[betabookcourier] Re: Beta Comments

  • From: "Joseph K Stephen" <joestephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <betabookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2005 10:39:38 +1030

Ok, shall do.
Thanks.

Joe
 

-----Original Message-----
From: betabookcourier-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:betabookcourier-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Katie Walker
Sent: Saturday, 3 December 2005 4:42 AM
To: betabookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [betabookcourier] Re: Beta Comments

Hi Joe,

I wanted to get back to you about the bugs you reported. I was able to
reproduce the crash related to a battery change cancel while in the bookmark
list. We'll look into that. I think the two other problems you reported --
the files appearing as folders in TT and very slow back navigation -- may be
related to a problem with your flash card. I suggest you do a checkdisk on
the card and repair any errors. If the checkdisk doesn't turn up any errors,
then reformat the card (8 and diamond). If you're still experiencing
problems, let me know.

Katie

At 01:27 PM 11/29/2005, you wrote:
>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
>

Katie Walker
Springer Design, Inc.
katie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 



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