Version 1.0 of the Personal Edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking does not support multiple users. Having multiple users is one of the most requested features. In this section, I'll describe a way that you can configure your version 1.0 Personal Edition to support multiple users.
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| Warning: version 1.0 of the Personal Edition Dragon NaturallySpeaking was designed is a single user system. Using the following technique to circumvent that limitation may be a violation of your license agreement. I am not a lawyer, and I make no claim as to what limitations are implied by your license agreement. |
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| The trick to having multiple users in Dragon NaturallySpeaking is to store the speech files for each user in a separate directory on your hard disk, and then change the pointer in the registry to the current location of the speech files before you start Dragon NaturallySpeaking. |
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| In version 1.0 of the Personal Edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the following registry variable is used to store the location of the speech files for currently active user: |
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| [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dragon Systems\NaturallySpeaking\Personal 1.0\Users\Customer\Settings] |
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| "User Directory"="Customer" |
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| The "User Directory" variable is actually the name of a directory (also called a folder) on your hard disk. The default directory name is "Customer" which is shorthand for the following directory: "C:\NatSpeak\Users\Customer". |
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| If you want to store your speech files in a different directory, you can then tell NaturallySpeaking where to find your speech files by changing the value of the "User Directory" variable. For example, if you moved the directory "C:\NatSpeak\Users\Customer" to a new location, say, "C:\My Users\Joel", then you could tell Dragon NaturallySpeaking where to find your speech files by changing the registry variable to read as follows: |
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| [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dragon Systems\NaturallySpeaking\Personal 1.0\Users\Customer\Settings] |
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| "User Directory"="C:\My Users\Joel" |
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| (Warning: in a file, you have to double any backslashes in quotes. So if you write these lines to a file like test.reg, the second line would be "User Directory"="C:\\My Users\\Joel".) |
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| This is half of what you need to support multiple users. The other half is to understand what comprises speech files. In the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Personal Edition 1.0, speech files consist of 6 separate files, stored in a subdirectory called "current", in the directory pointed to by the registry variable "User Directory". |
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| Here is an image of the Windows Explorer which shows the default user directory. Notice that there actually two subdirectories, one called "current", and one called "backup". The backup directory contains the last backed up copy of the speech files. |
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| Now that you know the basics, we are ready to set up a multi-user system. To demonstrate a procedure, we will set up a two user system. You should be able to extrapolate to more than two users. |
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| Make sure that you run Dragon NaturallySpeaking at least once before starting this procedure. It is not necessary to run General Training, but you must at least start the program wants in order to create the default "Customer" user directory. |
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| Now, open up the Windows Explorer and copy the "Customer" directory to a different place in your hard disk. For the purpose of this exercise, I recommend creating a new directory called "c:\My Users" and copying the customer directory into there. (In this example, I am ignoring the backup directories. They may or may not be present.) |
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| Now your system should look like this: |
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| Rename this directory to "Joel". Then create another copy of "c:\NatSpeak\Users\Customer" in "c:\My Users" and name that copy "Daphne". |
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| Now your system should look like this: |
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| Before we set up batch files to switch users automatically, lets review the manual procedure. |
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| To start NatSpeak with the user "Joel", use the registry editor (regedit) to change the "User Directory" registry entry to point to the "c:\My Users\Joel" directory. Then start Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Never change the directory while NatSpeak is running. |
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| Here is what the registry looks like after the change: |
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| To automate the procedure of switching users, we will create one batch file, one registry file and one shortcut on the desktop for every user. |
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| The registry file will automate changing the registry. To switch to the user "Joel", you will need a registry file named "c:\My Users\joel.reg" which contains the following text (notice that I doubled the backslashes in the quoted string): |
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| [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Dragon Systems\NaturallySpeaking\Personal 1.0\Users\Customer\Settings] |
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| "User Directory"="C:\\My Users\\Joel" |
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| Now create a batch file which will first update the registry and then start Dragon NaturallySpeaking. The batch file should be called "c:\My Users\joel.bat" and contain the following instructions: |
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| start /w regedit -s joel.reg |
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| Finally, create a shortcut on the desktop which will run your batch file. You create a shortcut by right clicking on the desktop and selecting "New" then "Shortcut". Enter the command line "c:\My Users\joel.bat" and call it whatever you like. |
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| Now you have a way to start NatSpeak with the user "Joel". You can repeat the process to create a registry file, batch file and shortcut to start NatSpeak with the user "Daphne". |
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