Hi all.
I got stanza to work in a way. But I would say that it is totally inaccessible
with braille. I get that problem again, that I can only read some of the text,
braille only shows some of the text, and then simply stops showing text, it
looks like the problem I have mentioned before with braille and large
paragraphs. Do any of you have any suggestions what to do.
Best regards Annie.
On Oct 28, 2010, at 7:48 PM, Esther wrote:
> Hi Donna, Brett, and Others,
>
> I'll add to Brett's post of my earlier discussion of how to use Stanza, and
> cc this to the macvisionaries list. I think the issue that Paul and others
> have with using Stanza's iPhone app to read ePub books is getting past a
> cover image or title page. This is pretty standard for most eReader apps
> (including Kobo Books), since VoiceOver only reads continuously till the end
> of a chapter (and might pause on a title page with a cover graphic). A
> general thing to try with these apps is double tapping the center of the
> screen to bring up page controls. Then you can just use the Bookmarks Icon in
> the bottom left corner of the screen to access the table of contents for the
> book and advance to the first chapter. When you double tap "I. Down the
> Rabbit Hole" for Alice in Wonderland, for example, you'll be moved to that
> point in the book, the page controls will disappear, and VoiceOver will start
> reading the chapter. (This is specifically checked for the current version
> of the Stanza app on an iPhone 4 with the latest iOS 4.1, in response to
> Paul's statement that Stanza doesn't work on the iPhone 4.) On the iPad, and
> on devices with earlier versions of iOS 4, you may have to explicitly double
> tap the center of the screen to toggle page controls off again and do a two
> finger flick down to resume reading. You can control all this via keyboard
> shortcuts under iOS 4.1.
>
> Stanza does not update the touch screen content while it reads the chapter,
> so if you were to touch the screen, you'd be taken back to the beginning of
> the chapter, but the Stanza eReader app has a number of other features. You
> can set multiple bookmarks (which you cannot do in Kobo books with the page
> transition mode set to "scrolling" for accessible navigation), and you can
> move to specific pages in books if you use the "Find Icon" button search
> facility of page controls to search for a specific phrase. You can also
> change the page of the book displayed on the screen while focused on the
> position slider (at the bottom of the screen when page controls are toggled
> on) by flicking up or down or via keyboard shortcut in iOS 4.1 (when the
> rotor is set to "Adjust Value"), or by using the double tap and hold pass
> through gesture and sliding your finger right or left. The problem is that
> the movement steps are rather coarse for a long book if you navigate with the
> position slider on an iPhone screen.
>
> The search function in Stanza was implemented before iBooks got this, and is
> very fast -- faster than in iBooks or Kobo Books when you load the same eBook
> and run a search. Navigating back to the "Find Icon" button shows you your
> last search results (which you can clear), and you can also navigate to the
> "More Icon" button (bottom right corner of screen) and double tap the "Find
> next" button to go to the next page that matches your search results. (This
> is all simpler to do via keyboard shortcut control).
>
> There's a Dictionary under the "More Icon" button, so you can look up a word,
> and then go back to reading your text. Again, this is simplest to use with
> the keyboard controls in OS 4.1 to navigate and type in the words.
>
> The functions that I like most, apart from the diversity of the store
> offerings in Stanza, are the multiple bookmarking functions and the ease of
> loading books into the app, which can be done wirelessly in several alternate
> ways in addition to using syncing with iTunes. I'll bring up page controls
> and search for a phrase on the page that's just been read ("Find Icon,
> button"), in order to navigate to that page. Then I'll double tap the
> "Bookmarks, button", and double tap "Bookmarks" at the bottom center of the
> screen, double tap the "Edit" button in the top right corner, and use
> "Bookmark Current Page". I can assign a name to this. (This is also easy to
> do with keyboard control).
>
> In Stanza, and also in Kobo Books since version 3.4, if you point to an ePub
> document on the web, you can choose to download it into these compatible
> applications. Try this from your iPhone or iPod Touch with the Baen Cryoburn
> distribution CD site:
>
> http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/24-CryoburnCD/CryoburnCD/index.htm
>
> Navigate to any of the book links, and then activate the link for the
> EPUB/Nook/Stanza version of the book by double tapping. In Safari, double tap
> the button for "Open In" and choose the app (such as "Stanza" or "Kobo").
> The book will download to the library of that app and, since Baen releases
> their books without DRM, will be readable in the app. (Note that your app
> will open in the book you are currently reading, but if you check your
> library you'll find the new book there.) Stanza can also download from your
> Dropbox file if you point it to a URL of an ePub file in your public file, as
> well as allowing transfers through Wi-Fi via the Stanza Desktop application.
