[duxuser] Re: From MS Word to Duxbury.
- From: "Dan Geminder and Suzan Muncer" <geminder@xxxxxxx>
- To: <duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:26:48 -0500
I've been doing a lot of this lately, so will share my preferences below,
following each of your points. There are probably other ways which are as
effective, but I have found the following to be speedy and accurate.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Blind Persons' Association
Sent: June 11, 2004 7:12 PM
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [duxuser] From MS Word to Duxbury.
Hello everybody,
Some of our readers type text in ms word for us which we later emboss in
braille. In most cases they try to use all sorts of style to make the text
resemble the actual print. But we note that very little formatting in ms
word is saved in the process of import.
We have prepared some instructions for these volunteers which I am
mentioning below. Please check it carefully and suggest your revisions and
additions:
By the bye, ours is an Indian organisation. We are using dbtWin 10.4 and
word 2000 professional. We get materials in word 97 or 2000 or even xp.
With best regards,
Amiyo.
Here is the instruction:
1. Two enters for a paragraph: When you start a new paragraph, press the
enter key twice that each paragraph is separated by a distinct line.
Works for me.
2. No alignment: Do not align a paragraph while writing text.
Left align everything.
3. Centre heading: If a heading is required, write the heading in a line and
press the enter key twice to make it separate. Then apply centre alignment
to the heading line.
This method is the least preferable in my experience. It results in the
[hds]...[hde] codes. Using Word's Heading 1 style will translate directly to
DBT's H1 style, therefore locking the heading to the following line of
braille. If your typists know which headings are to be major and which to be
minor, this works well, but it would surprise me if this is true. If you
find you usually have to go through the DBT file and change some of the
headings, you will actually save time if you always manually do all of them
in DBT anyway, and tell the typists to leave the headings left aligned with
no extra blank lines around them.
That's what I do when I'm doing both the Word editing and braille
myself: the only place that there is a blank line is where I want a new
indented paragraph in braille. Absolutely everything else is a single
"enter." Then, the first thing I do when I open the Word file in DBT is to
F6 a search and replace to change [<] to [p]. At that point, all the
indented paragraphs are correct, and there's no extra paragraph formatting
in the DBT document. Headings, lists, notes, etc. are very quick and clean
to apply. (I HATE to have to delete codes/styles and re-format; something
can get messed up too easily.)
4. No style: Do not apply bold, italic or underline style. It will be
ignored by Duxbury.
Duxbury handles italics just fine, except for multiple paragraphs, or
paragraphs that cross a page number.
Assuming that the Word file is to be used only for braille translation
(and not also for e-text), the most accurate way to mark up the italics in
Word is to __insert underscores before the first and last words of the
_italics. Using this method eliminates a lot of fussy editing in DBT after
importing. Note that the _double underscore is for double italics and the
_single underscore is for single italics; each underscore translates to dots
46. The DBT bold does not work yet (I hear that version 10.5 fixes it), and
in North American braille, underlining is usually changed to italics.
So I think you should ask you typists to mark all italics WITHIN THE
TEXT (not headings) with the underscores, include underlining as italics in
the same way, and leave out all bold.They can easily grasp the braille
conventions for single and double italics if it's explained to them.
If the underscore option doesn't look good to you, at least have them
include italics and underline as italics.
5. Asterisk for footnote: Do not apply superscript or subscript style. When
a reference number is required for a footnote, simply put an asterisk (*)
before the number like the following:
*1
True, but also make sure there is a space before the asterisk.
6. Three dots for ellipses: When ellipses or a series of dots are required,
only put three fullstop signs.
True, and a space is needed before ... and after ... unless followed by
other punctuation such as a question mark. When there are four dots, you
must decide whether it is period ellipsis or ellipsis period, and space the
ellipsis accordingly.
7. No extra space: No extra space: In print we often use extra spaces for
clarity. We sometimes put a space before a fullstop or a colon sign. In
braille text extra spaces are not applied before a punctuation.
Good.
8. Two hyphens for a dash: Carefully note hyphens and dashes as they have
distinct identity in braille. When a hyphen is required, say for instance,
inside a compound word like reporter-in-chief, put a single hyphen. When a
longer puctuation is implied by a hyphen or a dash sign, say as in
Calcutta--700017, put two hyphens without space on either side of them.
Good
I also suggest that the volunteer typists handle the following:
Delete all bullets/hyphens that indicate list items
Insert the characters &+ before textual references to the letters a, i, or o
if they happen to notice them (translates as letter sign, whereas DBT wisely
considers these letters to be words). This saves corrections after proofing.
Happy translating!
Other related posts:
