TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THIS MANUAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 SECTION I: THE BASICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 CHAPTER 1: GETTING STARTED. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 1.1 THE FIRST TIME OUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 * 1.2 The Concept of Files and FOLDERS . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 * 1.3 The Braille 'n Speak's Memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 1.4 How to Use The Commands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 1.5 The Concept of Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 1.5.1 The Options Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 * 1.5.2 The Status Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 * 1.5.3 How to Handle the Built-in Battery. . . . . . . . 12 1.5.4 The Parameters Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 CHAPTER 2: MAKING THE BRAILLE 'N SPEAK TALK THE WAY YOU WANT. . . . 14 2.1 Volume, Speech Rate, Pitch, and Tone . . . . . . . . . . . 14 * 2.2 Announcement of Punctuation and Numbers. . . . . . . . . 15 * 2.3 Multiple Voice Settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 SECTION II: WORKING WITH YOUR FILES. . . . . . . . . 18 CHAPTER 3: READING YOUR FILES . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.1 The Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 * 3.2 Navigating through a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 * 3.2.1 Moving by Blocks of Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 * 3.2.2 Moving by Relative Blocks of Text . . . . . . . . 20 * 3.2.3 The Text Counter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.3 Reading Blocks of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 3.3.1 Defining Blocks of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 * 3.3.2 Having the Voice Spell Out Words . . . . . . 24 * 3.3.3 What's the ASCII Value of the Character Under the Cursor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.4 Some Tips on Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.4.1 The Automatic Braille Translator . . . . . . . . . 25 3.4.2 Special Types of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 3.5 Searching for Text in a File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.5.1 The Location of the Cursor. . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.5.2 Finding Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3.5.3 Case-Sensitive Searches for Text. . . . . . . . . . 29 CHAPTER 4: WRITING IN YOUR FILES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.1 The Files Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 * 4.2 Creating a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 4.3 Where is the Cursor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.4 Room Left in Your File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.5 Getting Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.6 Writing Text in Your File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.7 Writing Control Characters into a File . . . . . . . . . . 34 * 4.8 Writing Repeated Character Strings . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.9 Formatting Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 * 4.9.1 Setting and Adjusting Margins . . . . . . . . . . 40 4.9.2 Formatting and the Status Menu. . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.9.3 Document Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 4.9.4 Changing the Appearance of Print Text . . . . . . . 48 4.9.5 Inserting a Time Stamp on a Printed Document. . . . 49 4.9.6 Skipping Blocks of Text to Print . . . . . . . . . 49 4.10 Selecting your Writing Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 CHAPTER 5: EDITING TEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5.1 Overwriting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5.2 Backspacing and Rubbing Out a Character. . . . . . . . . . 54 * 5.3 Deleting Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 5.4 Inserting Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 * 5.5 Copying Text into Your File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 5.6 Deleting Blocks of Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5.7 Find and Replace Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 CHAPTER 6: MANIPULATING FILES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 * 6.1 Exploring the File Command Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 6.2 Listing Your Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 * 6.3 Navigating Through Your Files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 6.4 Opening an Existing File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 * 6.5 Opening an Existing File by Its Number . . . . . . . . . 72 6.6 Renaming a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6.7 Write-Protecting and Unprotecting a File . . . . . . . . . 74 6.8 Deleting Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.9 Changing the Size of a File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 * 6.10 Copying an Entire File into the Currently Open File . . 80 * 6.11 Free Space in the Braille 'n Speak. . . . . . . . . . . 82 * 6.12 Working with Folders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 * 6.12.1 Running in Folder Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 * 6.12.2 Navigating through Folders . . . . . . . . . . . 84 * 6.12.3 Creating a Folder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 * 6.12.4 Moving a File into a Folder. . . . . . . . . . . 86 * 6.12.5 Moving Groups of Files into a Folder . . . . . . 87 * 6.12.6 Opening a File in a Different Folder . . . . . . 89 * 6.12.7 Moving Files between RAM and Flash . . . . . . . 90 * 6.12.8 Changing the Name of a Folder. . . . . . . . . . 91 * 6.12.9 Deleting a Folder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 SECTION III: WORKING WITH OTHER TOOLS . . . . . . . 93 CHAPTER 7: THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 * 7.1 The Clock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 * 7.1.1 The Current Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 * 7.1.2 Switching Between American and European Time. . . 94 * 7.1.3 Setting the Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 * 7.1.4 Changing the Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 * 7.1.5 Hourly Announcement of Time . . . . . . . . . . . 95 * 7.1.6 The Alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 7.2 The Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 7.2.1 Checking Today's Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 * 7.2.2 Setting Today's Date. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 7.2.3 Getting a Date from the Calendar. . . . . . . . . . 97 7.2.4 Inserting a Date into Your Calendar . . . . . . . . 98 7.2.5 Calendar Alert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 7.3 Information About Your Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 CHAPTER 8: THE STOPWATCH AND THE TIMER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 8.1 The Stopwatch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 8.1.1 Starting and Stopping the Stopwatch . . . . . . . .102 8.1.2 Reading Elapsed Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 8.1.3 Stopping and Resetting the Stopwatch. . . . . . . .103 8.2 The Timer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103 8.2.1 Finding out Time Remaining. . . . . . . . . . . . .104 8.2.2 Timing in the Background. . . . . . . . . . . . . .104 CHAPTER 9: THE CALCULATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 9.1 Basic Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 9.2 Setting Precision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 9.3 Inserting Calculation Results into a File. . . . . . . . .106 9.4 Performing Percentage Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . .107 9.5 Storing and Using the Memory Locations . . . . . . . . . .108 9.6 Extracting a Square Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 * 9.7 Complex Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109 9.8 Error Messages and Tips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 CHAPTER 10: OTHER HELPFUL FEATURES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 10.1 Word Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 10.2 The One-Handed Braille 'n Speak . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 10.3 Review Only Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 CHAPTER 11: MACROS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 11.1 What's a Macro, Anyway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 11.2 Recording a Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .114 11.3 Playing an Existing Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 11.4 How to Check a Macro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 11.5 Pausing a Macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 11.6 Write-Protecting Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 11.7 Adding your Own Messages to a Macro . . . . . . . . . . .119 * 11.8 Start-Up Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 CHAPTER 12: THE SPELLCHECKER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122 12.1 Running the Spellchecker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122 12.2 Adding a Word to Your Personal Dictionary . . . . . . . .122 12.3 Bypassing a Word for the Rest of the Document . . . . . .123 12.4 Reading a Word in Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 12.5 Correcting a Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 12.6 Repeating a Word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 12.7 Overlooking a Word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 12.8 Suggested Replacement Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 SECTION IV: CONVERSING WITH OTHER DEVICES. . . . . .125 CHAPTER 13: INTRODUCING TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND SETTINGS . . . . . .125 13.1 Cables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 13.1.1 Serial versus Parallel . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 * 13.1.2 Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126 * 13.1.3 Number of Pins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 13.1.4 Null Modem Cable Requirements. . . . . . . . . . .127 13.2 Telecommunications Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 13.2.1 Baud Rate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 13.2.2 Parity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128 13.2.3 Duplex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 13.2.4 Data Bits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 13.2.5 Stop Bits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 13.2.6 Handshaking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 13.2.7 The Interactive Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 13.2.8 Rejecting Ornamentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 CHAPTER 14: THE PORTABLE DISK DRIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133 * 14.1 How to Operate the Disk Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . .133 14.2 Retrieving a File from Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135 14.3 Saving a File to Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 14.4 Transmitting Textfiles or Applications. . . . . . . . . .137 14.4.1 Sending Files to the Disk Drive . . . . . . .137 14.4.2 Receiving Files from the Disk Drive. . . . . . . .138 14.5 Adding an Application to the Braille 'n Speak . . . . . .139 14.6 Reading the Directory from a Disk . . . . . . . . . . . .140 CHAPTER 15: PRINTERS, MODEMS, AND COMPUTERS . . . . . . . . . . . .142 15.1 Transmission Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 15.1.1 Activating the Serial Port . . . . . . . . . . . .142 15.1.2 Appending Linefeeds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142 15.2 Physical Page Format Considerations . . . . . . . . . . .143 15.2.1 Printing Text Without Translating. . . . . . . . .144 15.2.2 Finding out What Page is Being Printed . . . . . .144 15.2.3 Transmitting a Portion of a Document . . . . . . .144 15.2.4 Double-Spacing a Document on the Fly . . . . . . .145 15.2.5 Previewing Where Text Will Print . . . . . . . . .145 * 15.3 Sending Blocks of Text to Another Device. . . . . . . .147 15.4 Modems and Other Computers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 15.5 Using Sophisticated Modem Protocols in Transmission . . .151 * 15.6 The Braille 'n Speak as a Speech Synthesizer. . . . . .154 15.7 Sending Braille 'n Speak Output to Your Computer Screen .157 CHAPTER 16: RUNNING EXTERNAL PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159 * 16.1 Updating your Braille 'n Speak 2000 . . . . . . . . . .160 * 16.2 The Bilingual Braille 'n Speak. . . . . . . . . . . . .162 APPENDIX A: COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS . . . . . . . .166 TELECOMMUNICATIONS QUESTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166 * INTERNET CONNECTION QUESTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168 PRINTING QUESTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 CRASH AND RECOVERY QUESTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171 BRAILLE TRANSLATION QUESTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 * RAM AND FLASH QUESTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175 APPENDIX B: QUICK REFERENCE. . . . . . . . . . . . .179 SPEECH PARAMETERS MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 FILE COMMANDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181 ENTERING TEXT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 CURSOR MOVEMENT AND SPEAKING OF TEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . .185 FINDING, REPLACING, DELETING, AND INSERTING TEXT . . . . . . .186 FORMATTING TEXT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188 CLOCK AND CALENDAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .190 STOPWATCH/COUNT-DOWN TIMER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 SCIENTIFIC CALCULATOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 MACROS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193 SPELLCHECK FUNCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194 DISK DRIVE FUNCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .194 TRANSMITTING DATA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195 OPTIONS MENU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 PARAMETERS MENU. