I think such a petition will do about as much good as the one against the requirement for signed 64-bit Braille drivers did, that is, none! Freedom Scientific doesn't really care what the blindness community thinks about them. The only way to get their attention is to vote with your money, that is, spend it elsewhere. That being said, if Freedom Scientific Products are the only ones that meet your needs, you will have to stick with them whether or not you like their business practices, for example, the 2 latest lawsuits.
Gary King w4wkz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx----- Original Message ----- From: "Armond" <armond1980@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 1:55 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!
If you are only talking about the Unicode bug, then Windo-Eyes should be a good alternative for now. At least Windo-Eyes don't have the Unicode bug. Waiting for some more good responses about the JAWS issue! I'm even thinking about making a petition to Freedom Scientific regarding it. What do you think? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zdenek Vopat" <zdenekvopat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 11:13 AM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!can someone finally spelled out thee real alternatives for me, which of them are better than jaws please! I hear on this list that there are real alternatives but nothing specific as to what is bbetter than jaws if you know an alternative superior to jaws just say it so all of us could benefit. For instance the authors of linux distribution vinux admit that the speech software for linux is still more limited tthan jaws is. I don't feel comfortable buying a mac, specially since FBI cqan get a hold of my info and as well as importantly the cost of mac acceeds the cost of upgrade of jaws many times. So any real superior alternatives, or is it just a talk and being fed up with a corporation named freedom scientific? I wonder whether users of other screen readers don't have similar complains about their own software. Many thanks ofr a clear and specific answer to which software is superior to jaws.Zddenek----- Original Message ----- From: "Dorothy Ingram-Gorban" <Dorothy.ingram-gorban@xxxxxxxxx>To: "org, jfw@freelists. " <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 4:25 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!John it has obviously served you well in its time and may continue ,but it is a wise manufacturer of any product who listens to its customers,and theyare the blind world wide, some have never been subsidised but used their savings, some on this list are in residential nursing homes on a fixedincome, and still loyal to fs, but if fs fails to listen,now of all times tothe concerns of its customer base it will fail in the same manner many famous products have done in the past, for the first time there real choices, and whether or not fs is wise I think will soon be apparent. Regards Dorothy----- Original Message ----- From: "John R. Vaughn" <jrvaughn44@xxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 12:35 AM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!I concur with your sentiments. I have been using Jaws for over 20 yearsnow and it kept me employed, enjoying life and now enjoying retirement.FS and Jaws are not the be all and end all, but they have to have a product that works for folks. If it is not working for you, move on. Meanwhile, this is a Jaws list to be a positive support to other jaws users. Lets dothis or I will move on. John in sunny florida----- Original Message ----- From: "Zdenek Vopat" <zdenekvopat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 6:13 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!that's my understanding that eloquence is a history, but I am not freedomscientific better check out with them. I did not mean to crriticize theother fellow just asking to be more thoughtful and careful with words. Itseems to me that on this list there has become fashinable and perhaps rightly so to critisize jaws but noone suggests better product or am I missing something? Zdenek----- Original Message ----- From: "Farfar Carlson" <dgcarlson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 5:44 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!Zdenek, I agree that the statement is almost meant to be inflammatory.You wrote: "I believe that they are leaving eloquence instead of focusingon using the realspeak voices..." Just to clarify, did you mean that they are moving away from Eloquence and will instead push to use RealSpeak voices? I'd not be happy with using only RealSpeak for my day-to-day work. Dave----- Original Message ----- From: "Zdenek Vopat" <zdenekvopat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 07:48 Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!that's a pretty strong claim to make. In any rate I believe that they are leaving eloquence instead of focusing on using the realspeak voices thatyou can download for free, so perhaps that may explain the issue. Zdenek----- Original Message ----- From: "Devona" <djasister@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 4:31 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!Did they fix it? -------------------------------------------------- From: "Armond" <armond1980@xxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 8:19 AM To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!Hi, all,Many of you might find the following email exchange between a friend ofmine and Freedom Scientific's Jonathan Mosen shocking or, rather, frustrating. Basically, it describes a Unicode-related bug in newerreleases of JAWS 11 which later turned out to be an intentional move onthe point of Freedom Scientific to get users to purchase a certain right-to-left language pack from a dealer--at a higher cost--though this is against the spirit of the Unicode feature. Here's my friend'smessage--note that he himself doesn't have a blog or venue to voice hisconcerns and isn't interested in pursuing that line of action either forvarious reasons, so I'm doing that on his behalf and on the behalf ofthose who have been affected: ------------ Hello Jonathan,Please forgive me for sending you this message. The following bug is soserious that I decided to notify