This section describes how to install Dragonfly. The installation procedure of Dragonfly itself is straightforward. Its dependencies, however, differ depending on which speech recognition engine is used.
To be able to use the dragonfly, you will need the following:
- Python, v2.5 or later – for example available from ActiveState.
- Win32 extensions for Python – already included in ActiveState’s Python distribution or available from Mark Hammond’s page.
- Natlink (only for Dragon NaturallySpeaking users) – for example available from Daniel Rocco.
Dragonfly is a Python package. A simple installer of the next, next, finish type is available from the project’s download page. This installer was created with Python’s standard distutils and has been tested on Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.
Dragonfly’s installer will install the library in your Python’s local site-packages directory under the dragonfly subdirectory.
Dragonfly uses Natlink to communicate with DNS. Natlink is available in various forms, including Daniel Rocco’s efficient and tidy pure-Python package. It is available here.
Once Natlink is up and running, Dragonfly command-modules can be treated as any other Natlink macro files. Natlink automatically loads macro files from a predefined directory. Common locations are:
- C:\Program Files\NatLink\MacroSystem
- My Documents\Natlink
At least one of these should be present after installing Natlink. That is the place where you should put Dragonfly command-modules so that Natlink will load them. Don’t forget to turn the microphone off and on again after placing a new command-modules in the Natlink directory, because otherwise Natlink does not immediately see the new file.
If WSR is available, then no extra installation needs to be done. Dragonfly can find and communicate with WSR using standard COM communication channels.
If you would like to use Dragonfly command-modules with WSR, then you must run a loader program which will load and manage the command-modules. A simple loader is available in the dragonfly/examples/dragonfly-main.py file. When run, it will scan the directory it’s in for other *.py files and try to load them as command-modules.