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 STATUS MENU DEFAULT SETTINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .198 MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 APPENDIX C: TECHNICAL DATA ABOUT PORTS . . . . . . .201 APPENDIX D: ASCII BRAILLE SYMBOLS. . . . . . . . . .202 APPENDIX E: WHICH CHARGER TO USE . . . . . . . . . .205 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .207 ABOUT THIS MANUAL For those of you who already had some model of the Braille 'n Speak and know how to use many of its features, you'll find the Braille 'n speak 2000 has many exciting new improvements. In particular, if you have just upgraded from the 1996 revision of the Braille 'n Speak 640, we've revised the 1995 Braille 'n Speak User Guide to include all the features in the Braille 'n Speak 2000, which is the focus of this manual. If you're a Braille 'n Speak veteran, you'll find it easy to get acquainted with the new features in the Braille 'n Speak 2000. A section heading or a paragraph within a section that is preceded by an asterisk (*) is "new". Check the Table of Contents to see where they are. Don't be fooled by a section's name. For example, the section on getting the Braille 'n Speak to talk the way you want contains new information and so we've highlighted it with an asterisk. Therefore, even if you already know how to use the Speech Parameters menu, check this section out because we've added some features. This manual is your "road map" as you explore the Braille 'n Speak's modes, features and functions. In each chapter, we discuss commands and the tasks they perform; and, we provide you with detailed examples of how to apply them in your daily life. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic area and takes you through all of the commands related to that topic in detail. Here is a key to the map: INTRODUCTION: Tells you what a Braille 'n Speak is. SECTION I - THE BASICS: Explains what to do the first time you take the Braille 'n Speak out of the box. SECTION II - WORKING WITH YOUR FILES: Walks you slowly and painlessly through reading, writing, and manipulating files. SECTION III - WORKING WITH OTHER TOOLS: Tours the Braille 'n Speak's calendar, calculator, stopwatch, timer, and much more - with real-life examples. SECTION IV - CONVERSING WITH OTHER DEVICES: Demystifies the complicated business of file transfers, printing considerations, the external disk drive, and external programs - all in simple language, minus the technobabble you usually find in discussions of telecommunications. APPENDIX A - COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Answers commonly asked questions about printing, file recovery, file transfers, and the like. APPENDIX B - QUICK REFERENCE: Lists by subject all Braille 'n Speak commands. APPENDIX C - TECHNICAL DATA ABOUT PORTS: Provides technical specifications for linking the Braille 'n Speak to nonstandard devices. APPENDIX D - ASCII BRAILLE SYMBOLS: Provides a complete table for the ASCII character set in computer braille. APPENDIX E - WHICH CHARGER TO USE: Explains what chargers work with the various models of the Braille 'n Speak, Braille Lite, and portable drive to help you prevent accidentally damaging your unit by plugging the wrong charger into it. By the time you finish exploring the Braille 'n Speak universe, you'll wonder how you managed without it. INTRODUCTION What Is a Braille 'n Speak? The Braille 'n Speak is a computer that lets you write in braille and responds to you with speech. It translates Grade 2 or Grade 1 braille text - even computer braille text - into spoken words through its built-in speech synthesizer. Weighing less than one pound, and having its own internal, rechargeable battery and storage, this powerful computer can act as your notebook, your rollodex, your calendar, your calculator, your stopwatch, your timer, and much more! * You can use a Braille 'n Speak comfortably and unobtrusively at a meeting, on a street corner or a subway, just as anyone uses a pencil and notepad. And, chances are, you won't run out of room because the unit can store a lot of information. The Braille 'n Speak 2000 can store about seven hundred forty physical pages of braille in its random-access memory area (or 768 kilobytes) and over eighteen hundred physical pages worth in "Flash" memory (or 2 megabytes). We'll discuss the new "flash memory" in detail in Section 1.3. The Braille 'n Speak can "talk" with other computers - whether it's to store information on a disk or retrieve it for you to read later, or whether it's to print files with an ink printer or braille them with a braille embosser. * Using an external modem and your telephone, the Braille 'n Speak links you to a wealth of information over services such as the Internet: news, shopping, research, conversation with other computer users, and so on. If you have a personal computer with a screen access program (ASAP, Jaws, or Vocal-Eyes - just to mention a few popular ones), you can turn your Braille 'n Speak into a portable speech synthesizer through its "speech box" mode. This can come in handy if you're on the go a lot and want to minimize the gear you carry, or you suddenly have to access a computer at a colleague's desk (in a hurry). It's much easier to carry a floppy disk with your screen access program on it and your Braille 'n Speak than to carry around an extra speech synthesizer. So let's get started! SECTION I: THE BASICS * INTRODUCTION This section covers very basic information about the Braille 'n Speak: what it looks like, what to expect when you turn it on for the first time, how to set up the voice to your liking, and how to navigate around the menu system. If you're already generally familiar with how to operate your Braille 'n Speak, you may wish to skim most of this section. But we do recommend that you read the parts marked with an asterisk so that you don't miss out on any new features or information about your unit. Let's start by giving the Braille 'n Speak a physical to see what it looks like and to learn the basics about its use. The Braille 'n Speak is about the size of a video cassette. Its keyboard consists of the standard seven-key layout of a Perkins-style braillewriter. The rubber feet on its bottom prevent the machine from sliding around as you work. Place the unit in front of you with the spacebar closest to you - the usual position in which you operate your braillewriter. Find the right corner closest to you and slide your finger toward the back of the unit. About halfway, you'll find the "on/off" rocker switch. To turn the Braille 'n Speak on, rock the switch away from you; to turn it off, rock it toward you. Immediately in back of the "on/off" rocker switch is an earphone jack. You can also use this jack to connect your Braille 'n Speak to an external speaker or a patch cord to send the Braille 'n Speak's voice output to a tape recorder. * Now, find the left corner of the unit closest to you. Slide your finger toward the back of the machine and find an indented rectangular opening along the left side. Feel carefully within this opening and notice the two round DIN ports with tiny little holes in them. They feel virtually identical, one toward the front of the rectangular opening, the other toward the back, and they're separated by two vertical bars that are practically flush with the ports themselves. In fact, the ports perform the same function. They are both used to connect the Braille 'n Speak to other devices. * The cable that came with your Braille 'n Speak can be plugged into either of the ports and act