Hi, Julia. Actually, Openbook does support color scanning. They just make you keep the exact view going if you're going to scan in color. As for the split view, if you have some sight, that will be helpful. Otherwise, the exact view is an image and so won't speak. For people who have some site, I think the view toggle will be handy too.
Monica Willyard Julia Kulak wrote:
Hmmm, I thought the split view could be useful, kind of. I mean if you have formatting in poetry couldn't you just fix it so the two are identical? I still think its too bad that you can't just save exact view though, and that they don't support color scanning. Sometimes I use another product that does called text cloner. It usually gives pretty bad scans, but they're good enough that I can figure out what the text that is eledgeble in openbook and kurzweil is supposed to be.Julia ----- Original Message ----- *From:* Monica Willyard <mailto:rhyami@xxxxxxxxx> *To:* bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Sent:* Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:14 PM *Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Re: Openbook upgrade pricing Scott, thanks for posting this. You were thoughtful to take the time to do it. (smile) I just finished reading the list of new features. I've found some nice features worth looking at, especially the more current OCR engines, ability to rerecognize pages, and daisy file support. A lot of the updates only impact sighted scanners, so they are irrelevant to me. I also see 2 warning flags that I'm not overjoyed by. Major interface changes are coming, and I'm not sure about them. Because of them, I'm hesitant to pay to upgrade my version of Openbook. I do have Kurzweil and use it for most of my scanning needs. I maintain Openbook because I have an extensive library of scanned books, magazines, and articles from before I got Kurzweil. I've been an Openbook users since 1991. I had planned to keep Openbook installed and updated to help with validating books in that format and to help people learn to scan with it. Part of me wants to upgrade to be able to support other Bookshare volunteers. Part of me wants to finally and permanently step off the Openbook upgrade train. I'd like to know what you think about these changes. Here's the one that concerns me most. The new Desktop keyboard and Laptop keyboard layouts draw Freedom Scientific applications more closely together, making transition between products easier. This simplifies use by people who use more than one of our products as well as trainers who train all of our products. Whether you use JAWS® for Windows®, MAGic®, OpenBook, or the PAC Mate^(TM), the basic reading keystrokes are now the same. Desktop is the default layout. This redesign of Openbook's key functions seems like it would eliminate the traditional Openbook keypad where you press the zero on the number pad to start scanning. This is a layout that has been used in Openbook since the very early 90s, and I'm not sure that I want to switch to something different. Pressing one key to scan is part of what makes Openbook so easy to use. Do you know if they will find another key to use so there will still be one key scanning? For now, the other way to scan in Openbook is pressing control alt s. This keystroke is cumbersome if you're holding a page on the scanner and are trying to start a scan one-handed. My other concern is this. Files that you create and save in OpenBook 8.0 or later now use the extension OBX. This is the default file type when opening and saving files. OBX files are not compatible with versions of OpenBook prior to 8.0. However, the traditional ARK format is still supported so that you can open files from prior versions and save them as OBX files. You should also save using the ARK extension if you need to open the file in a prior version of OpenBook. Do you know if they've made some sort of library import tool to convert old files? I have literally hundreds of books I've scanned going all the way back to Arkenstone for Dos. I don't want to lose anything and still want to be able to access everything. Any thoughts you have to share would be greatly appreciated. Monica Willyard Scott Blanks wrote:As taken from the Freedom Scientific website: http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_OB80ComingSoon.asp here is the current pricing info for the OpenBook update. OpenBook customers can take advantage of attractive discounted upgrade pricing if they upgrade to OpenBook 8.0 before December 31, 2007. From now until the end of the year, OpenBook customers will be able to do so for only $100. Anyone purchasing or upgrading to OpenBook 7.02 between September 1, 2007, and the December release will be sent OpenBook 8.0 as a free upgrade. As has already been mentioned here, expect the upgrade price to increase to at least $150, perhaps more, after the New Year. And as with any program upgrade, I highly recommend people proceed with caution. Try to gauge whether there is truly a worthwhile reason for moving to the current version of the application. For example, I don't see, in the list of new OpenBook features, any mention of a ranked spelling type utility, which has long been a key feature offered by Kurzweil. If in fact there is no such tool as part of the new OpenBook, then should you dip into your bank account? Tough call, if you ask me. Scott
