Hi Tom, and thanks for your great feedback. In this message, I'm going to
attempt to reply to your points as well as the points made by others in
reply to your original message.
The issues you raise regarding Word support are issues which concern us
greatly as well. KeySoft 6.11 made some strides to improving the
situation. Prior to KeySoft 6.11, we did not support files created in Word
beyond 2000. Now, we support all versions of Word. that said, there are
characteristics that cause the Word converter to fall over and crash not
very gracefully, irrespective of Word version. These include the use of
formatting such as tables and bullet points. This isn't a satisfactory
situation to us either, and I have in fact authorised funding for a
project to research fixes to this issue.
One of the issues we face is that we as blind people use our BrailleNotes
quite differently from how many sighted people use their PDAs. A PDA for
the sighted has a small screen, and it's not common for people to do very
complex editing in that environment. For this reason, it may be that the
conversion utilities available to us as part of what comes with Windows CE
need to be replaced with a third party product that will offer much more
advanced Word support. We're actively investigating this now, but at this
stage it's too early to give any kind of indication as to when you might
see the results of this. However, this is one of the nice things about
KeySoft. We can take the bits of Microsoft code that work for us, and
replace others that offer more functionality. We've done this for example
in the case of our Media player which streams more formats than Pocket
WindowsMedia Player, and with our Download Manager.
I would have to take issue with those who have described the feature set
of KeySoft 7 as fluff. BrailleNote and VoiceNote mPower is now the only
portable product in the market offering you a choice of speech engine. We
have a powerful database manager already being used to assist people with
everything from running their businesses to cataloguing home inventory.
The fraction functions in the calculator are a big feature for students.
While much as been made of the games, keep in mind that a huge number of
BrailleNotes find their way to the education sector. The text adventures
assist with literacy because they encourage kids to use the machine more.
They also assist with orientation, because most of these games use compass
directions, teaching blind children to retrace their steps and assisting
them to develop a sense of spatial awareness. And yes, they're also good
fun. The changes to Bluetooth are particularly huge in the education
market because of the visual display functionality. The FM radio is
consistent with our intent, over time, to have the BrailleNote replace as
many of those other devices you have to carry around with you as a blind
person who travels.
All that being said, you'll get no argument from me about the substantive
issue you raise, and we are certainly actively working on the issue.
Jonathan Mosen
BrailleNote Product Marketing Manager
HumanWare
DDI: +1-925-566-9265
http://www.humanware.com
"Tom Lange" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
03/02/2006 02:57 p.m.
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Subject
[Braillenote] A Call for Better Keyword Support and other things
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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