vTurbo for NVDA is an application created by VICT Consultancy which interacts with NVDA's configuration files in order to add new features to NVDA, the free screen-reader produced by NV Access. Since vTurbo was not created using NVDA's open-source code or any derivative, vTurbo is not technically an NVDA 'Add-On' and therefore cannot be installed using NVDA's Add-On manager. This user guide provides detailed instructions on how to install vTurbo for NVDA on your system.
vTurbo is compatible with version 2013.3 or later of NVDA running on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Since NVDA is free, there is no reason not to update regularly to the latest version.
vTurbo supports English and French with English being used as the default language. vTurbo automatically detects the current language being used by NVDA and switches between English and French as appropriate. The vTurbo application also supports Polish but there is no Polish translation of this user guide.
Since NVDA requires to be restarted for the change of language to be put into effect, you may find that vTurbo itself closes automatically if there is a delay in NVDA restarting. Should this happen, restart NVDA as described in section 3.
Where NVDA restarts quickly, vTurbo will continue to run but you will have to select 'Refresh language' on the vTurbo settings submenu for the change in language to take effect.
After extracting the zip file which contains vTurbo, there will be a single application called vtnsetup.exe. Please follow these instructions to ensure that vTurbo is correctly installed to your version or versions of NVDA.
While following the installation instructions below, keep in mind that the setup file vtnsetup.exe must be run as administrator if your operating system is Windows Vista or later. To do this, right click on the vtnsetup.exe file or press the applications key to display the popup menu and select Run as Administrator.
Please note that if the Windows Program Compatibility Wizard appears at any time during the installation process, you should select the button which confirms that the program has been correctly installed.
The setup file does not need to be run with NVDA running. If you can run setup without running NVDA, you will have the greatest flexibility in installing vTurbo to your installed or portable versions of NVDA. Just follow the prompts in the various installation screens.
If you have a portable version of NVDA on removable media, such as a USB thumb drive, you should plug that removable media into your computer before running setup. The setup program searches your entire system for installed and portable versions of NVDA so that you have the opportunity of installing vTurbo for more than one version of NVDA at the same time.
After the Welcome screen, the setup program will conduct a quick preliminary search of your system and report if any versions of NVDA are found. This search only looks in likely areas of your system and it may therefore miss portable versions of NVDA hiding in sub-folders. If this preliminary check does discover all the versions of NVDA to which you want to install vTurbo, the setup program will not need to continue with a much slower but more thorough search of your system. You should only select the 'Yes' button at this stage if there is a version of NVDA on your system which is not listed in the displayed message box.
If you do decide to have setup carry out a full search of your system, be aware that this process can take many minutes. Setup will play a series of beeps during the search but do not be surprised if the beeps pause at various points during the search.
After completing the search, you will be asked to confirm your acceptance of the terms and conditions of the licence under which vTurbo for NVDA is distributed. For the avoidance of doubt, this licence applies only to vTurbo and has nothing to do with NVDA itself which is governed by a separate licence.
After accepting the licence, setup will list the versions of NVDA it has found and, if there is more than one, there will be a corresponding checkbox next to each version. If you do not wish for vTurbo to be installed at this time to a particular version of NVDA, you should clear the relevant checkbox.
Please note that vTurbo cannot be installed to a version of NVDA contained on a CD or DVD or which is otherwise read-only.
Thereafter, installation of vTurbo is automatic. The Finish screen offers an opportunity to view this user guide.
Due to the existence of a possible bug in NVDA when running as a portable version in Windows 7, care must be taken to follow the correct installation procedure depending on whether you are running an installed or portable version of NVDA.
If you have a fully installed version of NVDA on your hard drive, you should run that version in preference to any other so that the installation of vTurbo will be fully automatic. You can run setup with your installed version of NVDA to install vTurbo to that installed version of NVDA, to a second portable version of NVDA on your hard drive or to a portable version contained on removable media. In fact, you can install vTurbo to all these different versions at the same time.
Where you are running setup along with an installed version of NVDA, the setup process is identical to that mentioned above in relation to installing vTurbo while NVDA is not running.
This is a slightly more complex process than that which applies when running an installed version of NVDA. There are three main points to bear in mind:
Provided you have followed these steps, installation of vTurbo will be quick and automatic.
