Hey Jessi, yeah, love the weather here, call me spoiled lol! but it
was actually a bit chilly some of this past week, and definitely on
Sat!… lol! Still great though. Where did you travel from for the
convention?…
RE: Textedit and what I do with it, yes, I do tend to be a bit
picky when it comes to design, simply because well, it's me I'm
designing for! lol! So it's just got to be cool! <smile>
To be a bit unbiased though, one thing I do find annoying in the
spell checker, is the apparent lack of a way to have it correct every
instance of a misspelled word. I.E. If one were to genuinely
misspell a word throughout a document, I haven't found a way to ask
the spell checker to simply make its first correction of the word, and
then keep using that same correction for that word throughout the
entire doc. Now this doesn't mean that this ability isn't here,
<smile> It's just that I don't know where the heck it is, if it is.
lol!
there is of course, the usual find / replace feature, but I'm
interested in the spell checker here.
One thing to note about the Mac, is that in a lot of cases, if a
feature you want doesn't seem to exist, you can script it yourself.
Which is one amazing thing to me. I.E. The Mac itself has a scripting
language called AppleScript built into it. And you can access that
both through an app called Automator, which is a fairly easy user-
friendly interface,or in a more development oriented way, outside of
automator.
RE: Audible. I'm not sure, but I think that ITunes may play
Audible content? Perhaps someone can help me out here?… <smile>
Anyway, again, HTH and have an awesome day!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On Mar 18, 2008, at 12:50 PM, Jessi R wrote:
ah, cool, you were at CSun too!!! good times!!! I already wanna go
back...I miss the warm L.A weather and everyone else walking down
the halls with their guide dogs...I haven't seen another guide dog
besides my own in a minute!! so seeing all these other ones and
everyone tellin' their dog to hop up brought me back to training!
lol. I miss it!!
but I just got offtopic, haha. I'm glad it's so easy to run windows
on the mac...I think that'll be useful in some situations, or at
least until I get really used to voiceover. I have a feeling I'll be
on quite a steep learning curve for awhile, having to get used to a
whole new operating system and all its different commands, so the
fact that I can just switch into windows and kinda transition myself
over is very appealing. and it sounds like I'll need windows for
OCR, at least until they get one accessible for the mac, so the fact
that you can easily twitch between OS's is yaying!!
you must have to do a lot of complicated things in text edit, being
in the entertainment business and all, so that gives me hope that
it'll probably be able to do all that i need it to do, and if not
then I can always get one of the other word processing applications
others on the list have mentioned. I think I'll be set as far as
that goes!!
there are so many neat things I saw that I love about
voiceover...the fact that it has that captioning thing is nifty if I
ever wanted to work with someone else on the same project, and the
fact that I can use it on any mac computer with leopard or
tiger...wow! that's huge! and ITunes is now accessible, and I like
that the spellchecker in text edit is the same spellchecker that's
in mail and other programs too, so I wouldn't have to keep adding
words to the dictionaries of my word processor and my email...it's
annoying having to do that!!
and I just keep thinking of random questions as I go...is there an
audible player that works with the mac? I'm sure there is, but if I
can't use audible then I might have to reconsider lol!
peace and positivity:)
Jessi with guide dog Goldina
I am only one but I am one,
I can't do everything but I can do something,
the something I can do, I must do,
and by the grace of God, I will!
count it all joy, no matter what!
----- Original Message ----- From: "Cara Quinn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS
X by theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 12:35 PM
Subject: Re: a newbie with questions!
Hey Jessi, welcome!…
I also visited CSun for a few minutes over the weekend and was
surprised and glad to see Macs in places I wasn't expecting! <smile>
Honestly, for myself, I really can't recommend the Mac highly
enough. For someone wanting the most flexibility and functionality in
one system, it's super! I for one, do run Windows for some software
testing / development needs I currently have, but that will be
changing. <smile> I personally prefer the Mac OS however, just the
fact that you can also run Windows or any other current OS for that
matter, is just a terrific / useful thing in my opinion.
As for installing Windows, providing you have a proper Windows
install disc, the worst case scenario I know of is that you'll need
sighted help for a few minutes, like any other Windows install, but if
you use fusion, which is an inexpensive software solution to
virtualize Windows, you can do it without sighted help.
So in a nutshell, I'd personally say it's way easy to install
Windows on your Mac if you want.
As far as TextEdit is concerned, I'd say it's not as comprehensive
as Word, but much more-so than WordPad. I might compare it to the
word processing section of MS Works, such as ver 7. To be honest, I
prefer the control I've seen so far over text attributes in TextEdit
to that of Word. I.E. I'm in the entertainment industry, and will
occasionally design my own promo materials, so I like to have a lot of
flexibility over text styling and color and such, and with tExtEdit, I
have far more control of color, greyscale and various style options
all without sighted help, than I ever had with Word. I haven't
checked out adding transparent photos as backgrounds and such (as I
used to do with MS Works) yet, but that's next on my list. <smile>
One lil neat feature I definitely like, is the ability to quickly
change font size with hot keys. <smile> I personally really dislike
having to remember bunches o' hot keys, much of the time, preferring
menu options and big friendly buttons and such, lol! but in this
case, it's very fast and way cool!… <smile>
anyway, I hope this helps at least somewhat and I wish ya the best
of luck!
Have an awesome day and enjoy the list!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On Mar 18, 2008, at 11:12 AM, Jessi R wrote:
hey, people!
my name is Jessi and I'm new to the list. I was at CSUN this past
week, where I got to play with voiceover both just generally and
also exclusively with ITunes. I was so impressed with it that I'm
now possibly thinking a bout switching to a mac, and this is kinda
weird for me since I've been a windows user with jaws for about
ten years. but voiceover and the mac really made an impression on
me and I feel like I'm up for a challenge and something new!
I have quite a few probably silly questions though, so I'm hoping
ya'll can give me some answers.
does the mac have plug and play, like windows or would I have to
install a bunch of drivers for my printer/scanner etc?
text edit...is it a fully functional word processor with a good
spell checker, all the attributes you can add to your text in ms-
word, etc? is there a way to tell with voiceover whether text is
single/double spaced, the font, where the indents are, all that
important stuff? I'm a creative writing/journalism major in
college, so having a good, fully functional word processor is very
very important to me.
I heard that voiceover also worked with open office, which
apparently is a freeware wannabe office suite...is that true?
would there be a way for me to save files as .doc or .rtf or
something that other people could open on their pc's?
I heard it's possible to load windows onto the mac and then switch
between the two operating systems...is that hard to do? I thought
I might do that and kinda use both until I got to know voiceover
really well.
is there an accessible OCR program, like open book or k1000, for
the mac?
I think that's all I have for now, but I'm sure I'll be back with
more, lol.
peace and positivity:)
Jessi with guide dog Goldina
I am only one but I am one,
I can't do everything but I can do something,
the something I can do, I must do,
and by the grace of God, I will!
count it all joy, no matter what!
---
View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
---
View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
