To put this Margin Bell feature a little more in
perspective, put yourself in the position of a transcriber
who has used a Perkins for many a long year, and is now
presented with six-key entry into a DBT Braille file.
This is not dissimilar to how I felt when I graduated from a
typewriter to a word processor with word-wrap. I was
waiting for that all important bell to tell me I was nearly
at the end of the line and ready to haul the carriage back
to a new line.
I don't know about the States, but here in the U.K. we still
have literally hundreds of transcribers, sighted and blind,
who still prepare subjects like math and music in a Perkins.
Migrating them to a means whereby their hard work can be
stored electronically is a hard task.
That was one of my main considerations when I designed the
"Galatee" braille keyboard. It is laid out just like a
Perkins, and has about the same level of intelligence as a
Perkins.
George.
-----Original Message-----
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve
Dresser
Sent: 09 May 2008 21:27
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [duxuser] Re: Margin Bell in Word
Ann,
Unfortunately, some of those formatting decisions (like
putting hard returns
at the end of a line) cause more problems than they solve.
It's
counter-intuitive to most people, but the last thing you
want to do is use a
word processor as if it were a typewriter. When you do
that, the document
seems to be properly formatted until you resize it, at which
point
everything goes to hell in a hurry. And while we're at it,
let's not forget
the nightmare that unwanted line breaks cause for braille
transcribers.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Foxworth, Ann" <Ann.Foxworth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 15:52
Subject: [duxuser] Re: Margin Bell in Word
Since several people have expressed wonder at my interest
in having a
"margin bell" in word, I'll explain my reason. When
sighted people are
entering text in a Word document, they are tracking their
formatting
visually. They make decisions based upon how the text is
lining up. A
person using jaws can do the same thing, but we have to
stop typing in
the text and press some jaws commands to make jaws tell us
what column
and what row we're on. I admit, it would be a luxury, but
the most
likely reason Duxbury developers decided to put that
margin bell in
Duxbury was for the blind users of the program, and I am
very happy to
have it.
ANN FOXWORTH, BRAILLE CONSULTANT
DARS DIVISION FOR BLIND SERVICES
CRISS COLE REHABILITATION CENTER
4800 N LAMAR BLVD
AUSTIN, TX 78757
PH: 512-377-0471
-----Original Message-----
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Susan Jolly
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 2:34 PM
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [duxuser] Margin Bell in Word
I'm not quite sure why you'd want a margin bell in Word
but you can use
Word to produce a text file with line breaks at the end of
each line as
follows.
I don't know how to do this in Jaws but it should be
possible.
Set the font to Courier New or some other monospace font.
Set the left
and right margins and/or font size so that a line will
just hold however
many characters you want the maximum to be. Then type
normally. Word
will automatically wrap to the next line after spaces
unless you hit
Enter for a new paragraph. If you insert or delete any
words later, Word
will re-wrap the lines in the changed paragraph as
necessary.
Then, when you save the file, do a "Save As" and select
Plain Text from
the Save As Type pull-down list This will bring up a File
Conversion
box.
Check the "Insert Line Breaks" option. This will put a
line break after
every line in the file. Of course, once you've done this,
you can't
edit the file so it's a good idea to also save the
original file as an
ordinary Word document in case you want to edit it.
HTH,
SusanJ
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