If you are installing an update for vTurbo or reinstalling vTurbo to overwrite the existing version for any reason, there are two points to bear in mind:
Once installed, vTurbo starts automatically whenever you start NVDA. It then runs in the background and exits automatically when NVDA is closed. However, how you start NVDA will depend on what kind of version of NVDA you are running.
If vMouse for installed NVDA is not detected, the vTurbo setup program places an icon on your desktop called 'vTurbo for installed NVDA' and assigns the shortcut key, control + alt + T to that icon. When you press that shortcut key combination, NVDA will start and vTurbo will load automatically.
If you already have vMouse for installed NVDA, setup will instead replace your vMouse for Installed NVDA desktop icon with one called 'vApps for installed NVDA' which will continue to be launched with the shortcut key, control + alt + M. Activating this icon will launch NVDA, vTurbo and vMouse together, but you may have to restart your computer for this shortcut to work.
Where vMouse is not detected, the vTurbo setup program places an icon on your desktop called 'vTurbo for portable NVDA' and assigns the shortcut key, control + alt + T to that icon. If you also happen to have an installed version of NVDA on the same hard drive, the shortcut key will be control + alt + 1. When you press the appropriate shortcut key combination, NVDA will start and vTurbo will load automatically.
If you already have vMouse for portable NVDA, setup will instead replace your vTurbo for portable NVDA desktop icon with one called 'vApps for portable NVDA' which will continue to be launched with either control + alt + M or control + alt + 1, as the case may be. Activating this icon will launch NVDA, vTurbo and vMouse together, but you may have to restart your computer for this shortcut to work.
Ideally, your USB drive or other removable media which contains NVDA will be configured to start NVDA automatically when you plug that media into a PC or laptop. If this is the case with your version of NVDA, it will continue to launch NVDA automatically but vTurbo will also start at the same time. If you have to type 'NVDA' in the Run command window from the Start menu, you will still have to do this but, again, vTurbo will also start automatically. Please note that the vTurbo setup program places a special file in the root folder of your removable drive so that you only need to type 'NVDA' after the drive letter and backslash. You should not specify a full folder path, such as e:\nvda\nvda.
If you wish to run NVDA with vTurbo by selecting a file within Windows Explorer, you should execute the special file called nvda.bat contained in the root folder of the removable media. If you already have vMouse installed on removable media, setup will simply amend the batch file so as to ensure that NVDA, vTurbo and vMouse start together.
If you have configured NVDA to start automatically whenever you start Windows, you can have vTurbo start automatically as well. To do this, run vTurbo and select 'Start vTurbo at Windows logon' on the vTurbo Settings submenu.
If you also have vMouse installed for the same installation of NVDA, the item on the settings menu will be called 'Start vApps at Windows logon' which will act as a switch for both vTurbo and vMouse together. The same item on the vMouse settings menu will also be updated to refer to vApps and either vTurbo or vMouse can be used to change the same setting.
vTurbo closes automatically whenever you exit NVDA but if you wish to close vTurbo while NVDA is still running, choose Exit vTurbo on vTurbo's menu.
Most of vTurbo's features discussed below are accessed from the vTurbo menu. To display the vTurbo menu, press the hotkey, control + Windows key + alt + N. A standard popup menu is displayed which can be navigated using the arrow keys or by pressing the quick access key associated with the relevant menu item.
This section discusses the items on the vTurbo menu which relate to the application specific settings feature.
Once you have configured NVDA's settings for an application which currently has focus, you can save those settings by selecting Save Application Profile from the vTurbo menu. You may then hear the message 'configuration saved' and vTurbo will proceed to open the configuration profiles dialogue and set the application trigger for the profile.
You do not have to specify a name for the application profile since this is generated automatically by vTurbo. From now on, every time you launch that application or switch to that application, the specific settings in the application profile will be loaded automatically by NVDA.
You can also update the profile for the current application by selecting Save Application Profile from the vTurbo menu or by selecting 'Save configuration' on the NVDA menu.
Application profiles created using vTurbo are not affected by any subsequent changes to the normal configuration.
