Hi list and Humanware support staff,
There are times when I have to vent and get something off my chest, and
this
is one of them.
Today I encountered two problems with a Word document that I downloaded
from
the Project Assist web site in connection with a course that I'm taking.
First, after downloading the document to my PC and transferring it to a BN
Classic running Keysoft 6.11 build 26, I attempted to open the file in
Keyword, at which time I got the "review options?" prompt. So far, so
good,
but when I pressed Enter on that prompt I was told that the file was not a
recognized Word document. I re-saved the file on the PC as a Word 97
file,
transferred that one, opened it and it worked fine. As it turns out, I
couldn't open the original file until I did a 1-2-3 reset, then all was
well. However, that led to a second problem.
The Word file in question contained a number of web addresses which I
needed
to visit in order to complete a class assignment. Though I could see them
quite clearly when viewing the Word file on the PC, they were omitted
entirely from the document when viewing it in Keyweb. I was unaware that
Keyweb wouldn't display embedded hyperlink fields in a Word document, so,
frankly, I was a little surprised, and, a tad bit annoyed.
My Braille Note is on its way back to me, having been upgraded to an
MPower
which should be running Keysoft 7, and I'm really excited about that.
Having
heard about all the neat functionality built into Keysoft 7 and the MPower
platform, I can't wait to take the unit for a spin.
However, I need to reiterate and expound on something that I've been
saying
for a long, long time. Humanware development managers have been very
responsive to the needs and wants of the customers, and I extend a hearty
thumbs-up for their efforts thus far to enhance the functionality of the
product offering. Many folks, myself included, asked for a faster
hardware
platform and got it, a newer version of Windows CE and got it. Folks
asked
for enhanced media player support, streaming audio, database
functionality,
and the list goes on, and all of that is here now, and that's great!
But what about the long-standing issues that still need to be addressed?
Humanware needs to recognize and remember that there's a significant
percentage of folks within the user population who, like myself, use the
Braille Note for education and business as well as pleasure on a
day-to-day
basis, so special consideration must be given to ensuring that those
applications that can be used for education and business have the best
possible support that the platform will offer. This means that Keyword,
for
example, needs to be able to handle any Word document version that's
thrown
at it, and that in the interest of being fully and seamlessly integrated
into education and business-related activity, it needs to, among other
things, be able to handle fancier formatting such as tables without
crashing and handle markup such as embedded hyperlinks without omitting
the
associated information. It also means that those memory glitches which
cause critical documents to mysteriously disappear into the bit bucket
need
to be isolated and dealt with in no uncertain terms. Yeah, I ran across
that one a couple of weeks ago and let me tell ya, folks, re-creating my
data wasn't much fun.
These issues still haven't been fully addressed in years, and it's become
apparent that those of us who are concerned about them just haven't "made
enough noise" by submitting formal requests to Humanware development or
the
support team. So I urge those who feel as I do, stand up and be counted.
Voice your concerns on the list yet again, and write to Humanware support
directly as I'm doing at this very moment, so that Humanware development
managers can see the numbers and know that we're out here clamoring for
resolution of these issues.
Okay, time to get off my soapbox. No flames, please. See y'all later.
Tom
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