There are some programmes like Microsoft Word which have peculiar settings,
things like Smart Quotes and such which substitute the quote or the
apostrophe character, that is, the ASCII equivalent number with something
which produces a graphic looking like an apostrophe or a quote or sometimes
some other characters in other contexts, possibly a fancy question mark.
Sighted people consider these unique, interesting or different because
visually they are not difficult to interpret. Jaws however doesn't
necessarily know what that particular numeric value is supposed to
represent. Further, the sighted user can, if desired recognize it to be a
question mark in that particular context. It may have a different
significance in another context but if Jaws assumed it to be a question mark
the blind person could not know it was anything other than the usual
question mark character. Usually this would not probably matter, these
things though are a matter of discretion. I for won dislike when software
and/or hardware designers decide I am too delicate to hear swear words and
build in alternative pronunciations or when they assume that all two letter
combinations represent the short forms of American state names.
It is like when you use JawsKey + TopRow 4. There is a list of graphic
characters there you can choose to insert into your document. It is far from
a complete list of available graphics and probably depends on application as
to what many of them mean.
The thing to remember is that computers use numbers. What those numbers mean
or how they will be rendered on the screen depends on the context. There is
a lot of general agreement about what a lot of those numbers will mean
across a number of contexts. Most word processors agree much of the time on
what they mean, usually e-mail is limited to the ASCII set when plane text
is selected however this is why files created in one application are not
usually accessible to another application. Even different versions of a
particular application don't always agree on what the numbers mean. You need
to do things to a Word7 file and probably lose some features if you wish to
view it in Word2003 for example. Wasn't it just here on this list recently
we discussed reading .PDF files and the various contexts Adobe uses?
One could probably create a Jaws dictionary rule by highlighting one of
those odd characters and copying it into the dictionary with a created
pronunciation rule. I am not sure how that would play in the case of the
apostrophe since many of those pronunciations probably include the entire
word.
Dale Leavens.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donnie Parrett" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] the questionmark does not speak like normal
I never did really get an answer to my problem. Apparently, there are a
few keyboards that type
different styles than others. I was only having problems with a Daily
Devotion that I received.
That was the only thing that I had a problem with. So, the only way I
knew to solve the problem was
to stop subscribing to it.
Please join us on Skype Monday thru Friday at 8:00 EST for our Morning
Skype Prayer Time.
Contact Me At:
Donnie Parrett
1956 Asa Flat Road
Annville, Kentucky 40402
Home Phone: 606-364-3321
Church Phone: 606-364-PRAY
Skype Name: Donnie1261
Email: [email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Victor
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 12:23 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] the questionmark does not speak like normal
I have also noticed that the apostrophe now is spoken as a graphic string
of
characters, as opposed to it's proper name of apostrophe.
I also believe that Donny also had this problem way back when.
Not sure if he fixed the problem or not, but if he did, perhaps he'd like
to
share the fix with the rest of us.
Or, if anyone else has a fix for this, I would appreciate the help, as I'm
sure others would as well.
I'm using the latest build of Jaws 10, with Windows XP home, and Internet
explorer 8, and it has been doing this since explorer 7, and, most notably
in send space files I've downloaded, where the file name has a particular
apostrophe in the name.
Now, as I think about it, it seems that I can arrow through the characters
that have replaced the apostrophe, and delete them one at a time, then add
in the apostrophe, and it then is spoken correctly.
Could this have anything to do with it?
Just thinking aloud here, thanks folks.
Thanks all.
Victor
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