As I'm still using Openbook 6 I'm pleased at both the upgrade price, as there really wasn't anything in version 7 that made me want to upgrade, and most especially at the choice of synthesizers. The new choice of synthesizers should do away with all the spurious crashes where Via Voice would exit when certain character strings were encountered, but Openbook would be left running in the background without speech.
As a Jaws user, I also like the switch to the common keyboard interface.The re-recognition feature should be nice when you're trying to establish which recognition engine is more effective for a particular font style. While looking at Freedom Scientific's updated features list, I was left uncertain as to why the switch to the obx file extension. They didn't mention any improved features of it, or explain whether additional data would be saved in the obx format. Being of a cynical nature, I suspect the switch from Ark to Obx is more or less just they're attempt to distance themselves from the Arkanstone days, and to put their own stamp on the product. I would hope however that you can still set the file format to default to a choice of your own. Unless there are in fact some improvements to the Obx format, I suspect I would prefer to stick with Ark as the default. I wonder how Bookshare is going to treat this new Obx format, whether they will expand to include them as accepted formats, or just stick with the Ark. It would certainly cut down even further on the field of those able to handle certain file types. I know we've discussed it at great length in the past, with some differing views, but maybe this will spur Bookshare to require submissions only be in RTF.
Dave At 11:47 PM 11/24/2007, you wrote:
hi again,one more opinion which I neglected to include in my last message, regarding OpenBook. If properly implemented, I will personally be very glad to see the new keyboard layouts. Having uniformity amongst my assistive products, especially when they come from the same company, is important to me. I am also a full-time assistive technology instructor, and the consistency will help everyone. Again though, the effectiveness of this change will be determined by how well FS has dealt with any conflicts which arose from the change.Scott
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