Hi Lisa and All,
I went digging through the archives and found the below post. I
have left it entirely in tact. I hope this helps, and that it is
what you want to do.
**********
This post will discuss how e-mails can be saved to files which
you can store to a cf card, computer, or wherever you want to
keep them, instead of saving them in the database which, when you
have around 700 messages stored there already, will cause
sluggishness in Keymail. I will describe the method and the
preliminary steps the user has to take, and all I ask is that you
read the entire post carefully, as many times as you deem
adequate for your understanding. Towards the end, I will discuss
how similar methods can be used to save into files the entries in
the planner and other databases like the Address List.
If you would have further questions relating to this, please ask
me off-list at roselle at ambubuyog.net, my new e-mail address.
As I type this, I'm racing against time, so pardon me if I forget
anything, but as always, I will try to be as thorough as
possible.
Important sections you might want to read in connection to this
topic are the items in the Index that are titled, "Templates
Topics" and its subtopic "creation and use", and "Printer Topics"
and all its subtopics. I am no longer mentioning the section
number because I know that different users have different BN/VN
models and running different Keysoft versions, but I assure you
that this method works even for those running Keysoft 3.06.
Those using earlier versions could check if they have the Print
to File option described below, because I could not verify that
anymore.
OK, let's start...
The crude and inconvenient way used to save e-mails in the
KeyMail database into documents is to open the message and press
SPACE with S (CTRL with S), choose the destination drive and
folder, press BACKSPACE with X (CTRL with X) to select the
document type (preferably text), and then type a file name and
hit ENTER. Alternatively, the user can use the Store Block
command by first marking the whole message as a block, then
pressing S in the Block Commands Menu, selecting the drive and
folder, and typing a file name that will be created, or selecting
an existing file that will be replaced or appended to. The
problems linked with these methods are:
a. You have to do this for every single e-mail in the database
that you want to delete from your e-mail folders because you do
not need to read it often, and yet you'd like to keep a copy of
it for future reference.
b. You will not be able to save the e-mail headers which contain
information about the sender, the original subject line, the date
when you received it or when it was sent to you, etc. If you
really need such info, you would have to go into each saved file
and type it in yourself.
c. Since the method takes more steps, the user will spend about
20 to 30 seconds (depending on how fast he types) just to save
one e-mail, close it and move to the next one in the folder.
Further, to keep the database file small, e-mails have to be
saved each time they are received because they will only pile up
and make it difficult for the user to go through each one with
this method.
d. When the e-mails are saved into files, some users are not
happy with the format, finding that some lines are broken when
there really had been no new line markers in the original
messages. If they one to keep just one file for all the messages
in a folder, and thus they select this file when saving or
storing a block and choosing to append rather than replace it,
some indicators like the English language indicator displayed as
dots 1-2-4-6 l g e appear at the start of every message, and the
user likewise must manually put in a dividing line or string of
characters (like 40 dashes or asterisks) to serve as a message
separator.
The method I will be describing will address these problems
satisfactorily.
I. The Print/Emboss to File Option.
In Chapter 6, the User's manual discusses the items in the
Embosser/Printer Set-Up Lists. An item in both lists is called
the Embosser (or Printer) Port. The manual says that the
settings for this option are Serial, Parallel and Infrared.
However, there is a fourth setting that is not mentioned, and I
do not know why, considering that this is probably the most
useful of the four available settings. How often would a user
want to emboss or print an e-mail, the planner entries or
database records, compared to exporting them into files that they
can store and read in KeyWord or their computer?
This fourth setting is called "File" and you set it by pressing F
at the Embosser/Printer Port option, then ENTER. Alternatively,
you can press SPACE with dots 3-4 (CTRL with SPACE) to cycle
through the settings for the Embosser/Printer Port. Therefore,
the first step in this method is to configure the BN/VN to send
information you wish to emboss or print into files.
1. From the Main Menu, press W to enter KeyWord.
2. Press P for Printer or E for Embosser.
3. You will be asked if you wish to use the printer/embosser or
set it up. Press S to enter the Setup List.
4. SPACE or DOWN ARROW to the seventh item, "Printer port".
Press F then hit ENTER.
5. Exit the Setup List by pressing SPACE with E (ESCAPE) twice
to return to the KeyWord Menu.
