a severe bowel blockage.
I had about the same experience with McAfee antivirus. I removed it from the system because it had slowed me to the point where it was virtually unusable. So I gave my PC some electronic Ex-Lax and got rid of McAfee. I replaced it with the Avast! antivirus and my problems disappeared. Avast also found many viruses/Trojans that McAfee had ignored.
While these free systems represent potential value for many users, my time is more important to me than money, so I'm content with DNS Pro. If I get an itch for alternatives, I'm more likely to turn to the KnowBrainer or VoicePower systems. But what I would do probably doesn't mean much to most potential adopters.
OTOH, if Skip can get it going, maybe he can help me.
If I can manage to get it going, I'm probably going to write documentation on how to get it going. I must say that the install so far has been a lot easier than it was the last time I tried when NatLink was first created. So there has been quite a bit of progress made in that area. It appears that with one installation, Unimacro, Vocola, and NatLink were all installed. The only thing I had to do prior to that was to install the Python programs. So right now I'm in a discovery mode attempting to find out what to say to make the buttons push.
I have had some time to work
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