Announce! Design Environment

The Announce! desktop consists of three areas:

The ToolBar

The ToolBar is a horizontal row of buttons designed to give you fast and easy access to the most commonly used commands:

If the mouse is moved over an active Announce! ToolBar button, the Information field in the status bar will remind you of the action performed by this button. If the button is not active for this window, the Information field will be blank.

The functions of each button are described below:

The Main Desktop

Activating an Open Window

A window must be active before you can work in it. Announce! highlights or shades the window border and title bar of an active window. From the Window menu, choose the document window that you want to make active (ALT, W, name).

Arranging Windows

When several windows are open at the same time., the workplace can get cluttered. Select the Cascade or Tile menu items in the Window menu to rearrange your windows so they are all visible.

Working in the Voice Editor Window

The Voice Editor Window provide a graphical display of a waveform. The display scale can be adjusted both in the x and y directions, so that any waveform can be viewed regardless of length or amplitude. The scale on the left hand side provides an indication of amplitude, together with the maximum allowed values for ADPCM and 16 bit samples. The x scale indicates time, in milliseconds or seconds as appropriate.

Setting a new cursor position

Click in the window to set the cursor to a new position. The cursor is the position where new samples are inserted when using the paste command and insert menu commands.

Selecting part of a waveform

Drag the mouse in the window to select part of a waveform. A purple rectangular box will show graphically the sample selected, and the StatusBar will show the start and duration of the selection in milliseconds. Alternatively, to make a large selection, click in the window at the desired selection starting point, and then click again at the desired end point while pressing the Shift key. Most effect menu commands will operate on the selection, if there is one. Otherwise the commands will operate over the whole phrase.

Adjusting the X and Y scale of the waveform display

Working in the Phrase List Window

A phrase list windows show a list of phrases. Each phrase entry consists of 3 parts:

• A script for the phrase

• The current format of the phrase (LN for compressed)

• An icon

• Play a phrase	Double click on the phrase icon
  View entire phrase name	Click on the ellipses (...)
  Edit a phrase	Drag the phrase icon onto the desktop
  Copy a phrase	Drag the phrase icon into a new position in the same window or another phrase list window
  Move a phrase	Drag the phrase icon into a new position in the same window or another phrase list window while holding down the CTRL key

  See also Working with Phrases.

  The StatusBar

  The StatusBar provides information about the current state of Announce! and about the currently selected phrase(s).

  

  Information Field	Shows the current action being performed by Announce!. If the mouse is moved over a ToolBar button, the Information Field will show the action that would be performed by this button. If the button is not active for this window, the field will be blank. Click on the button to get a description of each button. If you mouse over a menu item, the Information Field will show a more detailed description of the menu item. If you drag a phrase or phrases from a phrase list window, the Information Field will remind you of the action Announce! will take when you drop the selection in the current location.
  Cursor Field	In a Phrase List Window: Shows the offset into the file of the first phrase of the selection. In a Voice Editor Window: Shows the start position in milliseconds of the beginning of the current selection.
  Size Field	In a Phrase List Window: Shows the duration in milliseconds of the selected phrase. If more than one phrase is selected, this field is blank. In a Voice Editor Window: Shows the duration in milliseconds of the selected samples.
  Rate Field	This field shows the sampling rate of the currently selected phrase in a phrase list, or the sampling rate of the phrase in a Voice Editor Window. Press the RATE button to change the sampling rate of the selected samples or phrases. See SampleRate in the Effect Menu for more information. When saving to voice files, Announce! will automatically convert to the sampling rate specified in the VoiceCard Setup Menu.