Since it is not possible to layer configuration profiles in NVDA, the Save Application Profile menu item is not displayed where there is already an application profile for the current application and where the currently active configuration profile is not that application profile. For example, although you can activate a voice profile while a triggered application profile is in use, you will not be able to save changes to the triggered application profile since it will not be the active profile in NVDA.
Once a profile has been created for a specific application, the name of that application will then appear on the Load Application Profile submenu of the vTurbo menu. The Load Application Profile feature allows you to quickly apply settings you have created for one application to the application which currently has focus so that you do not have to spend time recreating similar settings.
When you load settings from another application profile in this way, you will hear the message 'configuration applied'. You are then free to modify those settings and/or save those settings for the application which currently has focus by selecting Save Application Profile from the vTurbo menu.
Note that the Load Application Profile menu item will not be displayed where the currently active configuration profile in NVDA is not the normal configuration since layering profiles is not possible in NVDA.
If you no longer require an application profile which you have previously created, you can delete it by selecting the Delete Application Profile option on the vTurbo menu and then select the name of the application whose profile you wish to delete. The name of the application will be removed from the Load Application Profile submenu.
A vTurbo application profile may also be deleted by selecting its name in the configuration profiles dialogue box and then pressing the Delete button. vTurbo automates this process until you are asked for confirmation of the deletion. The advantages of selecting a profile for deletion on the Delete application profile submenu are that (a) the list in the submenu only displays application profiles and (b) if the application profile contains any vMouse hotspots, you are warned of this by the presence of the text '(Hotspots)' next to the filename.
You may wish from time to time to alter the default settings contained in the normal configuration profile and save the changes to that configuration. You do this by selecting the option Save Current Settings As Default on the vTurbo menu. Whether or not the current settings in use have been loaded from another application's settings file, those settings will now be used as the default NVDA settings.
Where the normal configuration is active, you can also quickly save any changes to that profile by selecting 'Save configuration' on the NVDA menu.
Note that the 'Save current settings as default' menu item is not displayed where the currently active configuration profile is not the application profile for the current application with focus.
vTurbo's Application Specific Settings feature allows you to store a complete set of NVDA configuration settings for different applications. There are times, however, when all you want to do is to change the reading voice and its associated settings as quickly as possible while in the same application. You can do this in NVDA by separately accessing the Synthesizer and Voice settings dialogue boxes from the Preferences submenu of NVDA and manually changing relevant settings as desired.
The Voice Profiles feature of vTurbo lets you create a settings file which stores only settings which are found in the Synthesizer and Voice settings dialogues so that you can later retrieve those settings from the vTurbo menu. For example, you can create separate voice profiles for different languages, for your favourite voices or to quickly retrieve voices with required settings, such as level of spoken punctuation, rate and pitch. This section explains how to do this.
Once you have chosen the desired speech synthesizer and made any changes in the NVDA Synthesizer settings dialogue, and having chosen the particular voice and made desired changes in the Voice settings dialogue, you can save these settings in a voice profile by selecting the Create a Voice Profile option on the vTurbo menu.
You are then presented with a simple box into which you can type a name for the voice profile you wish to create. This name will later appear as an option on the Load a Voice Profile submenu of vTurbo. Since this name will be used as a file name, avoid using characters which would be invalid when saving other kinds of documents.
Voice profiles created using vTurbo are not affected by any subsequent changes to the normal configuration.
You can quickly load a previously created voice profile by selecting the Load a Voice Profile submenu on the vTurbo menu. The submenu lists the names of the voice profiles you have previously created. Note that the loading of the voice profile could take several seconds if the associated speech synthesizer has not already been loaded during the current NVDA session. Once a synthesizer has been loaded, subsequent selection of the relevant voice profile will load the profile more quickly.
Once you have loaded a voice profile, you can switch between this profile and the voice and related settings contained in the normal configuration profile by pressing the hotkey Windows key, alt and V.
If you wish to save any changes you have made to the synthesizer or voice settings of the currently loaded voice profile, you can do this by selecting the Update Voice Profile option on the vTurbo menu.
You may also update an active voice profile by saving the configuration in NVDA.
You can delete a previously created voice profile by selecting its name on the Delete Voice Profile submenu of vTurbo. The name of the voice profile will be removed from the Load a Voice Profile submenu.
