Hi Brent, Brent Harding wrote: > >Yeah, what about variables in automater. I could never make that work. > I'll dig out bits of an off-list question I answered and append excerpts from the correspondence for an example:
<begin question> I note that you and others have said that automator is accessible. I have tried automator again and still can’t get it to work with Voice Over. What I wanted to do was to create a workflow with the following actions: Get value of variable current time Speak text So I opened the automator menu and pressed the choose button. I could then look at the actions list and find the action get value of variable. I could also find the variables table and find the variable current time. But I could not move these into a visible workflow e.g. to change the order or to associate the variable current time with the action get value of variable. What am I missing? <end question> <excerpt from first reply> You can do what you want by double-clicking to select "Current time" from the variables table, and then by going to the actions table and double-clicking to select the "Get value of variable" action. I set my cursors to track under the navigation option of VoiceOver Utility (VO-F8) so that I don't have to keep routing my mouse cursor to my VoiceOver cursor with VO-Command-F5 before I double-click. The variable you selected will appear in the action (e.g. "Get value of variable current time"). You can then double-click to select the next action "Speak text". Assuming that you don't want to change the voice on the pop up button of the "Speak text" action, just run the workflow with Command-R and you'll hear Alex announce the time. This is actually somewhat limited. To change the format of the reported time, after double-clicking on "Current time", navigate to the variables table, interact, and double-click on the "Current time". A window will open reporting the current time, but also giving a pop up button that allows you to choose the time format among four possible options or choose a customize option. (I think the settings are taken from your clock setup format preferences.) Also, there are no options to control the speaking rate of the time. When you double-click on actions you select in the actions table, they get added in sequence to the workflow. To re-order actions, select an action in the workflow and use Command-Up arrow to move up or Command-Down arrow to move down. (This seems to be new; there's also an "Actions" menu on the menu bar with these options. You used to have to Control-Click after interacting with the title bar of the action to get these options -- and that meant a real click with the trackpad, mouse, or "5" of the numeric keypad with NumPad Commander turned on. And there was/is no way to reorder Automator actions with VoiceOver under Tiger if you couldn't drag and drop with the mouse.) I didn't try to work with variables in Automator before your question, and I actually don't play with Automator that much. Navigating (with tabbing) in Tiger was actually easier; in Leopard I have to use VO-arrow keys and there are a lot of items I want to skip over to get to the main areas, so I use item chooser menu instead. The other change that Leopard made is that the Actions Library can be arranged either by category or by application (in the View menu options on the menu bar) -- in Tiger the actions were application so you saw "Finder" instead of "Files & Folders" and "iTunes" instead of "Music". Here's a brief overview of Automator (with VoiceOver specific comments): Main sections of GUI: 1) Actions Library Table, list of action categories (e.g., "Files & Folders", "Utilities", "Music", "Contacts") -- if you selected the "Variable" check box this will be the Variables Library Table and the next item will be the Table of Variables. 2) Table of Actions corresponding to selected category in Actions Library Table (e.g., "Find Finder Items", "Choose From List", "Add Songs to Playlist") 3) Description of Action, brief info about selected action -- VoiceOver announce this as "HTML area" 4) Workflow, selected actions assembled in order Constructing a workflow: Select the action you want from the Table of Actions and double-click to add your selection to the (end of the) workflow (instead of using drag and drop). I use VO-Shift-Space to click (on a MacBook keyboard). You either need to route your mouse cursor to your VoiceOver cursor (with VO-Command-F5) or have your navigation set to have your cursors tracking in VoiceOver Utility (VO-F8, press "n" to go to "Navigation", then tab to the settings and use VO-Space to check boxes for "Mouse Cursor follows VoiceOver Cursor" and "VoiceOver Cursor follows Mouse Cursor") before you double-click. Hold down the Control, Option, and Shift keys then tap the space bar twice to double-click. You can also double-click with your trackpad key (on a laptop), your connected mouse, or by pressing the "5" key on a numeric keypad twice quickly in succession when NumPad Commander is turned on (in Leopard). After you've selected your actions, navigate to the workflow area and interact with the action to adjust your settings. These could be specifications like setting which directory to search and what file types to look for in an action like "Find Finder Items" via pop up buttons and inserted text. Reorder actions in the workflow by selecting the action and using Command-Up arrow and Command-Down arrow. Run the workflow with Command-R. You can also save it as an application (if you want it to execute like an application) or as a plug-in (if you want it to show up in the Contextual menu for Finder, for instance.) <end first excerpt> <excerpt from followup reply> I realized that my description of how to check the format after selecting the current time variable in Automator was confusing, because VoiceOver says "Variables table" in two different places -- in the library and in the workflow. Once you select a variable from the Variables table corresponding to either a specific library or all libraries, and double-click on that variable, a second table of variables that you have selected for your workflow is displayed in Automator. This table of selected variables specific to your workflow is part of workflow area and gets displayed even if you switch between working with actions libraries and variables libraries. If you "hide libraries" under your view menu options, the first three sections of the Automator GUI -- for libraries of actions or variables, tables listing the actions or variables, and description of selected actions or variables -- are no longer displayed, but the variables table specific to your workflow still appears as part of the fourth section, which is the workflow. There is a variables button to "Show or hide the workflow variables list" (VO-H) that you can press (VO-space) to toggle this table view on or off, but the variables table is automatically shown the first time you double-click to select a variable in a library to add it to your workflow. This workflow variables table is where you check on the details of the variable format and value for items like "Current time". Main sections of GUI: 1) Actions Library Table, list of action categories (e.g., "Files & Folders", "Utilities", "Music", "Contacts") -- if you selected the "Variable" check box this will be the Variables Library Table and the next item will be the Table of Variables. 2) Table of Actions corresponding to selected category in Actions Library Table (e.g., "Find Finder Items", "Choose From List", "Add Songs to Playlist") 3) Description of Action, brief info about selected action -- VoiceOver announces this as "HTML area" 4) Workflow, selected actions assembled in order So I should amend the description to clarify that you need to navigate to the variables table in your workflow area to check the current time report and format. To change the format of the reported time, after double-clicking on "Current time", navigate to the variables table, interact, and double-click on the "Current time". A window will open reporting the current time, but also giving a pop up button that allows you to choose the time format among four possible options or choose a customize option. (I think the settings are taken from your clock setup format preferences.) Also, there are no options to control the speaking rate of the time. Finally, if you double-click select more than one variable from the Library variables table before double-click selecting the "Get value of variable" action, the multiple variable items will appear on a selectable pop up button in the action. <end second excerpt> Cheers, Esther --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