as a serial port to connect you to another Braille 'n Speak, a Braille Lite, a computer, a modem, and a printer. (See Chapter 13 for detailed information about connecting your unit to other devices. See Chapter 14 for details on connecting the portable disk drive). * In back of the rectangular opening for the ports is the input jack for the A.C. power supply/battery charger. * WARNING: When charging the Braille 'n Speak's built-in battery, you should use the 12-volt charger supplied with the unit. Do not use an old 9-volt charger you may have lying around from a previous version of the Braille 'n Speak. (See Appendix E for information on chargers.) Substituting another transformer which looks or feels like the correct one but which has the incorrect voltage requirements could destroy chips or other critical parts of the Braille 'n Speak. * If you have access to a Braille Lite or a portable disk drive whose charger is 12-volt, you can now substitute that 12-volt charger for the Braille 'n Speak's charger. They are all interchangeable. * Under normal usage, a fully-charged Braille 'n Speak functions properly under battery power from twenty to twenty-four hours, and it only takes from two to four hours to fully charge a Braille 'n Speak. However, the length of time a Braille 'n Speak can function under battery power varies according to how you use it. For example, to use the Braille 'n Speak to communicate with another computer, you must activate the serial port. Heavy use of the serial port with the unit on battery power, rather than on A.C., drains the battery more quickly. * (Note: We offer an emergency cable that lets you power the Braille 'n Speak from an external battery in case you can't charge your battery immediately. Also, if the Braille 'n Speak 2000 is an upgrade for you, it's critical that you check out Appendix E, "Which Charger to Use" for details about which models of the Braille 'n Speak work with which chargers.) There is a handy safety feature on the Braille 'n Speak relevant to battery usage. The Braille 'n Speak warns you when the battery starts getting low and continues to warn you every time you press a key until you take action. Experiment with your individual machine to see how much time it actually operates after the "Battery Low" message first occurs. Operating your Braille 'n Speak for too long at this low voltage condition may cause the "scrambling" of data stored in the machine. Should this happen, you may be able to recover the data, as you'll see later. If you do decide to experiment with the length of battery usage and your data, don't have any data you desperately need to keep - at least not until you are familiar with how to recover data on the Braille 'n Speak. The Braille 'n Speak comes fully charged from the factory. But eventually you'll need to recharge the battery. Once you have done so, you must remember to set the Battery Use Timer. We'll show you how to do that shortly. The optimal way to use the Braille 'n Speak is to keep it turned off most of the time when you are not actually doing something with it. In other words, if you are not reading, writing, computing or transmitting data, keep the unit turned off. The great thing is that turning it off does not erase your data and turning it back on instantly places you wherever you last stopped. In fact, the Braille 'n Speak doesn't like to be ignored. It reminds you that it is still turned on with a "hello?" message if you have not pressed a key within five minutes. And it continues to try to get your attention in this way until you react - either by pressing a key or by turning off the unit. Now, let's go to work. CHAPTER 1: GETTING STARTED 1.1 THE FIRST TIME OUT Let's assume that you're starting from scratch, with the Braille 'n Speak set up as it comes straight from the factory. Turn the Braille 'n Speak "on" by flipping the "on/off" rocker switch away from you. The unit says, "Braille 'n Speak ready; Help is open." If this does not happen, flip the rocker switch back toward you to the "off" position and plug the A.C. power supply/battery charger into the A.C. jack and flip the switch "on" again. You should then hear the announcement, "Braille 'n Speak ready; Help is open". Once you're comfortable with the Braille 'n Speak, or if you're in a setting where the Braille 'n Speak's start-up prompt might disturb a meeting, for example, you may choose to start up the Braille 'n Speak silently. To do this, simply hold down the spacebar as you turn on the unit. A click indicates that the Braille 'n Speak is ready for use. Let's continue now with learning about "files". * 1.2 The Concept of Files and FOLDERS Think of the Braille 'n Speak, as it comes from the factory, as a nearly empty, three-ring binder just waiting to be filled with your own personal data. Usually, a three-ring binder comes with tabs, or separators of some kind, to indicate the start of a new section in the binder. Each tagged section then can be considered a distinct "file".1 * And in fact, with so much storage capacity in the Braille 'n Speak 2000, you're really not limited to just one "binder" of files, so to speak. There's no reason why you can't have a number of "binders" or "folders" to contain groups of files you want to keep together. We'll discuss the new folders capability of the Braille 'n Speak at length in Section 6.12. For now, just be aware that you'll be able to store your files and programs in folders so you can keep them organized to your liking. The Braille 'n Speak comes with a number of "files" ready for your use. The number of files may vary, depending on whether we have included files that contain the latest update information, and so on. But there are some files that are permanently stored in the Braille 'n Speak from the factory. The Help file contains a summary of the commands you use to operate the Braille 'n Speak. The Clipboard file is like a blank scratchpad or trash can (more on this later). * Although not a permanent file, we include a file called "calendar.brl", which is ready for you to cram with your busy schedule. (Note: If you have upgraded your unit to a Braille 'n Speak 2000, you may have added to it your old calendar file that did not have the ".brl" extension. Not to worry, the calendar Alert feature in the new Braille 'n Speak will still recognize your calendar file and work properly. Read more about ".brl", ".bfm", and ".brf" extensions in Section 4.2) * Another file we often include for your convenience, but which is not permanent, is the spelling dictionary program file. It is a file called "Spell.dic". Unlike the Help, Clipboard, and Calendar files whose contents you can actually read, the Spell.dic file is a program file. In other words, this is a file that contains a program the Braille 'n Speak can access to help you do spellchecking, rather than a file you can read yourself. We'll talk about the spellchecking commands in detail in Chapter 12. * The spelling dictionary does take up a considerable chunk of space in the Braille 'n Speak's RAM memory, however, so you may choose to move it off into the Flash portion of your unit's memory or remove it altogether from your unit. * Another program file that may come on your Braille 'n Speak from the factory is the Bsname.bns program file. Again, this is a file that contains a program the Braille 'n Speak can access, not you. It