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Dictating text into Freelancer - Printable Version

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Dictating text into Freelancer - Barrier - 12-05-2022

Hey everyone.
As I was thinking of coming back to the game for a bit, I remembered that one of the most annoying things during rp sessions was typing everything out in between trying to fly, fight, or scan ships and system menus.
This got me thinking of the easiest way to avoid this - text dictation.

Now, I see two major problems with this approach: the dictation itself, and actually getting this text into the chat box inside Freelancer.
The first issue is solved by "current year" - yay for speech recognition tech! Everyone and their dog seems to have pretty accurate speech recognition. The secondary issue is making sure it doesn't turn off when the window is tabbed, like google docs or windows voice. For this, I've been using https://speechnotes.co/
You just press the mic, and then you can tab back to Freelancer and continue talking, with it taking down everything you say. So part one solved.

Part two is getting this text into Freelancer as quickly and efficiently as possible. This sounds like a job for a macro. Although I'm sure there is other software out there, I've been using https://www.autohotkey.com/download/
After less than an hour of testing, I managed to cobble together a simple macro for tabbing into the text window, cutting the text, and pasting it back into freelancer. You can download it at this link: https://archive.org/download/dictation_test/test.ahk
Alternatively, feel free to copy the code directly:
Code:
#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn  ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

^Tab::
Send, {ALT DOWN}{TAB}{ALT UP}
sleep 50
Send, ^{a DOWN}{a UP}
sleep 50
Send, ^{x DOWN}{x UP}
sleep 50
Send, {ALT DOWN}{TAB}{ALT UP}
sleep 50
Send, {Enter}
sleep 50
Send, /g %Clipboard%
sleep 50
Send, {Enter}
return
In order to use it, you must open the macro file while having autohotkey installed. The shortcut to use the macro is Ctrl+Tab, but you can change that to whatever you want. You need to also make sure that the last window you tabbed into Freelancer from is the text window (although I know there's a way to make it tab to a specific window if you read up on that).
Here's an example: [Image: HpJU05a.png]
At the moment it talks in group, but you can just remove the "/g" before "%Clipboard%, or create another macro for local chat with a different shortcut.

Anyone have suggestions on further simplifying this?

RE: Dictating text into Freelancer - sane - 12-05-2022

flair can handle hooking into the chatbox and enables copy-paste support, maybe you might want to look into that aswell instead of tabbing around

RE: Dictating text into Freelancer - Barrier - 12-06-2022

This is pretty cool, thanks for the suggestion! I think the send_message() function could do the trick, since it should work while you're inside Freelancer. I guess the question at that point is whether I can pull the text from the dictation window without having to tab to copy it.