> The above also works for the iPad. For those of you who prefer other eBook
> content than "military sf" science fiction, try going to the ePubbooks site:
> http://www.epubbooks.com/
> You'll have to use their search function or links to navigate to individual
> book pages to get to ePub download links (announced with the download size),
> but activating those links from your iDevice with apps such as Stanza or Kobo
> books will also let you download directly into the app. This does not work
> for iBooks -- you must download and add these to iTunes on your computer,
> then sync these books to you iDevice in order to get them into iBooks.
>
> I'll just briefly summarize the screen layout when page controls are brought
> up in Stanza by double tapping in the central text region of the screen (or
> by using VO-space with a keyboard).
>
> At the top of the page controls screen, from left to right:
> "Back Icon, button" at top left corner (takes you back to your main screen
> with "Library" selected to show contents of your library)
> heading announcing book title (top center)
> "Info Icon, button" at top right corner (gives Book Info description; if you
> double tap the "Edit" button in the top right of this screen, you can edit
> the Title, Author, and Subject information, and also delete the book from the
> app library)
>
> At the center of the screen: page information with Chapter name and position
> information (e.g. "Page 1/24", "0% into book")
>
> At the bottom of the screen, from left to right:
> "Bookmarks Icon, button" at bottom left corner (takes you to Table of
> Contents for navigation of your book; there's also a "Bookmarks, button" that
> lists your current bookmarks for selection and navigation, and an "Edit"
> button to let you add your current page to the bookmarks.
> "Gear Icon, button" (Settings control of font type, size, font and background
> color, and whether to "Use night theme")
> "Theme Invert Icon, button") at bottom center (inverts black and white colors)
> "Find Icon, button") type in search terms to find context matches throughout
> the book, and navigate to those pages
> "More Icon, button") at bottom right corner (delete books, find next, use
> dictionary, etc.)
>
> From the main Stanza page (with "Library", "Get Books", "Now Reading", and
> "Info" button along the bottom), the "Info" button has entries for "Settings"
> and for the "Online Help". In the "Settings" entries I disable Cover Flow
> ("switch button off") and also turn off "Show tips".
>
>
> HTH. Cheers,
>
> Esther
>
> On Oct 28, 2010, at 01:35, Brett wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Donna,
>>
>> Here is part of a post written a while ago from Estha, which should help to
>> get you going with Stanza.
>>
>> For the last few versions I have been able to read through every book I've
>> tried with Stanza using VoiceOver, but the big caveat is that the top screen
>> doesn't update, or at least, it doesn't update on the iPod Touch. What it
>> will do is read through the text continuously (unless you pause it with a two
>> finger double tap) through till the end of the Chapter. If you want to go
>> to the next chapter, you can double tap the "Bookmarks" button in the bottom
>> left corner and select the next chapter. Or, if you want to update the
>> current page you can use the information you get when you bring up page
>> controls
>> (double tap the center of the screen), where it will announce where you are
>> in the current chapter (e.g., page 1 of 15). Then, if you want to move to
>> some other page (like 13), you can toggle VoiceOver off and tap the right
>> side of the screen 12 times to advance, and toggle VoiceOver on again. Or,
>> you
>> can do a search for the last few words that were read to you, and you'll get
>> a list of matching sentence contexts and their pages, and you can double tap
>> and go to that page. All these methods work for me on both the iPod Touch
>> and the iPad, and they work better on the iPod Touch since the iOS 4 upgrade
>> (both because of the new version release of Stanza, and because of the
>> robustness of the shift to iOS 4). I would occasionally have to toggle
>> VoiceOver
>> off to tap the center of the screen and bring up the page controls before
>> the iOS 4 upgrade, but haven't found this to be the case since the update.
>> But all these comments are for ePub books.
>>
>> I haven't done much testing on PDFs, although Stanza will read them.
>> Natively, it is supposed to read the widest variety of input formats. I
>> just don't
>> know the answer to how it would perform (under VoiceOver) on formats like
>> your scanned RTF files, which it's also supposed to be able to read. Also,
>> all
>> ePub files (including those you create yourself) are not created equal, and
>> all eBook readers are not equally tolerant of non-compliant formatting. For
>> example, you won't get created tables of contents with chapter locations if
>> you simply convert from a PDF to ePub. You're not likely to have these
>> difficulties
>> with publisher's books, but you really should decide whether the interface
>> is one you can work with.
>> Hope this helps,
>> Brett.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/28/2010 1:24 AM, Donna Slater wrote:
>>> I am intrigued, how do you manage to read with VoiceOver and stanza? I have
>>> played with it for a while and although I can access the controls I cannot
>>> get VoiceOver to read a page. Thanks yet again for any help. Donna.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>
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