[duxuser] Re: From MS Word to Duxbury.
- From: Blind Persons' Association <bpaindia@xxxxxxxx>
- To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 05:31:02 +0530
Hello,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. Meanwhile, I have found some more
tricks. I also need time to try out the tips you have suggested. I shall let
you know of my observations in two or three days. Your suggestions will
definitely help in working out a set of instructions.
With best regards,
Amiyo.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Geminder and Suzan Muncer
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 9:56 PM
Subject: [duxuser] Re: From MS Word to Duxbury.
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!
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