Couple of requests one small, one not so small :)

[Gamemusicpacks]

Hi Gary, all

First of all, this being my first post to the VA Forums (despite reading them for a while) I'd like to take this opportunity to say thanks to Gary for the superb and very well thought out software he has made. There isn't a week that goes by where I use a feature and think to myself 'wow he really thought about how to make this pleasant to use'. So thank you!

Righty, first my small request, which is a little annoyance for someone who has occasional trouble with arthritic paws. In the edit command menu, where we have the up and down arrows to move a command macro line up or down the sequence, it would be really great if there were a 'move to top' and 'move to bottom' button, even if it were a shift click option over the existing 'move up' 'move down buttons. A minor thing, I know, but would be a really nice addition.

The other thing, I've seen repeatedly requested, so I'll just briefly mention it here Dynamic commands taking tokens/vars within the "when I say" section. This would help me with the music packs by reducing the number of separate commands or the need for a lengthy macro sequence.

Anyway, I thought I'd say hi to the forum & thanks to Gary! Thanks again.

Kate.
Gamemusicpacks.com

[Pfeil]

In the edit command menu, where we have the up and down arrows to move a command macro line up or down the sequence, it would be really great if there were a 'move to top' and 'move to bottom' button, even if it were a shift click option over the existing 'move up' 'move down buttons.

I'd like to add to that the request for CTRL + PageUp and CTRL + PageDown keyboard shortcuts with the same top/bottom functionality, as an extention of the currently available CTRL + Up Arrow and CTRL + Down Arrow shortcuts.

[Gary]

Hi, Kate.

I can certainly add, 'move to top', 'move to bottom' as that sounds like a great idea.

The other suggestion, although fantastic, is something that creates kind of a, 'cart before the horse' situation.

Command phrases in VA are used to drive the speech engine.  The speech engine, as VA relates to it, is loaded with exact phrases for accuracy, and those phrases are loaded when the profile loads.  A token (especially one that would use a variable) would require some type of initialization to occur BEFORE the commands are loaded.  Right now, the initialization of a profile is done by executing a command that's part of the loaded command set (which could recursively call other commands).  An initialization routine would have to be created that exists outside of the current command stack that's in place.  I mean, it's all of one line of code to allow the processing of tokens for the spoken phrases, but the reason it's not in there is because the values that the tokens depend on would need to be loaded PRIOR to the profile loading.  Hope that makes sense.

[Gamemusicpacks]

Hi, thanks for the replies,

Yes, I think I understand your explanation of the issues. I didn't expect it would be easy and don't expect it any time soon hehe. It does present somewhat of a chicken and egg/cart & horse scenario, I can see how it would complicate initialisation of commands. Perhaps one way to do it would be to initiate the stack of all commands that don't have tokens first as usual and have some sort of additional 'live' initialisation system with a safety check in place that would only allow init of a command, or a particular CMD segment if it has a value set within it's var/token section. It's definitely complex and I don't envy you the task of working that one out! Just wanted to +1 the request for it.

One other thing that would be quite handy, although I have worked around it with our plugin, is to be able to get live info from the variable pause command. I'll try explain: let's say I have set 60 seconds of variable pause, it would be very handy if at some point I could query the current value at a given time of the variable pause, so let's say 30 seconds have passed in our 60 second pause, I call its value, I'd like to have an option to read that there are 30 seconds left (or 30 have elapsed), so a dynamically updated alias of the original variable, a timer, if you will, perhaps accessible as a special token. I'd still want the original variable pause value available though.
As I say, it's a problem I've got around within my plugin, it'd just be handy to have VA manage this. Maybe keeping such dynamically updated variables would be more resource intensive, don't know how much of a difference it would make in VA tbh. Just thought I'd throw the idea out there anyway.
Thanks again & thanks for the swift responses.

Kate.
Gamemusicpacks.com