[bksvol-discuss] Unreadable Text in RTF
- From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 26 May 2006 15:19:09 -0700
I had to reject "The Sunborn" by Gregory Benford. It sounds like a great book
- I like much of Benford's work - but the last page of text before the author's
afterword was missing, and since I have corresponded with the submitter before,
and he has submitted 349 books successfully so far, I am sure it was just a
goof, and not carelessness, and that it will be fixed up and back on Step One
soon.
But that's not what I am writing about. I sent an excerpt of the book to him
so he could see what is missing, and in the excerpt is the beginning of an
Afterword by Benford. The strange thing is, that I did not hear the title
"Afterword" when I was reading the end of the book in .rtf format in Wordpad to
see where the missing text was that a previous validator had mentioned. I only
heard it after I checked the excerpt after I cut and pasted it into an email
message. I then saved the .rtf file in .txt format, suspecting that the
formatting or the font of the title was preventing it from talking somehow, and
it was clearly spoken by JAWS in the .txt version.
It actually gets a little stranger, because I brought up the same .rtf file in
Word, and while JAWS doesn't speak the title if I just use left and right arrow
and up and down arrow, if I use control right and left arrow, it will speak the
title. I was able to check the font with the control-shift-f combo, and it is
Ariel, 22-point. But the title will not show up at all with any key
combination when I try to read it in Wordpad.
Sorry for going on so long, but I wanted to be clear about what is happening.
So the question is: What is going on? I know that documents in Word's .doc
format sometimes do not speak italic text correctly, but I haven't encountered
this in an .rtf file. How can I reliably edit stuff in .rtf format if I cannot
have confidence that JAWS is giving me the goods on what is in the file?
I am troubled by this for obvious reasons, and would like to know how common
this is, what kinds of text are not spoken by JAWS, and what I can do about it
without saving everything in .txt format, which will not do for Bookshare
submissions, will it?
it?
Thanks for any help.
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