II. Templates for Ink-Printing and Embossing.
When you wish to ink-print or emboss data that are not stored in
files, but in databases like the one used for the Address List,
planner and e-mails, you need to use templates. These will tell
KeySoft which field entries are to be sent to a printer,
embosser, or file. There are ready-made templates that you can
use and they are located in the Keylist and Keymail folders of
the Flash Disk. You can create your own templates or modify the
existing ones.
There are restrictions, however, for KeyMail and KeyPlan. The
planner only lets you specify the start and end
printing/embossing date. KeyMail, on the other hand, will let
you modify the templates it uses, but you must retain their file
names. The template files KeyMail uses are the Email Embosser
Template and the Email Print Template found in the Keymail folder
of the Flash Disk. You can change their format and contents, but
do NOT change their file names.
Meanwhile, you can create templates of your own, with your
preferred file name, if you are to use them with KeyList
databases that you have customized or created, but that is not
the concern of this post, so please refer to chapter 10 of your
User's Manual if this is what you wish to do. But if you follow
my discussion here, you will also get a fairly good idea of how
templates are created and modified.
Let's look at the Email Print Template. Enter KeyWord by
pressing W from the Main Menu. Press O for the Open File option,
select the Flash Disk as the drive if it is not yet selected,
then Keymail as the folder, and hit ENTER on Email Print
Template.
Templates used for ink-printing are text documents, while those
used for embossing are Braille documents. Both are of KeyWord
type, not the foreign Braille and text types. Each line in the
Email Print Template has a field name, followed by a field
pointer, except for the Body Field where there is no word "Body"
but just the pointer.
This means that when you print an e-mail, be it to a file or to
actual paper, the words "From:", "Date:", "To:", "Copy:", and
"Subject:" will appear before the field entry, but the body
(referring to the message body) will just be printed without the
tag, "Body:" which is not necessary. But if you really want that
to appear, then before the Body Field pointer, write the word
"Body (without the quotes) in computer Braille because you're in
a text document, followed by a colon (dots 1-5-6, or SHIFT with
SEMICOLON) THEN a SPACE.
You can also include other things in this template that will
appear in the resulting printed e-mail. For instance, if you
want to print several e-mails to a single file (steps on how to
do that are discussed below), you naturally would want a message
separator, for instance, 65 asterisks or dashes.
After the line containing the Body Field pointer, you can type
that string of asterisks or dashes or whatever message separator
you prefer, or add new line markers. You can also use something
like "END OF MESSAGE" (without the quotes) as the separator, and
if so, just type that where you would like it to appear. Just
imagine the template to be the file into which you will insert
the field entries of your e-mail, and the format and sequence
will be the same.
Thus, you can also remove some fields. For instance, if all the
e-mails you wish to save were sent to your address, and you don't
need such information to be saved, then erase the line containing
the tag and pointer for the To field. You can do the same for
the Copy tag and CC field pointer.
One more thing I should point out is that the Date field there
contains the Date-Index Field pointer whose entry is the
receiving Time&Date information, not the Sending Time&Date field.
This is the header you see on an e-mail after the From field, not
the one after the To or CC field which, in my opinion, is more
important. If you wish to change this to the Sending Time&Date
field, or you wish to insert other fields like the Message-ID or
Reply-To header, then do the following:
1. Position the cursor where you want the field to be inserted.
Make sure you have a new line marker separating each field line.
One new line marker will do.
2. Press BACKSPACE with I (CTRL with A then I) to insert a
field.
3. You will be asked whether you wish to get the field from the
Address List or E-mail Folders database. Press E for the latter.
4. The BN/VN will pause, then tell you to "Please wait", and I'm
telling you now that you may need to wait for a long time, so
please be patient. The first time i did this, I had 673 e-mails
saved in my database, and the pause was approximately 15 minutes
long. Do NOT interrupt it. Do NOT reset, do NOT turn off the
unit, do NOT let the batteries go flat. Don't press anything,
just leave it alone, sit tight and wait.
For VoiceNote users, you can press SPACE with C (READ with I), if
your fingers are really itching and not having a Braille display
to check if the VN has not yet gone to sleep increases your
anxiety. Do NOT panic if the VoiceNote does not respond, the
command you executed is just to tell KeySoft that you're waiting
for it to do something so it shouldn't dare doze off and leave
you petrified. The reason for the long pause is that templates
are part of KeyList's function but the E-mail Folders database is
sorted and used by KeyMail, a different application. Your
database records are being sorted to be accessed by KeyList,
hence the long pause that depends on the size of the database.