You may also delete a voice profile directly within the configuration profiles dialogue box of NVDA but the list of profiles displayed in the Delete voice profile submenu of vTurbo is restricted to voice profiles only.
If you use a refreshable Braille display with NVDA, you will have set up the relevant driver and settings for that display in NVDA's Braille settings dialogue. You can save different Braille settings, such as translation tables for different languages, for particular applications using vTurbo's application specific settings feature but there may be times when you wish to change translation tables or other settings while still in the same application. You can do this in vTurbo by creating Braille profiles which you can name and then recall later from a menu. Not only that, you can link your saved Braille profiles to voice profiles you have created so that the two load together. This section explains how to do this.
Once you have chosen the desired Braille display, translation tables and other settings in the Braille settings dialogue, you can save these settings in a Braille profile by selecting the Create a Braille Profile item in vTurbo's Braille profiles submenu. The Create Braille Profile dialogue is then displayed and the cursor is placed in an edit field into which you can type a name for the Braille profile you wish to create. This name will later appear as an item on the Load a Braille Profile submenu of the Braille profiles submenu. Since this name will be used as a file name, avoid using characters which would be invalid when saving other kinds of documents.
If you press tab after entering the name of the Braille profile in the Create Braille Profile dialogue, the cursor focuses on a list of voice profiles you have created. In addition, this list always contains the items 'No link'. The item 'No link' is selected by default which means that if you do not wish to link your new Braille profile to a voice profile, you can press Enter as soon as you have typed the name of the Braille profile.
Where you create a Braille profile which is not linked to a voice profile, you can change to that Braille profile without changing the current voice and its associated settings. If you do wish to link your new Braille profile to a voice profile, select the voice profile from the list and either press Enter or select the OK button.
A Braille profile created with a link to a voice profile will be displayed in the Braille profiles submenu as 'Name of Braille profile + Name of voice profile'. vTurbo automatically adds '+' followed by the name of the linked voice profile.
Braille profiles created using vTurbo are not affected by any subsequent changes to the normal configuration.
You can quickly load a previously created Braille profile by selecting the Load a Braille Profile submenu on vTurbo's Braille profiles submenu. The submenu lists the names of the Braille profiles you have previously created. Where the Braille profile is linked to a voice profile, the associated voice profile will also be loaded. Note that the loading of the voice profile could take several seconds if the associated speech synthesizer has not already been loaded during the current NVDA session. Once a synthesizer has been loaded, subsequent selection of the relevant voice profile will load the profile more quickly.
Once you have loaded a Braille profile, you can switch between this profile and the Braille settings contained in the normal configuration profile by pressing the hotkey Windows key, alt and B.
The Update Braille profile command on the Braille profiles submenu displays the Update Braille Profile dialogue which lets you save any changes you make to the currently loaded Braille profile in NVDA's Braille settings dialogue. You can also add, change or remove a link to a voice profile and even use the currently loaded Braille profile as the basis for another Braille profile you wish to create.
If you have made changes to the currently loaded Braille profile using NVDA's Braille settings dialogue, you can quickly save those changes by selecting Update Braille profile on the Braille profiles submenu and then pressing Enter when the Update Braille profile dialogue is displayed.
Where the currently loaded Braille profile is not already linked to a voice profile, you can add a link by selecting the name of the desired voice profile in the Link to voice profile list in the Update Braille Profile dialogue. Note that you will have to reload the linked Braille profile for the voice profile to be loaded.
You can change the voice profile to which the currently loaded Braille profile is linked by selecting the name of a different voice profile in the Link to voice profile list in the Update Braille Profile dialogue. You will need to reload the amended linked Braille profile for the newly selected voice to be loaded.
You can remove a link to a voice profile by selecting 'No link' in the Link to voice profile list in the Update Braille Profile dialogue. You will then be able to reload the unlinked Braille profile at a later stage without changing the currently active voice and its associated settings.
You can delete a previously created Braille profile by selecting its name on the Delete Braille Profile submenu of the Braille profiles submenu. The name of the Braille profile will be removed from the Load a Braille Profile submenu.
You may also delete a Braille profile directly within the configuration profiles dialogue box of NVDA but the list of profiles displayed in the Delete Braille profile submenu of vTurbo is restricted to Braille profiles only.
