Blazie Engineering 1996 Update Features In keeping with our annual tradition, Blazie Engineering has released yet another update for our line of notetakers --- Braille 'n Speak, Type 'n Speak and the Braille Lite. We received many suggestions throughout the year from many customers with requests for features and improvements that you felt should be included in our products. We've implemented many of them, as well as a few ideas of our own that we felt would be useful additions. We hope you like the many features we've added in the past year. File Folders The following supplements chapter 4 of the Braille 'n Speak manual. The main feature we've added is something called "folders." With folders you can take the list of files in your file list and organize them into groups of related files. You may create up to 20 separate folders, label them with whatever names you like and move any files you choose into them.) A folder is kind of like a group or subgroup where you can easily categorize your files. Here are some examples. If you use your Blazie notetaker a lot, you might have several files containing letters to friends or business associates. You might have some files containing class notes: a biology file, a file for science notes, history, etc. You also might have some of our external software in your machine, like Graphit or Braille Term. The problem has always been that these files are often scattered in your unit, with very little organization. Now, you can organize your files into folders. To use our previous examples, you might have a folder called "school" containing your biology, history and science files. You might want to have a folder called "programs" with your external software like Braille Term and Graphit. And, you might have a "letters" folder to store all those letters you've written. With the 1996 update, this is now possible. If you press the space bar from the file menu, you will toggle the unit from its default state which we call "all files mode" to the new "folder mode." In the "all files" mode, the unit behaves exactly as it used to, allowing you to move up and down your file list. However, "folder mode" shows you your file list differently. In folder mode, dot 1 chord and dot 4 chord (up arrow and down arrow on a Tns) moves you up and down your file list in the folder you happen to be in. By default, there is a folder called "startup" which will contain your help, clipboard and calendar files. However, you can certainly create additional folders and place your files in those folders. Creating folders is easy. Just press dots 346 (or the plus key) on your machine, and you will be asked which folder you wish to create. Simply enter the folder name, followed by e chord, (or return on a Type n Speak,) and the folder will be immediately created. To move from folder to folder, press dots 2-3 chord to move to the previous folder, and dots 5-6 chord to move to the next folder. On a Type 'n Speak, these are the pageup and pagedown keys, respectively. Dots 2-3-6 chord moves to the first folder in your folder list. This is alt 8 on a Tns. Dots 3-5-6 chord moves to the last folder, which is an alt 0 on your Tns. Dots 2-3-5-6 chord speaks the name of the currently open folder. This is an alt 7 on a Tns. Finally, to delete a folder from your unit, first move or delete all files from the folder and then press dots 36 or the dash key and the folder will be removed. The reason you need to remove your files from a folder you want to delete is because you can only delete a folder if that folder is empty. This is actually good, because otherwise you might delete a folder which might contain valuable files. All of these folder commands must be issued from the file menu, as opposed to the open file. You also must be in "folder mode" when you issue a folder command. If you are in "all files" mode and try to issue a folder command, your unit won't let you do this and you'll have to press the spacebar to go into "folder mode" first. Issuing these keys from your open file will not work; you must be in the file menu for all of the folder commands to work properly. Once you have created a folder, you'll probably want to move one or more of your files to that folder. Originally, your unit will have just one folder called the "startup" folder. (Note: Braille Lite 40 will also have a default folder in flash memory called "flash startup." Let's say, as an example, you want to copy the "calendar.brl" file from the "startup" folder to a new folder you have created. First, move the pointer in the file menu to the "calendar.brl" file. When you know you're pointing to the "calendar.brl" file, press the gh sign chord, which is dots 1-2-6. This is the Shift numlock on a Tns. You will be asked which folder you'd like to move the file to. Now, press dot 1 chord or dot 4 chord (up arrow or down arrow on a Tns) to move up and down the list of folders. You may also press the numbers 0-9 at this point to tell your machine which folder to move the "calendar.brl" file to. Your first "startup" folder is always called folder 0, the next folder will be folder 1, etc. So, at this point, if you enter the number 1, the "calendar.brl" file will automatically be moved from the "startup" folder to the next folder in your machine. You'll notice that the first folder is the "startup" folder and this is a folder which automatically is in your unit. Move downward until you hear the name of the folder you want to move the file to, and then press e chord or "enter" on a Tns. The Move Command The following section contains material which changes and supplements Section 3.2 in the Braille 'n Speak manual. The number sign chord (shift f3 on a Type 'n Speak) has been significantly enhanced. Previously, it just allowed you to enter a number of lines. Now, it allows you to do much more. Now, when you press this chord it no longer says "enter number of lines to move." It now simply says "move." This is because this command has many more options, although you can still use it to move to a specific line, if you want to. Entering number sign chord and the following letters will let you move by