This also explains why, after you've inserted fields into this
template, the next time you use KeyMail, you will again be told
to please wait or the unit will just not respond but seem like it
froze, and you need to wait the same length of time that you have
waited when inserting fields into the template. Again, you must
not interrupt this, lest your database will get corrupted and the
stored data become inaccessible.
5. After the long wait, the BN/VN will say, "Field selection
list" and places you on the first field in the Email Folders
database definition file, which is called "Header". Press SPACE
(DOWN ARROW until you get to the Date field.
Note that this is different from the Date Index field, which
comes before the Date field, so skip that one and press ENTER
only when you reach the Date field. When you have selected it by
tapping the ENTER key, its pointer will be inserted into the
template and displayed as dots 1-2-4-6 fld then the name of the
field, which in this case is Date, enclosed within parentheses.
Now, if you're fine with the Date Index field in the original
form of the Email Print Template, then disregard the above steps.
Or, if you want to change it but you're scared to do it yourself,
then e-mail me and tell me which fields you want to go in, what
would be the format, and I'll create the template for you and
send it as an attachment. Write to me at the e-mail address I
gave in the third paragraph of this post.
Note that you can insert any field that you want from the E-mail
Folders database. But if you choose to insert the Folders field
pointer, using the template to print an e-mail does not show the
name of the folder where you have it stored, but a number
corresponding to that folder.
Folder names are not saved in the e-mail database but in the
Keysoft.ksd file in the Dictionaries folder of the Flash Disk
which saves KeySoft settings and other system info, and which the
user cannot access.
One last thing that needs to be changed in the Email Print
Template is the settings for the side margins. When you use the
Print to File option, the resulting file will contain the
document, e-mail, or database record as it would appear on paper.
Thus, if you have a non-zero left, right, top and bottom margin,
you will find spaces before each line (corresponding to the size
of the left margin), and blank lines at the top and bottom of the
file (corresponding to the top and bottom margins). Having
Justification turned on will also cause extra spaces between
words to be inserted, so make sure that's turned OFF. To do
this:
1. Position the cursor at the top of the template file (press
SPACE with dots 1-2-3 or READ with T).
2. Enter the Layout List by pressing BACKSPACE with L (CTRL with
L). SPACE (DOWN ARROW) to the setting for Justification and make
sure it's turned OFF. If not, press F, then ENTER.
3. SPACE (DOWN ARROW) to the settings for left and right
margins. Set them to 0, by typing 0 (no need for the number
sign, dots 2-4-5 will do on the BT units) and hit ENTER. When
you're done, exit with SPACE with E (ESCAPE), and type Y for yes
to confirm the changes made.
4. Next, enter the Page Settings List by pressing BACKSPACE with
P (CTRL with P). SPACE (DOWN ARROW) to the settings for the Top
and Bottom Margins, then set them to 0 in the same way you had
set the left and right margins to 0. Exit and confirm the
changes made.
5. You can also change the settings for the paper length and
width if you want. These settings are in the Page Settings List,
before the Top and Bottom Margin settings. You can change them
to the maximum and this will affect word wrap. But if you're
happy with the defaults, then leave them as they are. When
you're done with all changes, exit the template file by pressing
SPACE with E (ESCAPE) and return to the Main Menu.
Don't worry, the Format Menu settings you've changed will only
take effect on the template and what you print using it. Note
that you can do the same changes you've done to the Email Print
Template in the Email Embosser Template.
Don't be discouraged and think that this is a complicated method.
What I have discussed so far is just the setting up of
preliminary things. When you've done these changes, you do not
need to do them again every time you want to save e-mails into
files. Now we're ready to find out how this saving of e-mails
can be done.
III. Using the Print/Emboss to File Option for Saving E-Mails
Conveniently.
It is always a good practice to organize the e-mails you have
received into folders according to something that the messages
have in common. For instance, you can keep messages from the
BrailleNote list that you find to be worth saving to a folder
called "BrailleNote". You can also keep e-mails from a certain
person to a folder that bears that person's name.
You can save the e-mails there, and schedule a time when you wish
to export the e-mails into files that you can store in a cf card
or your computer, and then delete the ones you have in the
database to reclaim more space, and avoid poor and slow KeyMail
performance which I'm sure most of us are oh so familiar with.
