Answers inline. On Feb 13, 2011, at 7:52 PM, Alex Hall wrote: > > 1. What is with this "interact" command, or whatever it is called? > What is it and when is it used? > Interacting allows you to manipulate a particular control, without being forced to view all of its content at once. For instance, have you ever looked at a listview in Windows Explorer with the Jaws cursor? It looks like a confusing mess of information, depending on how you have view settings. VoiceOver might let you know that this part of the window is made up of a table or list. You wouldn't see all the info in that list until you interacted with it. This makes use of applications much clearer, and can be a huge time saver. It is one of the biggest differences between VoiceOver and Windows screen readers, and for some it is a little tough to get used to. Once you do, I believe most prefer it to the Windows screen reader approach. I certainly do.
> 2. While the rotor, I gather, is available, can you still use commands > to quickly navigate webpages? With jaws, for example, f moves by form > fields, x by checkbox, n by non-linked text, t by table, and so on, > instead of having to take the time to move through the rotor. Yes. VoiceOver has all sorts of commands like this. Using those commands in conjunction with the rotor makes browsing a pleasure on the Mac. > > 3. Can vo be scripted? For example, I have jaws set to play a musical > note based on the indentation level for a certain text editor so I can > know where I am in Python code. NVDA can do this as well, though the > functionality has to be written as a plugin in Python. Is anything > like this available in vo? Yes. VoiceOver can be scripted using AppleScript, Automator work flows, or really anything that can be compiled into a Mac application, which includes a wide range of programming languages if one chooses to go that route. > > 4. Can other voices be used with vo? Alex sounds okay, but are there > other options at this point? > The Mac ships with a ton of voices. I like Alex and Victoria best, myself. There are also quite a few third-party voices available. > 5. In some podcasts I have heard, it sounds like there is no menu or > dialog wrapping. That is, if there are ten options in a menu and you > are at the bottom, you have to up arrow nine times instead of down > arrowing once. Is this true? If you navigate menus with just the arrow keys, menus wrap as they do in Windows. Only if you add the VO keys do that not wrap, and personally I don't know why anyone would navigate a menu with the VO keys pressed. In dialogs and other windows, you can choose to have VoiceOver wrap if you wish. > > 6. It is quite rare that jaws will freeze or require a restart. How > often do you experience problems with vo that cause a loss of speech? > Does command-f5 fix the problem, or do you have to restart the whole > machine? In six years as a VoiceOver user, I could probably count the number of times I lost VoiceOver and needed to restart the whole machine on one hand. VoiceOver, and the Mac in general, is far more stable than WIndows in my personal experience, and more stable than Jaws in particular. In fact, Jaws's instability led me to abandon it around 2004 or so in favor of Window-Eyes, which was more stable for me. VoiceOver is incredibly stable, and when there are problems, a quick cycling of VoiceOver with Command-F5 almost always fixes the problem. > 7. Are shortcut keys available? For example, in a file menu, you might > just press "o" to open instead of arrowing to and activating that > option. > Mac menus allow you to start typing the command name instead of pressing accelerator keys. THis means you don't have to memorize the accelerator keys for every menu in every application. So, if you wanted "Open" in the FIle menu, usually just pressing O takes you right there, but if there are multiple options that start with the letter "O" you can continue typing "Open". This works the same way as finding a file by typing part of its name in a ListView in Windows Explorer. > 8. How well does Windows work on a system like bootcamp? There is not > much from windows I would miss, but my audio games are definitely on > the short list. Many of them rely on the .net framework, ActiveX, and > other core components. Does any of that work on the mac? In short, can > audio games for Windows run on the mac with Windows installed? > Yes. You can install WIndows on a Mac via BootCamp or via something like VMWare Fusion. Fusion allows Mac OS X and Windows to run simultaneously. > 9. Is there a virtual machine option for the mac so you can "boot" > windows without restarting? > Yes. THe afore mentioned VMware Fusion. > 10. How is vo with punctuation? Can you customize what symbols are > spoken, is it level-based, or is it all or none? > THe usual settings of All, Some, Most, None, etc are available. Using the dictionary, you could further customize this to your taste. > 11. Can you set up application-specific options? For instance, jaws > lets you set a low punctuation level for one program and a high level > for another and switches between them as you switch between > applications. Is something like this possible, even if it is not > punctuation? > You could do something like this via AppleScript or Automator. Although, you have quick access to the vast majority of these settings without going into the VoiceOver Utility app, making it quick and easy to change, for example, punctuation settings on the fly. > 12. Is it at all possible to get osx10.6 or later to dual boot with > windows on a windows box to test it out without making the huge switch > to a mac? > It's possible with just the right hardware, but illegal and likely to be unstable. Part of want Mac OS X is such a stable OS is that it is designed to run extremely well on specific hardware. This is also why things like PlayStation, XBox, Wii, and others tend to be more stable than traditional PC's, even though they are essentially PC's themselves. > Thanks in advance for any information. Again, I am not looking to > replace my Windows machine, but I have heard so many conflicting > reports about vo and the mac in general that I thought I would get to > the bottom of it all by coming to the people who use it on a daily > basis. Your welcome. Sadly, there's a lot of mis-information out there. 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