works with the Flash ROM capability of your Braille 'n Speak. Your machine's serial number is already branded into its Flash ROM (read-only memory) and the "bsname.bns" program lets you brand your name into your Braille 'n Speak permanently. We'll talk about how to run external programs like this one in detail in Chapter 16. * Notice that we've now used the terms "Flash" and RAM to refer to the memory in your unit. In the next section, we'll discuss what these terms mean and how you can use the expanded memory capabilities in your machine to store and work with a much larger amount of material than ever before. * 1.3 The Braille 'n Speak's Memory We at Blazie Engineering appreciate how challenging it would be to part with the Braille 'n Speak whenever you wish to take advantage of the new features in our latest releases. Now your unit is equipped with the capability of letting you update your unit yourself. This is called "Flash ROM" (read-only memory). Check out Section 16.1 to see how to update your unit to the latest software release. Now what's this talk about RAM and FLASH all about? In the introduction to this manual, we mentioned that your Braille 'n Speak can store up to the equivalent of seven hundred forty pages of braille in RAM and over eighteen hundred in Flash memory. That's a lot for such a tiny device. What does this mean and how does it work? What we've done is provide you with 768 kilobytes of RAM (random-access memory) - space where you can edit your files and run external programs, and in addition, another two megabytes of Flash memory - where you can store files you just want to read or edit later, and programs while you're not running them. Don't confuse the terms "Flash ROM", which is the Braille 'n Speak's ability to allow you to update its software and brand your personal name into it, with Flash memory. Here we're simply talking about an area of memory in your unit where your files can be STORED so you can read them, or stored for safekeeping until you need to edit them or run them if they're program files. As you'll see in Section 6.12, the process of moving files between RAM and Flash is quite easy and quick. Now, let's turn the Braille 'n Speak on and start learning how to use it. 1.4 How to Use The Commands As we said earlier, when you start up the Braille 'n Speak for the first time, after the announcement, "Braille 'n Speak ready", you hear the prompt, "Help is open." Also, remember that whenever you turn it off, the Braille 'n Speak keeps your place for you wherever you had stopped in a file. When you turn it on, it reminds you where you left off by announcing the name of the file you left open. Since this is your first time out, the Braille 'n Speak announces that you have the Help file open. All of the Braille 'n Speak's commands are produced by "chording". If you've ever played a piano or other keyboard instrument, you know that a chord refers to any two or more keys pressed together. Isn't that what you do anyway when you braille, you might ask? Yes. But for our purposes, "chording" means pressing any combination of braille dots along with the spacebar. So, for example, if we say, "Press the l-chord", we mean, "Press the spacebar together with dots 1-2-3 (the braille letter l), making sure to press all the keys simultaneously. Whenever we refer to a chord for a braille symbol other than a letter of the alphabet, we will write out the exact dots to be pressed in parentheses for clarity. So, for example, when referring to an "ar-sign" in Grade 2 braille, we will also write out "dots 3-4-5" in parentheses. There are several levels of commands in the Braille 'n Speak: commands for bringing up menus of options, commands for navigating through your files and for performing various editing functions within those files, and commands for utilizing the Braille 'n Speak's built-intools, such as running the stopwatch or storing to a floppy disk or computing a formula. We'll get to each of these in separate chapters. For now, let's just stick to the basic commands you need to get started. The Braille 'n Speak is pretty forgiving when it comes to aborting a command procedure. You usually press an e-chord to "enter" or "execute" a command. But most of the time, if you change your mind in midstream, you can cancel the process with a z-chord. Depending on what you are doing, the Braille 'n Speak responds to an e-chord either by performing some command or by exiting a menu that you have entered (more on this later). But if you do halt a command procedure with a z-chord, the Braille 'n Speak announces, "Abort". 1.5 The Concept of Menus As we mentioned above, the Braille 'n Speak has a set of commands for working with menus. Just as a restaurant menu offers you choices of food, menus on a computer offer you choices of functions to perform. And a "submenu" offers more levels of choice. Continuing our restaurant menu analogy, let's say that the major menu is for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then if you pick the dinner menu, you'll see choices for appetizers, entrees, desserts and beverages. Clearly, you'll then need to check out each of those sets of choices for which appetizer, entree and beverage you want - and, if you're very good, you'll skip the set of dessert choices. The Braille 'n Speak's menu system works very much like a restaurant menu. Basically, there is an Options menu, a Speech Parameters menu, a Status menu and a Parameters menu. Like the dessert menu, each menu in the Braille 'n Speak provides you with choices of its own. For example, from the Options menu, you have choices like: Calendar Check, File Commands, Calculator, Stopwatch, and Spellcheck, as well as many others. Some of the menus are for performing functions and issuing commands. Some, like the Status menu, are for setting things to work to your specifications - like turning a setting on and off or switching among a setting's various modes. You can navigate through all the choices in a Braille 'n Speak menu quite easily. When you issue a command that brings up a set of choices, you can either write the specific letter that selects the choice you want, or you can cycle through the choices till you find the specific one you want. You move forward through the choices with a dot 4-chord, backward with a dot 1-chord. To move to the first choice in a menu, press an l-chord and to move to the last choice, press a dots 4-5-6-chord. To hear the current choice repeated, press a c-chord. Once you hear the choice you want, you press an e- chord to select it. Sometimes, doing so brings up another set of choices (or a submenu). We'll show you those types of menus in Section II. For now, let's look at three of the major menus in the Braille 'n Speak. 1.5.1 The Options Menu The Options menu is one of the most important menus in the Braille 'n Speak. You'll be using it a lot and after a short time you probably won't need to cycle through its choices. You'll just know them automatically. But since we're just starting out, let's show you how to browse through the choices. We'll only cycle through the choices at this time, not select any to work with in particular. From the Help file that you currently have open, press an o-chord to bring up the Options menu. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Option." Press a c-chord to hear the current choice. