Great message Carl! Thanks also to Humanware for my BT. I love it. It has been a blessing to me because of my slowly decreasing sight. Thanks to the BT I am trying to use print less and less each day. Looking forward to my transplant! Terry Powers
-----Original Message----- From: Karl Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 9:40 AM To: 'Braillenote List' Subject: [Braillenote] A rock and a hard place. Hello Folks, I am writing in response to Jonathan's post and have changed the subject line to reflect what I feel is really the underlying problem here. First I won't complain about any functionality Humanware is able to get into the Braille Note and my personal favorite for top of the list is access to Pocket Excel as I feel this is the last major tool for business users which is still missing. Having said this I believe that Humanware and, in fact, Freedom Scientific are working hard to provide the products they feel best serve the blind population. However in there efforts they find themselves between the classical rock and hard place. This is because of the nature of the platform they are working with. Under the layer of applications provided in Keysoft is the Pocket PC environment. This product was developed and is intended for use in pocket sized devices designed to act as an adjunct to the full PC. The sighted user of a PDA carries it around to collect contacts, keep appointments and take notes and then at the end of the day brings the device back to the office or home, docks it with the PC and gathers the information inside for further development with full featured programs like Word and Excel. This is all well and good when you have paid from $200.00 to $400.00 for the device. Because of the special needs of the blind Humanware has worked to develop a product based on the same platform and with as many features as possible which exist on the general market PDA for the sighted. Because of this special market's needs the product is necessarily more expensive costing upwards of $2,000.00 for a version without Braille and up to $6,200.00 for the largest Braille version. Because of this price structure blind users understandably feel that it should do quite a bit more than the similar $200.00 device. After all for the $6,000.00 price one could purchase one whale of a desktop or laptop computer. This feeling puts Humanware in a difficult position because they are developing software on a platform which is simply not currently designed or intended to offer the full features of Word or Excel. Where a blind person might have only the BN to perform all our computing needs thus demanding more features and abilities, a sighted person would never consider owning only a PDA without a computer. I realize the above doesn't solve the problems some are describing with compatibility with Word etc. but I am stating it because I feel we need to try to understand the monumental task Humanware has set for itself and, although not perfect, the distance they have come in offering a good solid product which serves many important needs. I hope also that it helps a bit in understanding the heavy demands we as blind users place on our note takers/PDAs which the sighted do not. Finally I believe that it is imperative that we as blind technology users carefully consider the equipment we purchase or is purchased for us before the decision is made. As a technology consultant I take very seriously my role in assisting my customers in deciding what they want to accomplish and which equipment will best suit the situation. Because, as all of you know, once you have started down a path and invested the large amounts of money necessary it is difficult if not impossible to back up and take another path so our decisions need to be right the first time. Well I guess I have rambled on enough and I hope this may be helpful in some way. I can only say keep up the good work Jonathan and all the folks at Humanware. And I don't envy your precarious position but I'm glad someone has decided to take it on because the blind are much better off because of it. Karl ____________________ Karl Smith Access Technology Specialist Axis 4304 South El Camino St. Taylorsville, Utah 84119 Phone: 866-824-7885 Fax: 866-824-7885 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] No one will ever go broke underestimating the intelligence of the human race. - H. L. Menkin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 12:33 PM To: Braillenote List Subject: Re: [Braillenote] A Call for Better Keyword Support and other things 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. Please respond to Braillenote List <[email protected]> To "Braillenote List" <[email protected]> cc 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 ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote __________ NOD32 1.1395 (20060206) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