lines, words, characters. l for line, w for word, c for character. If you don't enter a character but just enter a number, the machine will move you to that line number you specified just like before. In other words, if you type number-sign chord 4 e-chord or enter, you'll wind up on line 4 in your document. Here are other ways to use the new Move command. Let's say you want to move to line 5. You would write number sign chord l 5 e chord To move to character 444 write number sign chord, c, 444, e chord You can also enter a plus or minus to move from where you are. For example: to move down four lines write number sign chord, l plus 4 e chord If you want to move back 7 characters, type number-sign chord, c, -7, e-chord Typing a letter followed by 0 for a number gives you a full count of lines, words or letters. For example, l0 counts how many lines are in a file. Entering number sign chord followed by The letter p will go to a relative print page. For example, to move to print page 4, type number-sign chord, p4 e-chord You can also type B to go to a certain Braille page. For example, to move your reading cursor to Braille page 5, type number-sign chord, b5, e-chord. Hourly Announcement Since your Blazie notetaker has a clock, it would make sense that you'd want to be reminded of what time it is on the hour, like other talking clocks do. Now, you can. Type h-chord to get to the new option from anywhere within the status menu. This is an alt-H on a Type 'n Speak. Pressing n while pointing to this option will turn the announcement off. Pressing the number 1 sets the announcement to "bell only." Pressing 2 sets it to voice only and pressing 3 sets it to bell and voice." What this means is that every hour, on the hour, as long as your unit is on, you will automatically hear what time it is with a bell, verbal reminder only or with a bell and a verbal reminder. Note: If your unit is turned off, this feature will not work. Press the letter N to turn the hourly announcement off. Say ASCII Value Some of you may know that in our 1995 update, we allowed you to hear the ASCII value of a character when you press the current character key three times. The trouble is that a lot of people didn't need this feature, and this caused some confusion, so we now have in the status menu a "say ASCII values" on/off toggle. When this toggle is turned on, the unit will in fact speak the ASCII value of a character with the third press of the current character key. If this feature is off, which by the way is the default, the machine will only speak the name of the character and its phonetic equivalent, like alpha for a, bravo for b, charlie for c, etc. From the status menu, press dots 36 chord (the read current character key)to jump to this option. Start-up Macro Some of our power users who enjoy writing macros may know that pressing n-chord followed by the spacebar records a "power-on" or start-up macro. This macro will get played back every time you turn on your unit. The only problem with this was that some people accidentally wrote n-chord space when they meant to just write an n, so people would inadvertently write start-up macros without knowing it. We received tons of support calls from customers who would say "every time I turn on my Bns it starts entering characters into my file" and we'd have to walk them through deleting the start-up macro. Now, when you press n-chord (alt n for tns) and the space bar, your machine will prompt you and ask you if you are really sure you want to create a start-up macro. Press y if that's what you want, and n if you don't want to do this. Speak Just The File Name While in the file menu, you can now press dots 3 chord or dot 6 chord to move up and down the file list and just hear its name with no other information like page count, translator status, etc. This is a shift left arrow and shift right arrow on a Tns. Pressing dots 3-6 chord twice will speak the name of the current file you are pointing to. This is a shift-end on a Tns. Speech Voices The following section supplements Chapter 2 of the Braille 'n Speak manual. It is now possible to have five different voices to switch among in your Braille 'n Speak, Type 'n Speak or Braille Lite. From the speech parameters menu, press dots 2-3 chord and dots 5-6 chord to go from voice to voice. These are the pageup and pagedown keys on a Tns, respectively. You will hear "voice number 1" "voice number 2" etc. Voices range from 1-5, and each one can have a different rate, pitch, tone or volume. Each voice also saves the state of the numbers/digits toggle, punctuation settings and key echo, key click and silent key settings. Once you hear a voice number, just adjust the speech the way you like it, and those settings will remain for that voice. The best part of all of this is that only voice 1 will be reset during a warm reset. When a warm reset is performed, your unit will return you to voice 1, but Voices 2 through 5 will remain just as you have set them. Only a cold reset will reset voices 2 through 5 back to their defaults.) If you press y-chord or alt-y on a Type 'n Speak, you may enter a number from 1-5 to change to the voice you want to go to. For example, press y-chord followed by the number 4, and you will hear "voice number 4." Your unit is now set to voice number 4 until you change it or do a warm reset. When using a Braille 'n Speak or a Braille Lite, enter the numbers in Nemeth code. Base conversions in the scientific calculator We have added 6 new commands to the scientific calculator. Their names and functions are as follows: hd - converts to hexadecimal from decimal od - converts to octal from decimal bd - converts to binary from decimal dh - converts to decimal from hexadecimal do - converts to decimal from octal db - converts to decimal from binary Improvements in the Tab Command You may now use the tab command which is dots 4-5 chord to repeatedly type any character you want, as many times as you want. Here's an example. let's say you want to type fifty spaces. Press the tab command, the number 50, a space, and e-chord or enter. You can use this command for any characters you want. Improvements