With the setting 'Allow skim reading in Say All' in the NVDA Keyboard Settings dialogue box turned on, continuous reading with Say All in browse mode is no longer interrupted when pressing single character navigation keys.
vTurbo enhances the say-all feature in NVDA's browse mode in the following ways:
vTurbo's enhanced say-all and sleep timer features are activated with its own special hotkey, Windows key + alt + J.
The Read Just Text feature of vTurbo lets you quickly turn on a mode which ensures that all you will hear will be text without any punctuation or document formatting information such as font style in a Word document or heading and link announcement in a web page. The Read Just Text feature is independent of any currently active application specific settings or voice profile. When you switch off Read Just Text, the punctuation and document formatting settings applicable to the current application settings or voice profile are reinstated.
Example 1: when proofing a document in Word, you may be using application settings which report all punctuation and font information. If you wish temporarily to read text without this information, you can select Read Just Text on the vTurbo menu. You can later reinstate the previous settings by selecting Read Just Text again from the vTurbo menu, thus removing the checkmark on this menu item.
Example 2: reading an article on the internet. By default, or in terms of your application specific settings, you may have NVDA set to announce headings, links and the like as you navigate through web pages. If you simply wish to read text without these announcements, select Read Just Text from the vTurbo menu. As in example 1, you can reinstate your usual announcements by clearing the checkmark next to Read Just Text in the vTurbo menu.
You can now also toggle Read Just Text mode on and off by (a) pressing the hotkey Windows key, alt and R and (b)activating or deactivating the Read Just Text profile in the NVDA configuration profiles dialogue. Note that vTurbo automatically creates the Read Just Text configuration profile for this purpose and it should not be deleted.
vTurbo enhances NVDA's speech dictionary functionality by providing an alternative way to add entries to the default, voice and temporary dictionaries. It is already a relatively simple task to add an entry to a speech dictionary in NVDA, especially if one remembers the sequence of keystrokes to display the desired entry dialogue box. For example, the Add dictionary entry dialogue for the current voice can be accessed by pressing NVDA key with N, then P, D, V and then alt + A. You are then free to type in the pattern to be replaced or to paste text from the clipboard.
The Fast Dictionary Entry feature in vTurbo speeds this process up by providing a single hotkey which opens the Add dictionary entry dialogue for the required speech dictionary. By pressing Windows key + alt + D, vTurbo sends the correct series of keystrokes to NVDA in order to display the Add dictionary entry dialogue but it also automatically displays the word currently under the cursor in the Pattern field so that you don't need to type this yourself. Note that if you have already copied text to the clipboard for pasting into the Pattern field, you can replace the default entry in the Pattern field by pressing control + V.
You can tell vTurbo what speech dictionary to use as the default speech dictionary in the current NVDA session by choosing the default, voice or temporary dictionary from the Fast Dictionary Entry submenu on the vTurbo menu. This means that you can, for example, select the voice speech dictionary in this way so that a series of speech replacements can be added to that dictionary every time you press the hotkey control + Windows Key + alt + D. The default speech dictionary is used for the Fast Dictionary Entry feature when NVDA is launched.
If you find yourself in the Add Dictionary Entry dialogue after pressing vTurbo's Fast Dictionary Entry hotkey and cannot remember which speech dictionary is currently being used, press NVDA + T to read the window title since vTurbo adds the name of the currently active speech dictionary to the window title.
When you press Enter or select the OK button in the Add Dictionary Entry dialogue, NVDA returns focus to the Add button inside the relevant speech dictionary's main window. If you have finished adding entries, you have to tab to the OK button and then press enter. vTurbo introduces a further enhancement here by enabling you to press the OK button from anywhere inside this dialogue by pressing either control + Enter or control + spacebar.
If you have ever come back to your computer and pressed Numpad Insert + T or Numpad Insert + tab to find out where you are, only to discover that Numlock was on and that you have inadvertently typed 0t into a document or caused some other kind of problem, vTurbo makes this a thing of the past! vTurbo's Smart Numlock feature ensures that even if you press Numpad 0 with T or tab while Numlock is on, you will hear what you expected to hear and vTurbo will also automatically turn Numlock off for you. This is a very simple feature but it will eliminate inevitable niggles when using applications like Calculator or Excel where you may occasionally switch Numlock on.