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Calendar Check". Go ahead and press dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords to hear the numerous choices in this menu. The last choice you'll hear is "Execute program". If you press another dot 4-chord after hearing that choice, you'll simply hear a click to let you know you're at the end of the choices. Likewise, if you press a dot 1-chord at the top of the list of choices, you'll hear a click to let you know you're at the beginning of the choices. Press l-chords and dot 4-5-6-chords to jump to and from the first and last choices in the menu. Stop somewhere in the middle of the choices and press a c-chord to hear the current choice spoken again. Though it may be tempting, try to refrain from pressing an e-chord on any of these choices since we haven't talked about any of them in detail. But if you're adventurous and happen to press an e-chord on a choice, you can always get out of trouble fast by pressing a z-chord. Doing so brings you back to your file wherever you had stopped. In our case, that's the Help file and we should be right at the beginning of the file. * 1.5.2 The Status Menu The Status menu contains information about the status of each setting in the Braille 'n Speak. In this menu, you'll find selections such as Format parameters, Serial Parameters, and so on. Don't worry about these terms right now. Let's just skim through the choices on the Status menu for practice. * Bring up the Status menu from wherever you are by pressing an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord). You should hear, "Status menu, Interactive on." Move around through the choices by pressing dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords. There are lots of choices and it may get confusing to listen to so many settings that are unfamiliar. So jump to the last choice with a dots 4-5-6-chord. You should hear, "Allow folder mode, off". Jump back to the first choice with an l-chord or with another dot 4-chord. If you jump to the beginning of the choices with an l-chord, or if you press dot 1-chords repeatedly to bring you back to the beginning, pressing another dot 1-chord cycles you around to the last choice again. Stop somewhere in the middle and press a c-chord to hear the current choice. You can get out of the Status menu with either an e-chord or a z-chord. * When you're on a particular setting, it can be changed by writing a specific response - usually the letter y to turn it on and the letter n to turn it off. If a setting has multiple options, you can cycle among them by pressing the spacebar repeatedly until you hear the one you want, and then press an e-chord to exit the Status menu. But for the moment, we'll simply focus on cycling through the choices themselves. So these details aren't important. We'll discuss each and every choice on the Status menu specifically as we learn about it. Another way to jump quickly to some of the major groups of settings in the Status menu is to press a dots 5-6-chord to move forward or a dots 2-3-chord to move backward. These commands move you to the first setting in a major group. For example, from the first choice, "Interactive on", to which you return with an l-chord if you've moved beyond it in your practice, press a dots 5-6-chord. You'll hear, "Serial Parameters, Interactive on". Press the same command again and hear, "Miscellaneous Parameters, Braille Translator on". A third time brings you to, "Format Parameters, Printer is Epson compatible" and one more time cycles you back to "Serial Parameters, Interactive on". Cycle backward through these major groups with dots 2-3-chords. Again, this procedure simply jumps you to the first choice in a major group of choices to save you time as you cycle through this large menu. Of course, the fastest way of all to select a choice is to know what character to write that selects it. As we go through the choices in the Status menu as they come up in this manual, we'll detail each choice and its corresponding character that selects it quickly. One nice thing about the Status menu is that it remembers what setting you chose last and places you there the next time you enter the Status menu. So, for example, if you stop on "Battery used" and then exit the Status menu, the next time you enter the Status menu, you'll be right there at that setting. And, while we're here, it's a good time to show you one very important setting because it may affect you sooner than you might think. This is the "Battery used" setting. * 1.5.3 How to Handle the Built-in Battery * If you've upgraded your Braille 'n Speak to the Braille 'n Speak 2000, take a look at Appendix E, "Which Charger to Use". Older models of the Braille 'n Speak used a charger with a lower voltage than the 12-volt charger we now provide. If you try to charge your Braille 'n Speak 2000 with the wrong charger, you may end up with a non-working unit on your hands. So read through Appendix E carefully to see which charger to use in your particular situation. Recall that we said earlier how important it is to be aware of the length of time your battery has been running since you last charged your Braille 'n Speak. The Braille 'n Speak warns you when its battery is running low with a "Battery low" message. But periodically, you should check what percentage of battery drain you have. Enter the Status menu from wherever you are with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4- chord) and write an sh-sign (dots 1-4-6). (By the way, this happens to be the computer braille symbol for percent.) Depending on whether or not it is being charged when you issue the sh-sign command, the Braille 'n speak says one of two possible messages: 100% not charging", or "x% charging". "100% not charging" means just that; the Braille 'n Speak is either not plugged into an outlet, or it is plugged into an outlet but is fully charged. "x% charging" means the Braille 'n Speak is plugged into an outlet and the battery is being charged. The closer the percentage is to 100, the closer the battery is to a full charge. When you have checked the status of battery drain, you can exit the Status menu with the usual e-chord. Once you've recharged the battery, it's a good idea to go into the Status menu and set the battery drain counter back to 0 so that you have an accurate reading of how well your unit is retaining its charge. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord) and then select the choice, "Battery used", by writing a th-sign (dots 1-4-5-6) to bring you directly to the setting (a th-sign is computer braille for question mark). The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Battery used, 0 hours, 10 minutes". Of course, the actual time depends on how long the unit has run since its last charge. We don't mean how much time has passed since you last turned the unit on, but how long it's been since the Braille 'n Speak was last charged. If you've just recharged the battery and want to bring the timer back to 0, press a dropped 0 (dots 3-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Reset battery timer, y or n?" To reset the timer, write a y for yes. You'll hear, "0 hours, 0 minutes". If you don't want to reset the timer, just write an n. In either case, after you've made a choice, you can exit the Status menu as usual with an e-chord. 