Indeed Karl and Robert to be honest it's nice to hear a voice of reason on
the list.
Clearly Humanware are committed to doing the best they can with the
mainstream operating system and specifically designed hardware
environments
to give us the most functionality they can and to be honest I think they
do
a good job.
Having used the FS stuff for a long time and recently moved to the
Humanware
products I feel I'm being as well served as currently I can be.
OK I regularly stretch my PK to it's limits, but then I do my PC as well,
and the truth is that with my PK I am a good deal less dependent on a day
to
day basis on my PC than I used to be especially when on the road.
So my view is let's stop criticising for the sake of it and provide
constructive views as to the additional functionality we need from our
products!
Terry Clasper
T&T Consultancy ltd
Office Suite 5, Imex Technology Park
Trentham
Stoke-On-Trent
Staffordshire
ST4 8Lj
Telephone: 01782 644141
Fax: 01782 646142
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
URL: www.tandt-consultancy.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Carter
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 2:55 PM
To: Braillenote List
Subject: Re: [Braillenote] A rock and a hard place.
Hi All,
This message from Karl clearly states what I believe to be the reality of
what Humanware is facing. I hope all of us will read it carefully.
Robert Carter
At 08:40 AM 2/7/2006, you wrote:
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
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