The 'Maximize all windows' feature, found on the vTurbo Settings submenu, lets you specify whether you want vTurbo to maximize the current window if it is not already maximised. A checkmark appears on this menu item when this mode is active. Please note that when this feature is enabled, you will not be able to restore the maximized window to a smaller size; in that situation, you will have to turn off the 'Maximize all windows' feature.'
vTurbo enhances the NVDA Find feature by saving search terms which can then be selected later from a list. Up to 50 search terms are automatically saved to disk so that the list is available later even where you close vTurbo. Only the most recent 50 items are retained in the search history list.
Pressing the down arrow when focused in the edit field in the NVDA Find dialogue will open the vTurbo Find dialogue and display a list of previously saved search terms sorted in alphabetical order. You can quickly jump to an item in the list by typing its initial letter or by typing the first few characters: for example, typing 'wed' will select the first item in the list beginning with those letters, such as the word 'Wednesday'. When you press Enter on an item in the list, NVDA will search for that item in the normal way.
If you do not wish to select an item in the search history list in the vTurbo Find dialogue, you can still type the text you wish to find and press Enter.
Note that vTurbo will save the text searched for whether the vTurbo Find dialogue has been opened or not.
The usual NVDA Find dialogue remains open when the vTurbo Find dialogue is open but closing one will automatically close the other.
With VICT Consultancy's vMouse for NVDA, you are able to switch to any open window by pressing a hotkey using the temporary hotspots feature. Now, vTurbo makes it possible to switch to any open window by either selecting its name from a list or by typing part of its name.
Press the hotkey Windows key, Alt and K to open the Find Window dialogue box. The cursor is placed in the Window name field where you can type part of the text of any open window and then press Enter to activate that window. Note, however, that the search for a matching window name is case sensitive and you must therefore type the search term in the same case as it appears in the window title.
Alternatively, you can arrow down the list of open windows in the Find Window dialogue and press Enter on the one you wish to activate. The open window titles are listed in alphabetical order and you can jump to an item in the list by typing its initial character or the first few characters of the title and then pressing the down arrow.
NVDA's sleep mode, invoked by pressing NVDA shift S (or NVDA shift Z in laptop layout), disables nearly all of NVDA's functions so that you can use the voice and screen reading built into a running application like Kurzweil 1000, for example. There is a way of permanently invoking sleep mode automatically for an application but this requires you to create a small text file containing some Python code and manually saving this in the AppModules folder of your NVDA installation.
vTurbo lets you turn sleep mode on or off permanently for the application currently in focus by simply selecting 'Toggle automatic sleep mode' on the vTurbo settings menu.
If you have created a number of application profiles, voice profiles and Braille profiles using vTurbo, you might find later on that you discover a setting in an NVDA dialogue box which you would wish to save in all of your vTurbo profiles. To avoid having to load each profile manually and changing and saving the new setting, vTurbo lets you do this automatically. This section shows how you can save a single setting or even all settings in an NVDA dialogue box to various categories of profiles.
When focused on a control in an NVDA dialogue box whose settings can be saved to configuration profiles, press the applications key to display a popup menu. Select 'Save this setting only'.
A small dialogue box will then appear with at least two checkboxes letting you save the setting to the normal configuration profile and to all your vTurbo application profiles if you have created any. In addition, if the current control is in the Synthesizer or Voice Settings dialogues, a third checkbox called 'All vTurbo voice profiles' will also be displayed. Similarly, if the current control is in the Braille Settings dialogue, the additional third checkbox will be called 'All vTurbo Braille profiles'.
Press the OK button to save the settings to the selected categories of profiles or the Cancel button to return to the open NVDA dialogue. When focus returns to the open NVDA dialogue, you must then select the OK button to close the NVDA settings dialogue which will then cause the setting to be saved.
To save the current settings of all of the controls in the currently open NVDA dialogue box, press the applications key to display the popup menu and select 'Save all settings in this dialogue box'.
The same small dialogue box described in section 5.12.1 will then be displayed allowing you to select the type of profiles to be updated.