As to how often you want to do this, I leave that to your
discretion. I am suggesting though that instead of exporting
each e-mail to individual files, save to a single file all the
e-mails you have in a folder, and then give the file a name that
indicates the time span during which the e-mails were received;
e.g., "February 2004" or "Feb 22-28".
Although there is nothing wrong in saving e-mails to separate
files, you must keep in mind two things. The more files you have
a folder in the Flash Disk, compact flash card or storage card,
the longer it takes for KeyWord to open the folder and display
the list of files. If you plan on saving hundreds of e-mails,
it's best to group them and then save each group of messages to
single files.
Also, a blank file already takes up 623 bytes. I know this is
small, but if you have 100 files of small sizes, then 62,300
bytes are eaten up aside from what the file contents take up,
while having these messages in one file will account for about
61,677 bytes less of occupied space.
Now let me show you how several e-mails can easily be saved to a
file.
1. Open the folder containing the e-mails you wish to save into
files. Remember that if you had inserted fields into the
template file, you will be asked to "Please wait" and you must
wait, no matter how long it takes.
For now, you would need to mark every e-mail you want to save in
a single file first. Press SPACE with M (CTRL with SPACE) on
each e-mail. After this, you can schedule the saving of e-mails
and thus need only to mark all messages in a folder because you
have already deleted the ones you have previously saved into
files.
To mark all e-mails in a folder, enter the E-mail Action Menu
(SPACE with dots 2-6 or CTRL with ENTER), then press A for ALL.
Note that if you used the Find option in KeyMail to get the list
of only the e-mails you want to save into files, you need to mark
them manually one by one. Using the Mark All option in the
E-mail Action Menu will not mark only the Search results but ALL
the e-mails in that folder. Now if you just want to print/emboss
one e-mail, then you do not need to mark it.
2. When you're certain that you have marked all that you want to
save to a single file, enter the E-mail Action Menu once more
(you do not need to be inside a message to do this, but just
inside the folder with the marked e-mails), and press P for Print
or E for Emboss.
3. You will be asked if you wish to print/emboss or set up the
printer/embosser. If you are not sure that the printer/embosser
port is already set to File, then press S, SPACE (DOWN ARROW) to
that item, press F, then ENTER, exit with SPACE with E (ESCAPE),
and finally hit P to print or E to emboss.
If you're certain that the printer/embosser port is already set
to File, then at that prompt asking you what you want to do,
press P to print or E to emboss.
4. Wait for the BN/VN to finish printing/embossing your e-mails
to a file. I've been using this method since I discovered it
last December and with my BNBT-32 whose e-mail database that time
had over 1,300 e-mails in it, the print/emboss to file option
works at approximately one e-mail per second.
Of course the speed will also depend on the length of e-mails,
but I have tried this with a mixture of short, long, and
average-size e-mails, and the resulting speed is just about the
same. When the BN/VN is done printing or embossing the e-mails
to a file, you will be returned to the e-mail folder on the
message where your cursor was upon executing the Print/Emboss to
File option.
5. Exit the e-mail folder and KeyMail itself and from the Main
Menu, press W to enter KeyWord. Type O for the Open File option,
and then select the KeySoft Systems Disk as the drive. If you
are immediately placed at the folder name prompt, hit BACKSPACE
to go to the drive name prompt.
6. After the Keysoft Systems Disk is selected, select the root
directory which is the same as the None folder. If nothing is
being offered at the folder name prompt, or something other than
None is being offered, just type the word "none" (without the
quotes).
7. SPACE (DOWN ARROW) to the file called Print to File.txt and
press ENTER to open it. Note that whether you chose to print or
to emboss your e-mails, the file you need to open is still called
Print to File.txt; yes, that's a .txt extension for both cases.
8. You will be asked if you wish to review the options and press
Y for yes. If you chose to emboss your e-mails to a file, then
make sure that the BN/VN recognizes Print to File.txt as being a
Braille document, which is the first item in the list of options
where you are placed. Type B for Braille or T for text. Hit
ENTER.
I also suggest that you set Line format when opening the file,
which is the second or third item in the list of options,
depending on whether you specified the file to be Braille or
text. Press L to set Line Format. This will make sure that
there are new line markers between the e-mail header information,
and before and after the message body and separator.