1.5.4 The Parameters Menu The Parameters menu works the same way as the Options menu. From anywhere within your currently open file, enter the Parameters menu with a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". Cycle through the numerous choices in this menu, forward with dot 4-chords and backward with dot 1- chords. You can see the current choice with a c-chord. Jump to the last choice with a dots 4-5-6-chord and back to the first choice with an l-chord. Many of the choices available in the Parameters menu are also available in the Status menu. The major difference between the two menus is that the Status menu tells you how a setting is currently set; whereas, the Parameters menu simply expects you to change a setting. You select a setting to change by pressing an e-chord when you hear it spoken. For practice only, let's cycle through the settings. From your currently open file, the Help file, press a p-chord. At the prompt, "Enter parameter", press a c-chord to hear the first choice, "Add linefeeds". Again, don't worry that you may not know what that means. You'll find out soon enough. Now press dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords to cycle forward and backward through this menu. The last choice should be, "Serial number". Since we don't really want to do anything in particular for now, just press a z-chord at any time to return to your currently open file, the Help file. Should you press an e-chord on a choice, don't fret. Again, just get out with a z-chord and nothing will happen. As we pointed out in the beginning of this section on menus, we'll get into the specific choices of each menu when we need them as we learn how to use the features of the Braille 'n Speak. For now, just remember that when you first turn on the Braille 'n Speak, you'll always be in the last file you worked on wherever you had left off in that file. If you want to do something from a menu, you have to issue a command to get to it. What's nice is that when you're finished using the menu, the Braille 'n Speak remembers to put you right back into your file, just where you last were in that file. Now let's move on to setting up the Braille 'n Speak's voice to your taste. If you're used to listening to speech synthesizers, the factory settings may seem slow and cumbersome. You can change them to make the voice talk just as you like it. CHAPTER 2: MAKING THE BRAILLE 'N SPEAK TALK THE WAY YOU WANT Before we look at the files that come in the Braille 'n Speak from the factory, let's get the unit talking in the way that is most comfortable for you. You can adjust the speech in the Braille 'n Speak in several ways: not only can you adjust the volume, the rate of speech, pitch, and tone of the voice, you can also adjust how the Braille 'n Speak handles the announcement of punctuation and numbers. To change any of these speech parameters, we need to bring up the Speech Parameters menu. Press ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-chord) to open the Speech Parameters menu. The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Set speech parameters" and waits for you to enter an option. Should you enter an option that the Braille 'n Speak does not recognize, it prompts you with, "Invalid parameter" and waits for you to try again. To exit this menu, as you exit all menus in the Braille 'n Speak, press an e-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Exit". Let's run through the options available in the Speech Parameters menu: 2.1 Volume, Speech Rate, Pitch, and Tone The speech parameters for volume, speech rate, pitch, and tone are easy to remember and to change. To make the Braille 'n Speak talk louder, press dot 4; faster, dot 5; in a higher pitched voice, dot 6; with a higher tone, dots 5-6. Conversely, to make the Braille 'n Speak talk softer, press dot 1; slower, dot 2; in a lower pitched voice, dot 3; in a lower tone, dots 2-3. Each time you press one of the above dot commands, the Braille 'n Speak announces what you have done while producing the desired effect. So, for example, when you press dot 4, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Louder" in a louder voice. When you press dot 2, it says, "Slower" in a slower voice, and so on. Naturally, there is a limit on how soft/loud and how fast/slow and even how high or low you can make the voice. If you go too far in the "Softer" direction for volume, for example, you'll stop hearing the Braille 'n Speak announce "Softer". Don't panic. Just press dot 4 a couple of times to bring the volume back to where you can hear it again. Notice that we have not said, "Press dot 4-chord, dot 2-chord" or whatever. You are already in the menu since you pressed an ar- sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak knows that you are in a menu. Until you press an e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak thinks that any keys you press are attempts to make a choice in the Speech Parameters menu. Experiment with the volume, rate of speech, pitch, and tone to find a set of levels that is comfortable for you. The Braille 'n Speak remembers how you've set these parameters and keeps the voice set just as you leave it when you exit the menu, and even after you turn off the unit and turn it on again. If you decide to return to the factory settings for speech, or anything else for that matter, there is a way to do that. We'll show you how later. * 2.2 Announcement of Punctuation and Numbers Another set of speech parameters that you can change to your liking is the way the Braille 'n Speak's voice announces punctuation marks and numbers. * To find out the current status of the punctuation setting, from the Speech Parameters menu, write a p, and you'll hear something like, "Current punctuation setting is No". If you want to hear total announcement of punctuation marks - all of them, regardless of what and where they are - write the letter t (total punctuation). To hear most punctuation announced, write the letter m and to hear only some punctuation, write the letter s. If you want to hear no punctuation announced whatsoever, write the letter z. Remember, none of these settings is permanent. You can change them at any time. The Braille 'n Speak has two options for pronouncing numbers. You may prefer to hear numbers spoken as digits or as full words. Write the letter n to switch between these two modes. For example, if you write the letter n and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Say full numbers", this means that when you are reading a number, the Braille 'n Speak will say the number in words like "two thousand". If you write the letter n again from within the Speech Parameters menu, the Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Say digits". The next time you read a number, the Braille 'n Speak will pronounce each digit, like "two zero zero zero". You'll probably want to set the Braille 'n Speak most of the time to read in digits mode since phone numbers and addresses, zip codes and the like, are easier to listen to as digits. If you keep numerical data, such as money information for your bank account, in your Braille 'n Speak, chances are, you'll want the Braille 'n Speak to pronounce full numbers when working with that kind of data. * 2.3 Multiple Voice Settings As we've just pointed out, you might want to set number announcement to "digits" most of the time and only use the "full numbers" form of announcement when you're in the file that contain's addresses and phone numbers. