[betabookcourier] Beta Comments
- From: Katie Walker <katie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: betabookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:27:58 -0800
Hi everyone,
Here's an email from Joe Stephen, a new beta tester who focused primarily
on the downloadable Bibles. When he sent us this email, he hadn't been
added to the list yet. Steve asked me to forward the message to the group
to see if anyone wanted to comment on his suggestions.
Katie
From Joe:
First of all to the bugs found so far with release K1:
1. Crash:
A. create at least one bookmark in either of the bibles, (I'm not sure that
the version matters, I did it once in the KJV with ch and v and also in the
WEB with ch and v.
B. Go to the bookmark list with shift+9.
C. now press the change battery keystroke, shift+diamond
D. next cancel the change battery action with any key.
E. you then get an error beep regardless of which key you press and you
can't exit the bookmark list and continue with book navigation. If you press
exit you hear "exiting bookmark list and returning to bookmark" but then
can't navigate at all.
F. The only way to recover is to remove both batteries and reinsert them
(after pressing shift diamond twice to turn off the machine).
I did this twice in a row so it should be quite reproduceable. While it
could be argued that users wouldn't do this series of keystrokes, Any lockup
is hard for beginners to recover from and while I wouldn't consider myself a
beginner, it still took me a while to get things going again.
2. Transfer tool gets confused about folders and files. When I used the
transfer tool to view the contents of my book courier after transferring the
bibles from the download page, it showed my mp3 files in the root folder as
folders, so would say something like "The river will flow.mp3 closed". I
could right arrow on this folder and expand it and it would just show the
contents of the root folder again. If however I deleted the "The river will
flow.mp3" it only saw it as a file and deleted it ok but then the next mp3
file in the folder showed up as a folder instead of a file and so on. Iddid
not try reproing this again.
3. Navigation in the bible going backward (press the 4 key) by book is much
much slower than moving forward by book. Stepping a book at a time, going
backward takes what I would consider an unacceptably long time, especially
if you want to go back several books. Moving forward by book doesn't have
this delay.
Suggestions:
1. Just as you have the ability to set the increment of the
fast/forward/reverse from 5 secs to 1 min to 10 min for audio files, I'd
like to suggest that you ad this capability for text files but instead make
the increments as follows: 5 units, 10 units, 20 units, 1%, 5%, 10%. In very
large documents, 5% is too much!
2. I'd like to suggest that when pressing the Where Am I keystroke, that
even at anouncement less, you hear the book you are navigating, currently
you only hear this at announcement level more but I would argue that most
people who use the less option to avoid general verbosity while navigating
still need to hear the book they're currently navigating when they press the
Where Am I keystroke. Also, in the bible there is no way of hearing which
book you are in unless you first set a bookmark and then use book navigation
to move your reading position which leads me to my next suggestion:
3. Add to the Where Am I keystroke, not only the name of the book and the
percentage but also add the navigation unit's text so if you're reading the
bible, you can hear the book/chapter/verse, so the pseudo code might be:
a save cur position,
b move to beginning of largest nav unit and speak title, (in the case of
bible, this would be book)
c move back to saved position
d move back by smaller nav unit (chapter in the case of the bible)
e speak this title,
f restore saved location,
g move back to beginning of verse,
h anounce it
i restore saved location.
Of course if you maintain the current book/chapter/verse or whatever the
major nav units are in the generic book you're reading then you won't have
to get the where am I key to keep searching however I think that just a
percent in a very very large book is not very useful.
4. I would very very much like to see an additional navigation mode beyond
the largest unit defined called Binary positioning. Wen this navigation unit
is chosen, the 4 and 6 key do the old power search trick you have with the
standalone bible and the old road runner. I know that obviously this
probably confused some users however for large books like the bible it makes
quick navigation very easy indeed. If it were a separate navigation mode it
couldn't be tied to the current unit but I suspect we're running out of
keys. Obviously the most flexible aproach would be to actually tie it to the
current navigation unit so it was restricted to that unit, so if book, would
move to between current book and end of bible, if it were chapter, it would
move between current chapter and end of current book, etc etc but even if it
was a standalone mode not tied to the navigation unit it would be much
faster to find information. While I know you may suggest that I use the
standalone bible for this, I find having both versions of the bible as well
as all my other material on one unit far superior!
5. Change of keystroke. I mentioned this a couple of years ago when the BC
first came out and I'll mention it again. I think navigation by file is used
more than setting a bookmark or going to the bookmark list. I also think it
counter intuitive to have bookmark features on the first key action and the
shift key action but the file movement on the beep key action. I suggest
that move to next/previous file be placed on the shifted keys and set
bookmark/bookmark on the beep key. Perhaps this is also because I've used
the old RR and RRTB and on both, bookmark setting was on the beep key.
Currently it makes it impossible to move quickly by file unless you go to
the library because you have to wait for the beep but on the other hand, you
aren't likely to set bookmarks rapidly on consecutive units so putting it on
the beep key is no inconvenience.
6. toggle annotations. Currently you have two versions of each bible, one
with ch and v and one without. I would argue that one might want to hear ch
and v while navigating but not when actually reading continuously. To make
this possible, add a markup keyword called annotation to your text so that
chapter and verse numbers or other delinniating text can be marked as an
anotation, then add the ability on a keystroke to speak current annotation
and to the settings list an annotations option which has the following
values: speak annotations when navigating, speak annotations while
navigating and reading, do not speak annotations. (Of course when do not
speak was chosen, the user could still press the annotations key to hear the
current annotation, perhaps this could be tied to the where am I enhancement
I mentioned above).
7. Autobookmark. In the standalone bible, when you moved to the next book,
your reading position would be maintained in the current book. While I
understand that on the BC the bible is a single file and so this isn't
possible, an easy way to affect the same behaviour would be to add an
autosave last position option to the settings list that saved your current
reading position as a bookmark whenever you moved by the largest navigation
unit. This would be very useful in non-bibles as well. You would only save a
bookmark if the user left the current largest navigation unit (like book for
the bible) using the 4 or 6 key. There have already been times when I've
lost my position because I accidentally navigated away from my reading
position. If you only navigate by a verse or chapter its not so painful but
for book it can be a real distraction to have to find your position again,
especially in a big book like psalms. So, if you had this option, whenever
you left a book (or whatever the largest navigation unit was) using 4 or 6,
the BC would save your current position as a bookmark. I don't think the BC
is currently smart enough to distinguish bookmark types but if it were, it
might save this as a last reading position bookmark and thus replace any
other bookmark by that name for the current book so you'd only ever have one
last reading position bookmark per largest navigational unit (book in the
case of the bible).
Thanks again for this great product and especially the bibles!!!
Joseph Stephen
Software Engineer
JAWS for Windows
Freedom Scientific Inc
And personall Book Courier/Bible Courier user since the beginning.
Katie Walker
Springer Design, Inc.
katie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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