[bksvol-discuss] Re: big help with word on or off list
- From: talmage@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:59:24 -0500
Hi Lissi,
Some of these issues you're having are related to the scanning
software; and, improvements or changes in your speech software, are
bringing them to your attention.
You need to remember that the people developing the scanning OCR
packages (like FineReader & OmniPage) are not truly doing it for us,
it just happens to be an ancillary benefit, that companies like
Kurzweil and Freedom Scientific are able to make use of. What the
OCR packages are really trying to do is to successfully replicate the
scanned document for the records or files of the organizations buying
their software. Therefore, when the OCR package sees a blank space,
it is essentially saying to itself, oh-ho, I see a blank space, and
as I want to make sure that it stays a blank space, I'm going to
label it as a non-breaking, or sticky, space. (As a side note, this
is the same reason that with some OCR packages you get a line feed at
the end of each scanned line.) Now getting back to the non-breaking
space, word processing packages such as MS-Word, WordPerfect,
WordStar, etc. allow the user to identify some spaces as
sticky. Typically you would want to use a sticky space for a phrase
you didn't want broken up by the automatic word wrap feature if it
crosses a margin for either the screen or a printer
boundary. Certain examples might be something like February 22, or
New York. Now this is of course fine and dandy when used
prudiciously, but the OCR software may not be prudicious, it
identifies a space and wants to maintain that space, so it labels it
as a sticky space. Now this isn't truly a big deal, but just for
your own information, every time you see a non-breaking space in your
file, it actually takes up the space of 2 characters, because when an
Rtf document notes a sticky space, it does so in the file by entering \~.
All of what I've just said regarding the sticky space pretty much
goes for the hyphen as well.
Now as for the super, or sub, script, again it can often just be a
mistaken identification issue with the OCR software. For whatever
reason, when the OCR package is analyzing the image file, it
perceives the line of text as being either higher, or lower, then it
ought to be, so consequently it decides it is either super scripted,
or subscripted, text. Again, I don't really think this is a big deal
at this point, as I don't believe the Brf, or Daisy, files will note
the difference, but perhaps someone else here can either confirm or deny this.
The only thing that comes immediately to mind for the leading spaces
is try a tab character instead.
The mode you're stuck in is over type, as opposed to insert mode,
just hit the insert key to toggle it back and forth.
Dave
At 08:58 PM 2/24/2008, you wrote:
Dear Booksharian Friends,
After validating over 250 books reading word by word over the past 2
and a half years, I'm still befuddled by my computer and need
serious help with new problems that are cropping up for no reason I
can understand.
I'd be so grateful if anyone can help me on or off list! These
problems are making me even slower than I already am because I read
each book through and provide carefully written and proofed synopses.
Most of these difficulties started after I loaded JAWS 9.0 which has
made many improvements.
I'm also using word 2003 and maybe the books that are difficult for
me have been edited in word 2007. I have written to for of the
people whose scans I've worked on lately to ask if they use word
2007. One of then has already answered to say she isn't using Word 2007.
Here are some examples of the problems I'm having .
1. Most of the time I make individual corrections by backspacing to
delete and writing in the correction. When I backspace, for the past
month or so, I'm hearing jaws 9 say nonbreaking space or hyphen.
These nonbreaking things take up the space of a character. When I
delete them with the backspace and space again or put in my own
hyphen, jaws says the normal space or hyphen. No more nonbreaking.
How are nonbreaking spaces etc different from characters that just
say their name like space?
2. In one part of book I'm validating now, when I try to insert 3
spaces at the beginning of paragraphs, a useless gesture I know
because Bookshare eliminates them, but I can't help myself if they
are indented in the print copy, a blank line is inserted, but I'm
unable to place spaces before the first word of the paragraph.
3. As I proofread, I often hear jaws say end subscript or
superscript. I've tried highlighting the document and making sure
sub and super script are unchecked, but they remain. The print in
these sub and superscript words doesn't look any different from the
print before and after it as far as I can tell. Sometimes I can make
the super and sub scripts disappear by backspacing over them and
writing in the text again, but this doesn't always work. This is
happening with scans I've received from submittors and scans I've
done myself. In the scan I've done, I hear them as I proofread. I
think the BRF ignores super and sub scripts even when we need them
to indicate notes, etc, but I don't know what happens to them in daisy files.
4. I'm back to having that character replacing problem I had before
and have forgotten how to correct it. I'm in some kind of character
replace setting where the letter I type over disappears. For
example, if I write step instead of stop and put my cursor over p
and backspace to erase e and then type in o, I get sto because the p
has disappeared. If I place the cursor on the space after sto and
type in the p, I get stop, but the space has gone.
I'll appreciate any help I can get with these frustrating computer
misbehaviors. Or, I admit, they could be my own misbehaviors because
I still don't know enough about how my programs work.
airadil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Always with love
Lissi
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