Medialog hasn't yet replied to the message Amir sent them many weeks ago, after having found their contact information via a couple of Google searches. As such, no one really knows how much this language pack costs. Of course, the mere existence of such a pack should be questioned as it's unprecedented to offer an assistive technology product this way and then make it crippled so that a second language pack--or something similar--can complement its missing features just to boost sales. And, BTW, the Medialog website doesn't offer any pricing information about JAWS or other Freedom Scientific products it sells. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Maria Kristic" <maria6289@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 11:37 AMSubject: Medialog Contact Info RE: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!
I am able to access the Medialog site from the U.S., so here is their contact info, that I am hoping Armond will pass on to Amir. I am not doubting Amir's AT competence--I am on a support list for another product, of which he is also a member, and I know that he is very familiar with AT based on his posts there, so if he is unable to access it, I assume that some factor other than user error and over which he has no control is causing that to happen. Anyway, as I do not speak Arabic, I looked at the English section of the Web site, www.medialog.ws/en. That is from where I obtained the below contact information; I also looked at various other pages of the site, and the most helpful thing I found relating to this is a statement that JAWS is available in Arabic, so I am supposing that a call/note to them will furnish more useful information (i.e., whether the language processor is free/paid, its price if it is not free, how it could best be obtained based on the circumstances, e tc.) Here is the information for their main office out of Lebanon--I assume that all of the below names are all of the employees who work at this office (they have another one in Paris), and one would be corresponding with one of them if one were to call/email.LEBANON Beyrouth Kamal Assaf Milios Awad Saydeh Noun Chady Moussa 9, Jounieh Lebanon Tel: +961 3 84 17 59 Fax: +961 6 74 48 77 Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxx Support Email: support@xxxxxxxxxxxI hope this is helpful to Amir. I would be interested to learn, if he is inclined to share, whether this language processor is or is not freeware.Cheers, Maria -----Original Message----- From: Peter Holdstock <peterholdstock@xxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2010 11:25 AM To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!I was trying to establish if in fact there is actually a cost for obtainingit as that would make a difference as to whether FS were up to anything unfair. Peter -------------------------------------------------- From: "Zdenek Vopat" <zdenekvopat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 11:02 PM To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!well I don't know where you are heading with this but international sanctions are outside of the power of the freedom scientific they better follow whatever the "civilized, democratic and freedom loving" world orders them to do otherwise they would be in a big trouble.----- Original Message ----- From: "Alex Midence" <alex.midence@xxxxxxxxx>To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 11:41 PM Subject: Re: Freedom Scientific introduces bugs intentionally!Bit of a moot point that. He can't get ahold of the people who sell it and he lives in a country with sanctions. He can't use credit cards or pay pal. He's basically got to hope someone buys it outside hsi country and mails the cd to him and then he's got to hope the cd is in a format readable by the cd rom drives available in his country. That, or, someone has to e-mail it to him if it is a downloadable patch. I wonder if FS will pull something like this for Cyrilic alphabet languages too. Then there's Greek and Japanese. I hope someone big raises a stink about this. Just thought of another gorup affected by this. Anyone out there Jewish? If you like reading any your religious materials in Hebrew, you can't do it anymore with Jaws 11 without this "bug" fix. Hebrew is written from right to left. Are there any blind Rabbis out there? If so, have you noticed anything like this? Alex M On 8/6/10, Peter Holdstock <peterholdstock@xxxxxxx> wrote:How much is the language pack? Peter -------------------------------------------------- From: "Armond" <armond1980@xxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 2:19 PM 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 for various reasons, so I'm doing that on his behalf and on the behalf of those 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 which FreedomScientific employee it should be sent. This affects the latest JAWS 11 update. As you know, each unicode symbol or character has a value in hex. For instance, 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 minus 1. That is, for instance, the letter "Alef" with the value of U+627 is read is "Yaa hamzeh" which has the hex value of U+626. That's quite strange, but the bug indeed affects all unicode symbols modified in Eloq.sbl! This means that I can't use the Eloquence engine to type or read 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 behavior of NumPad5 in a slightly different way. That is, if NumPad5 is pressedonce 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 for its phonetic representation, JAWS incorrectly reads it in the form of the actual 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 inJAWS. If you could please let me know your serial number, we'll look atyour 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 support it. Eloq.sbl is mentioned, too. At any rate, am I correct in assuming that in the future it would be impossible to use Eloquence to read and type modified Unicode symbols and get correct feedback? May I ask why this decision has been made? As I live in a country which is now under various sanctions, I can't use credit cards or PayPal to pay for any app including JAWS, so I have to useit 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 thedisplay of a webpage with an error message, regardless of the browser used, 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 of your 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 search for 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 its later releases do. I sincerely hope Freedom Scientific address that more responsibly without thinking about the extra copies it might sell to those who 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 to read 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. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- 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--JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.comJFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxTo unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfwAlternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.htmlIf you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-- 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. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw Alternative archives located at: http://n2.nabble.com/JAWS-for-Windows-f2145279.html If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
