[bksvol-discuss] Re: openbook clarification
- From: "Gerald Hovas" <geraldhovas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 23:45:47 -0500
Scott,
The character set that Windows uses has three characters for single quote
and three for double quote. What you are probably seeing are the open and
close single quotes and the open and close double quotes which are
characters 145, 146, 147, and 148, respectively. There is also a generic
double quote and generic single quote which are characters 34 and 39,
respectively.
Visually, I think the only difference is the way the quotes are slanted.
It's not easy, though, for OCR software to catch the slight difference in
the quotes and recognize them correctly. For one thing, a slight skewing of
the page could possibly cause the OCR software to recognize the wrong quote.
You can determine which character is at the cursor by hitting the 5 on the
NumPad three times quickly. As you know, the 5 is the key which JAWS uses
to read the current character. If you hit it twice quickly, JAWS will speak
the letter phonetically, but hit it three times quickly, and JAWS will speak
the value of the character.
I checked the quotes in the book I'm working on, and Fine Reader had not
only ended two quotations with a closing quote, but had begun them with the
closing quote as well. I tried typing a double quote from the keyboard to
see what I got, and Word first entered an opening quote, then when I typed
it again, Word entered a closing quote. So you possibly have four different
programs trying to determine which quote to use: first, Fine Reader (or
another OCR program), second, OpenBook (or Kurzweil), third, Word (or
another word processor), and finally, the Braille translation program.
What you may want to try, and I believe what was suggested, is to replace
the opening and closing quotes with the generic quote. You can specify
which quote to use in the Search and Replace by turning on NumLock and
typing a four digit value using the NumPad while holding down the Alt key.
The value is a 0 followed by the value of the quote you want, 034, 147, or
148 for double quote and 39, 145, or 146 for single quote. So you'll need
to enter 0034, 0147, etc. Don't forget to turn NumLock back off, though,
before trying to use JAWS again, or you will start entering numbers into
your document. I hate it when that happens. <Smile> I haven't used this
trick for quotes before, but I use it now and then to enter an ? (m dash),
which is 151.
You also asked whether or not converting to RTF will automatically correct
the quotes. No, since the opening and closing versions of the quotes are
valid characters for the RTF file format. BTW, the file I was looking at in
Word with the problem with the quotes was an RTF file.
HTH
Gerald
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Scott Blanks
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 7:00 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] openbook clarification
I'd like to know, if someone can describe, what openbook puts into documents
in place of quotes and apostrophes?
Also, and I apologize if I seem dense, but is my understanding accurate that
these out-of-place characters remain in the document when converted to rtf
from Openbook's .ark format? In other words, visually the odd characters are
still present? They haven't changed back to regular quotes and apostrophes?
I am in the same boat as other blind users in that, and this has been
mentioned before, the signs seem correct according to my screen reader.
Thanks, and I hope my questions made some sense,
Scott
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