When focus returns to the open NVDA dialogue after you have selected the desired type of profiles to update, you must then select the OK button to close the NVDA settings dialogue which will then cause the settings to be saved.
This feature is similar to that described in section 5.12.2 but, instead of saving the current settings of each control in the current NVDA dialogue box to existing profiles, a new NVDA configuration profile is created containing all of the current settings in the active dialogue box.
To do this, select the item 'Create a master profile using these settings' in the popup menu which is displayed when you press the applications key. You are then presented with a simple box into which you can type a name for the profile you wish to create. This name will later appear in the list of profiles in the configuration profiles dialogue box. Since this name will be used as a file name, avoid using characters which would be invalid when saving other kinds of documents.
The term 'master profile' is used here to indicate the fact that when this newly created profile is later manually activated, its settings will take precedence over settings contained in any triggered profiles.
The configuration profiles functionality introduced by NVDA version 2013.3 allows the user to create files containing particular settings which the user has changed. Although these profiles may be set to be triggered by specific applications, it must be borne in mind that the NVDA configuration profiles work quite differently to the application, voice and Braille profiles which you can create with vTurbo. If you wish to create profiles for specific applications, or voice and Braille profiles, it is strongly recommended that you follow the instructions in this user guide so that the profiles you create will be compatible with vTurbo. All profiles created with vTurbo will be usable as NVDA configuration profiles with or without vTurbo running.
It will be appropriate to create a configuration profile in the manner described in the NVDA user guide where you wish to create a settings file (a) which is not an application profile, voice profile or Braille profile and (b) whose settings are intended to stay effective in preference to any other triggered profiles. Please refer to the NVDA user guide for instructions on how to create such configuration profiles.
When you first run vTurbo 2.5, any existing application settings files, voice profiles and Braille profiles will be automatically converted to the new configuration profiles format and moved to the Profiles folder kept by NVDA.
There are five types of settings files created by vTurbo which can be exported:
All of these settings files can be easily exported to a single file for the purposes of backup or to import settings to a different computer or USB drive running NVDA.
Note that settings files exported using previous versions of vTurbo may be imported as described in this section. vTurbo automatically converts the imported files so as to be compatible with the new configuration profiles functionality.
To export all of vTurbo's settings, select Export settings on the vTurbo settings submenu.
The Export Settings dialogue will then be displayed in which you can specify the filename for your settings file and the drive and folder to which it should be saved. By default, the name 'vTurboSettings.vts' is displayed in the file name edit field. Press the Save button to save the settings to the named file. A message box will then be displayed a few seconds later confirming if the export has been successful.To import settings to vTurbo:
From time to time, the developers of NVDA will add features to NVDA and it is possible that a future version of NVDA might incorporate a function which renders one or more of vTurbo's features redundant. With this in mind, vTurbo allows you to turn off each of its features separately in order to avoid conflicts with future releases of NVDA.
The 'vTurbo features' submenu item on the vTurbo settings submenu contains a list of vTurbo's features. By default, there is a checkmark against each of these items, indicating that their respective features are enabled. If you wish to turn off one of these features, simply remove the checkmark from the relevant item in the list by selecting its name. You will then be asked to confirm your decision before vTurbo disables the feature and deletes settings files relative to it.
Note that a feature can be turned back on by selecting it again from the vTurbo features submenu but this will not reinstate any settings files which have been previously deleted.
If you wish to remove vTurbo from an instance of NVDA, you must ensure that you are running the version of NVDA from which vTurbo is to be uninstalled. To uninstall vTurbo from that version, select Uninstall vTurbo on the vTurbo Settings submenu of the vTurbo menu.
The advantage of using a portable version of NVDA on a USB thumb drive is that you can use NVDA on any PC or Windows laptop. One minor disadvantage is that you are limited to the Espeak speech synthesizer contained on the thumb drive (and any others for which a special NVDA driver has been provided, such as Vocalizer) and whatever speech synthesizers are installed on the computer or laptop you are currently using.
You will need to bear this limitation in mind if you save application specific settings or voice profiles using vTurbo to a USB thumb drive since the speech synthesizer used by your settings files might not exist on the computer you plug your thumb drive into. If the required speech synthesizer does not exist, the default speech synthesizer will be used instead.