9. If your e-mails had accented letters in them, like e acutes
or u umlauts, etc., set the extended character set to MS-DOS.
This is the last item in the list of options. Press M to select
the MS-DOS setting.
10. When you're done configuring the options, press SPACE with E
(ESCAPE) and you will be placed at the top of the file. Check
the first two characters there. They may be weird ones like the
first is the null character (ASCII number 0) which is neither
displayed nor spoken, and the next one may be a Y dieresis
(umlaut). Delete those two weird characters (SPACE with dots
3-6, or the DELETE key, twice).
11. You should have all the e-mails you marked for
printing/embossing in that single file, with header information
intact, and separated by the message separator you typed in the
template file.
If you have any problems at this point, e-mail me at the e-mail
address I gave with your questions, a description of what you've
done, and what the problem is all about.
However, this Print to File.txt is temporary, being in the
Keysoft Systems Disk and will be overwritten every time you use
the Print to File option. Thus, you need to save its contents
elsewhere.
You can either press SPACE with S (CTRL with S) or mark the whole
file as one block and use the Store Block command. Choose any
drive other than the Keysoft Systems Disk and your preferred
folder.
At the file name prompt, press BACKSPACE with X (CTRL with X) to
see which file type is set for the destination document. Make
sure it's a Keyword type Braille or text document. Type the file
name and hit ENTER.
12. When you're done saving its contents to a file, you can
either exit and leave Print to File.txt where it is, or delete it
by selecting the Erase File option in the Block Commands Menu
(press E then Y).
Next, check the file you have saved in the Flash Disk, cf card or
storage card. If you're sure it's there safe and sound, return
to KeyMail and erase the e-mails you have successfully saved. In
the future, when you have gotten the hang of this method, after
printing or embossing the marked e-mails, do not exit the folder
yet.
Instead, re-enter the E-mail Action Menu (SPACE with dots 2-6 or
CTRL with ENTER), and press D to delete the e-mails, and type T
to move them to the Trash folder (as opposed to just removing
them from the folder but keeping them in the All folder which
doesn't really get rid of them from your database). Empty the
Trash folder after you have made sure that the file into which
the group of e-mails was saved is intact.
IV. Final Notes.
I really recommend that users learn and use this method. It has
greatly improved the performance of KeyMail in my unit and I have
not lost any important e-mails. The frequency at which you will
save e-mails to files will depend on how many messages you
receive and would like to keep. I do mine every month, for
example.
The speed is much better as I have already raved about. The
headers are all there as I have specified in the template file.
The lines are not broken off. Messages are separated properly.
But I use the Print, not the Emboss, Email option in the E-mail
Action Menu. This is because e-mails we receive are really text
documents. They are only displayed as grade 2 Braille because of
the setting for Preferred Reading Grade. Notice, however, that
when you route your cursor to a contracted word, it is expanded,
which shows that the message body is a text file. Hence, it is
better to save a text file to a text file.
If you choose the Emboss option, it will still work. However,
the Duxbury Braille Translator and KeySoft do not always agree.
If you read the result of the Emboss to File option using speech,
you will notice errors in translation. This is not a problem if
you're using the Braille display to read them and if you will not
copy-paste a saved e-mail to a message you'll be sending to
someone.
Otherwise, the translation errors will carry over to the
resulting text message body that the recipient (blind or sighted)
will read in your e-mail. To avoid these problems, I suggest
using the Print Email option, since when you read the saved
e-mails, the on-the-fly translation to grade 2 will still be used
by your display, unless you change it.
Further, if the Printer/Embosser port is set to file, printing
entries in the planner or records in databases like the Address
List will also be exported to the Print to File.txt document in
the root directory of the Keysoft Systems Disk.
You can save this as a .doc or .rtf or .wp5 file, transfer to a
computer using a card reader or ActiveSync, and read and edit it
there. This will be useful if you want to have copies of
information you stored in KeyList databases and the planner that
will be readable on your computer when you send your BN/VN for
repair or upgrade.
Lastly, do not forget to change the Embosser/Printer port setting
to serial, parallel or infrared if ever you intend to connect the
BN/VN to an embosser or printer.
I hope all this helps. Again, for any questions or comments,
please write to me at roselle at ambubuyog.net. Thank you.
Regards,
Roselle
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