[duxuser] New Features for 10.4
- From: "George Bell" <george@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 01:52:02 +0100
I sent the following message a few weeks ago, and
unfortunately it triggered a rogue auto responder. However,
I'm keeping my fingers crossed his time, and hope that it
may generate some questions as to what's going into DBT
10.5.
George Bell.
As many of you know, although things may appear to have been
quiet, development of DBT has been going on behind the
scenes. And so to quote an English colloquialism, it is
perhaps time to "Let the cat out of the bag". Or at least
some of its kittens. (Smile)
My company is just a small dealer based in the U.K. for the
Duxbury Braille Translator, but we are delighted to play a
minor part in feeding Duxbury with ideas and suggestions
from users aimed at making a good product better.
That's the polite version. I'm sure that behind the scenes,
Duxbury's development team must cringe when they see my
e-mails pouring in, most relating to suggestions from this
list.
However, it's all in good spirit, and progress is being
made. Hopefully we'll see a new release during the 3rd
quarter of this year.
A Beta version should be out around a month before the
planned release.
I won't detail everything in one message, since I'm sure
there will be many questions, and even further suggestions,
relating to individual new features. So keep a watch on
this list.
First, you will possibly have heard that Microsoft will be
releasing Office 2003, currently code named Office 11,
during the second half of this year. Well I'm happy to say
that they have NOT changed the format of Word's files, so
keep learning all you can about Word's Styles. I'd better
say that this does relate to Beta 2 of Office 2003, so this
is not set in stone.
The biggest overall change to DBT is perhaps surprisingly a
visual one. All dialogs have now been changed to enable
them to comply with any changes made to Windows Display
settings, especially the accessibility options such as High
Contrast. If that surprises you, please bear in mind that
well over 50% of DBT users are sighted, and a significant
number use special screen display settings.
One of my pet improvements revolves around the proverbial
cursor. DBT now stores where you left your cursor in the
document. Re-open a file you were working on before lunch,
and your cursor will be placed where it was when you saved
it. When you translate a document, it also relocates the
cursor in the braille file to the beginning of the word your
cursor was left on in your DBT print document. So if you
were working on a section in the middle of a large document,
you won't have to scroll through the braille file to that
section. And to add a little icing to the cake for sighted
users, if you press the shift key, you will be able to see
where your cursor is currently located.
Templates have had a major face lift. You can now select a
default Template. So it doesn't matter how many templates
you have, and in what order they are listed, you can select
your most used one as a default. You will also have the
option to store text and Codes in Templates.
Templates can also be linked to customized MWS files.
And talking of codes - you'll be able to edit them, whereas
now you have to retype them. All being well, coded view
will now appear much like HTML/XML only (in my humble
opinion) better.
There is more, but that's it for now.
George W F Bell
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