you as I don't know to whichFreedomScientific employee it should be sent. This affects the latestJAWS 11 update.As you know, each unicode symbol or character has a value in hex. Forinstance, the Persian or Arabic character "?" ("Alef") has the following value: U+627. Now JAWS 11 interprets hex values in the form of the correct value minus1. That is, for instance, the letter "Alef" with the value of U+627 isread is "Yaa hamzeh" which has the hex value of U+626. That's quite strange, but the bug indeed affects all unicode symbols modified inEloq.sbl! This means that I can't use the Eloquence engine to type orread characters in Persian and Arabic because what I type or whatever the cursor points to will be read as something else by JAWS 11.0.1447.Would you please inform JAWS developers about this bug? I don't want todowngrade to the previous JAWS 11 release. All the best, Amir ------------ My friend's second message: ------------ Just as a follow-up to my previous message, this bug affects the behaviorof NumPad5 in a slightly different way. That is, if NumPad5 is pressed once on a Unicode character which has a certain value in Eloq.sbl, JAWSincorrectly reports that character in the form of the actual Unicode value minus 1. However, if NumPad5 is pressed twice on a Unicode character forits phonetic representation, JAWS incorrectly reads it in the form oftheactual Unicode value plus 1. Just thought I'd pass this finding, too.Best, Amir ------------ Jonathan's reply: ------------Hi Amir, the issue you've advised me of is actually a design change in JAWS. If you could please let me know your serial number, we'll look at your situation further and see if there's anything we can do for you.Jonathan ------------ My friend's reply: ------------ Hi Jonathan,That's a bit strange because the JAWS online help still indicates that Unicode symbols can be added for engines like Eloquence which supportit.Eloq.sbl is mentioned, too. At any rate, am I correct in assuming thatin the future it would be impossible to use Eloquence to read and typemodified Unicode symbols and get correct feedback? May I ask why thisdecision has been made? As I live in a country which is now under various sanctions, I can't usecredit cards or PayPal to pay for any app including JAWS, so I have touseit in demo mode. The only exception to this is, as you know, use apps Itest. On the other hand, I heavily depend on JAWS for reading and writing Persian letter by letter, using my modified Eloq.sbl file in combination with Eloquence, because Persian doesn't have a TTS engine. Would it be possible to kindly make changes to the status quo? Best, Amir ------------ Jonathan's reply: ------------Hi Amir, JAWS now requires a language processor to work with Arabic andHebrew correctly. This can be sourced from our Arabic distributor Medialog - http://www.medialog.ws Hope this helps. Jonathan ------------ My friend's final reply: ------------ Hi Jonathan, Thanks for the note regarding the Arabic distributor of FreedomScientificproducts. However, following the URL which you provided results in the display of a webpage with an error message, regardless of the browserused, indicating that the page cannot be displayed. Do you happen to have a download link for that language processor? As I badly need the processor, your help would be greatly appreciated.For your information, I'm pasting the error message which is apparentlyin both French and English below. Medialog Accessibilities 404 - Fichier ou répertoire introuvable. frame Erreur de serveur 404 - Fichier ou répertoire introuvable.La ressource que vous recherchez a peut-être été supprimée, renommée ouest temporairement indisponible. 404 - Fichier ou répertoire introuvable. frame end The page cannot be found frame The page cannot be found The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please try the following:. Make sure that the Web site address displayed in the address bar ofyour browser is spelled and formatted correctly. . If you reached this page by clicking a link, contact the Web site administrator to alert them that the link is incorrectly formatted. . Click the Back button to try another link. HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found. Internet Information Services (IIS) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical Information (for support personnel). Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title searchfor the words HTTP and 404. . Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Web Site Setup, Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages. The page cannot be found frame end Best, Amir ------------ Now, do you think this intentionally-introduced bug, which affects certain right-to-left languages, shouldn't be addressed in JAWS 12? Interestingly,even the first iterations of JAWS 11 didn't exhibit this bug, but itslater releases do. I sincerely hope Freedom Scientific address that more responsibly without thinking about the extra copies it might sell to thosewho do not even need an Arabic or Hebrew TTS engine to read individual right-to-left languages. This is like getting Windows users in certain countries to purchase localized releases of Windows just to be able toread and write in their own native languages. BTW, if you can remember, my friend Amir has been behind theSymbian-oriented MobileSpace blog and also participates in beta testingcertain accessibility-related products for the visually impaired. Best regards, Armond -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. 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Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx$U«zVyÙbzK hhTêZ?èm¶Yÿà ç?¢k ?éí?øor?¿IÊâ¦Ø§,f¢-)à-+-?Ûiÿùb²Û-.èÝ.Ê&þX¬¶)ß¡È"þÇ+S>h,¶©?+az7ar??bâ²Ø§²ÚîrبzÄè¦<-jg¬±¨ ¶yúèsØb²f¢-)à-+-±éÝjg¬±¨ ¶^ß·ª¹ë-~·z-+-²SàÂ+a¶°¢·nzË>±Êâm觶¬¹¸ÞrÙb?à+r¯zÉhq«^u«a¶Úÿ 0~·z-+-²SàýªÜ?+Þ³øßÀ mz¹Ú¶+Þj·!S÷¬-?µçZ¶m§ÿçÚv>nWo¢oÉdY¢µ¢?Ú0±ýµã?»öf"?ò¢èZ½æ§ÉÊ'qê籦èºÛazX¬¶s,¶·oz+ÞuúèsØ^-+-¢»a{²¶¥SËb±·¢zî?Ú'¢Úh²Ûazkh¶¥SËQjØ^Ê'µ§-¶¥SËhÂw«jØßÁ§fS{ ç¥SËl -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message tojfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.htmlIf you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, orthe way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. 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