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