in setting time We have made changing the time easier in a couple of ways. First of all, you now have the option of moving the clock backward or forward any specified number of hours and minutes from the current time. This command will be especially useful for those who travel across time zones frequently or for all of us during the switches from standard to daylight savings time. It works like this. After you press o chord or f 9, continue by pressing s and t as usual. When you are prompted to enter time, h h m m, you can enter the new time as usual, or you may also enter a dash or plus, dots 36 or dots 346. After pressing a dash or plus, simply enter the number of hours and minutes you wish to move the clock in the h h m m format. As an example, dash 0 2 0 0 will set the clock back exactly 2 hours. Plus 0 1 3 5 will set the clock forward 1 hour and 35 minutes. The other small change is that it is now possible to backspace when entering the new time in the event you make a mistake while typing. Status menu improvements It is now possible to cycle through the individual choices of a status menu item by simply repeatedly striking the space bar until you hear the choice you desire. As an example, if you are on the baud rate item of the status menu, striking the space bar repeatedly will cycle you through the different possible baud rates from 150 through 38,400. This will work on all status menu items except those which require a specific number value like print line length or window length. Paste File It is now possible to paste the contents of a file into a file you're working on. For example, you may be writing some notes for a class or a business meeting, and you may want to insert another file at the cursor position that may be relevant to what you're writing. To do this, type the paste command, which is 346 chord or the Numlock key on a Type 'n Speak. You will hear "paste what." Enter the letter F for "file" followed by the file you wish to insert. Now, press e-chord or enter and the contents of the file you requested will be placed right at the cursor position. There must be enough room in the open file in order for this to work properly. For example, if you want to paste a file that is 3 pages long in a 1-page file, you won't be able to do this, just like pasting from the clipboard to an open file. So, make sure there's enough room in your file when performing this operation. Append to clipboard We got calls from some of our customers who asked us if there could be a way to append things to the clipboard file, rather than just overwriting what is already in the clipboard. Now, you can. Now, when you press the gh-chord or shift Numlock for the copy command, you will be asked to enter "a for append or c for copy." Entering the letter C will copy the block of text to the clipboard and it will overwrite whatever was in the clipboard file, which is how it always worked. However, writing the Letter A at this point will append or add whatever it is you're copying to the clipboard instead of overwriting it. When deleting text, if you end your deletion with a 346 chord or Numlock on a Type 'n Speak, your deleted text will also be appended to the clipboard. Ending your deletion with an e-chord or enter will overwrite the clipboard just like before. Change In Formatter If you are printing to an ink-print printer with page numbering turned off, the bottom margin no longer defaults to 6 as it did in previous revisions, but now defaults to 0. This should make things a lot easier for people who do a lot of printing. If page numbering is turned on, however, the print bottom margin will default to 6. We also have new formatter defaults in the status menu. Even after performing a hard reset, your formatter defaults will no longer be set at 0. They are as follows: Print line length 75 Print left margin 10 print page length 60 Print top margin 6 Braille line length 33 Braille left margin 1 Braille page length 25 Braille top margin 1 Some much needed miscellaneous changes Here is a quick list of some minor changes we have made in the units in the 1996 revision. It is now possible to create 127 files in your machine. When creating a new file in the file menu, the units are much more forgiving when it comes to entering invalid names and invalid file sizes. The units simply say invalid name or whatever and then ask you for another name or file size. In previous revisions, at this point you would have been thrown all the way back to the enter file command prompt. Changing from numbers to digits in the calculator does not affect the numbers or digits setting of the current file any more. The calendar file now has the name of calendar.brl. This is done so that when loading this file from disk the translator will automatically be turned on for the calendar file. You can now use bfm and brf as valid filename extensions which, like the brl extension, will automatically turn the translator on if the file is loaded from disk. Changing from european 24 hour time to american time can now be done without resetting the time. Entering p from the speech parameters menu will tell you the current punctuation setting. Using the dots 1456 chord or the help key from the file menu will give you a pull down menu for file commands. When updating a Braille Lite, speech will automatically be turned on at the beginning of the process. Holding down the space bar at power up with the Braille Lite now does not turn speech on. We would like to thank you for purchasing our 1996 update. Many features which you'll find in this update are because of feedback from many of you, and we appreciate your comments and suggestions we have received over the years. It's because of you, our customers, that our updates are as good as they are. Please keep those comments coming. whether by phone, letter, fax or email, we want to hear from you on things you'd like to see in upcoming revisions. Stay in touch with us. David Goldfield, Customer Support Blazie Engineering 105 East Jarrettsville Road Forest Hill, Maryland 21050 Phone (410) 893-9333 fax (410) 836-5040 BBS (410) 893-8944 email: support@blazie.com