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do that without having to go into the Speech Parameters menu every time you wanted to make this adjustment? Also, let's suppose you need punctuation announcement to be set to "Total punctuation" for a certain file, say, the file you're editing for a term paper. Then for your calendar file, you want only some punctuation announced. And finally, for the files you just listen to without proofreading, you prefer no punctuation to be announced at all and numbers to be pronounced as "full numbers". Now you can create up to five different configurations of speech parameters - or "voices". The voices are numbered from 1 to 5, and voices 2 through 5 are retained even if you do a warm reset. In the case of a warm reset, only voice 1's settings return to our factory defaults. The only time all voice settings are lost is when you have to do a cold reset. For more information on cold and warm resets, see Appendix A.) To set a "voice" to a particular configuration of speech parameters, first enter the Speech Parameters menu in the usual way by pressing an ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-chord). When the Braille 'n Speak says, "Speech Parameters", you can press dots 2-3-chord to move to the previous voice and dots 5-6-chord to move to the next voice. Once you're in a particular voice configuration, you can change speech parameters to anything you want that voice to have, and then press an e-chord to exit the Speech Parameters menu. This voice setting stays in effect until you change to another voice configuration. In fact, your Braille 'n Speak retains the current voice configuration the next time you turn on the unit. By the way, don't confuse the command to create voice configurations with the command to change the frequency of the Braille 'n Speak's voice. Both commands are issued from within the Speech Parameters menu but the command to adjust frequency is just dots 2-3 to lower the frequency and dots 5-6- to raise it. The voice configuration command uses those same dots but chorded.) Let's take an example. First note that from the factory, the Braille 'n Speak is set to Voice 1. By now you may have changed some features of this voice as you've worked through earlier sections of this chapter. But just remember that this voice you're now hearing is Voice 1. For purposes of this example, we'll establish Voice 2 such that all punctuation is announced and key click is in effect. And to distinguish it from Voice 1, let's raise its volume a couple of notches and speed it up a bit. Enter the Speech Parameters menu with an ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-chord). Press dots 5-6-chord once and you should hear, "Voice Number 2". Now that you've selected this voice, you can change its speech parameters. Turn on "total punctuation" announcement with a t. and "key click" on with one or two presses of the spacebar until you hear "key click, on". (Actually, you'll hear, "key space click space on" since "total punctuation" is on now.) Press dot 4 a couple of times to raise the volume and dot 5 two or three times to speed up the speech rate. Exit the Speech Parameters menu with an e-chord. From now on, this voice will be in effect until you choose another, even when you turn off your Braille 'n Speak and turn it on again. (Note: If you do a warm reset, the Braille 'n Speak reverts to Voice 1 but all other voice configurations are retained. However, a cold reset erases all voice configurations and your Braille 'n Speak reverts to its factory default settings for all of them. See more on cold and warm resets in Appendix A.) Once your various voice configurations are established, you can easily switch among them. From anywhere in your currently open file, press a y-chord followed by a dropped number from 1 to 5 and the voice switches instantly to your choice. You don't even have to press an e-chord. We'll assume the currently open file is the Help file, which is the file that is automatically opened the first time you start the Braille 'n Speak. While it can be useful to have all punctuation announced when you're proofreading, it can be quite annoying the rest of the time because even spaces are announced - all of them. So let's return to Voice 1. From your currently open file, press a y-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Voice" and waits for you to enter a number from 1 to 5. Write a number 1 (in dropped number notation, of course). The Braille 'n Speak immediately responds with, "Voice number 1" in that voice's volume, speech rate, pitch and tone. And if you read something, you'll see that punctuation is set to however you had it for Voice 1 and that numbers are spoken however you set them, too. A real neat twist to the capability of switching voice configurations is that you can incorporate the command into a macro. Macros are commands you can define to automate some functions you do repeatedly and we talk about them at great length in Chapter 11. For now, it's enough to say that you'll be able to create a macro that switches to Voice 5, say, and opens your address file, where Voice 5 has been preset by you to speak numbers as digits, for example. For now, just experiment with setting up two or three voice configurations and juggling among them until you're comfortable with the concept. There are several other speech options available from the menu, which we will talk about in Section 15.6. They have more complicated uses. But the basic speech parameters outlined here will get you started using the Braille 'n Speak with the voices that sound nicest to you. Hey, guess what? You are now ready to start reading and writing files. SECTION II: WORKING WITH YOUR FILES INTRODUCTION Before we can begin reading or writing anything in a file on the Braille 'n Speak, we need to talk about braille translation and ASCII. The Braille 'n Speak has a built-in braille translator for Grade 2 and Grade 1 braille. You may have heard the term "ASCII" (pronounced askee) from computer users. ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange - is a code used by most computers today that are accessible to blind users. You need to become familiar with some of this code in order to respond to prompts in the Braille 'n Speak. But wait! Don't panic. Basically, the ASCII character set consists largely of all the letters, numbers, and punctuation marks you already know. You'll probably not need to learn the rest of the ASCII character set, unless you're into writing Greek letters and other unusual symbols. The braille equivalent of ASCII (known as computer braille code) consists of the braille alphabet you already know plus some twists for punctuation and numbers. It's important that you be able to write punctuation marks in computer braille because they differ from those you know in Grade 1 or Grade 2 braille. In addition, the digits 0 through 9 are written in the four lower dots of the braille cell. 1 is a "dropped A", 2 a "dropped B", etc. You don't need to precede any of these "dropped" numbers by a number sign. Punctuation marks differ from those used in literary braille, but they are easy to learn. (See Appendix D at the back of this manual for a complete list of computer braille equivalents to the braille ASCII character set.) For the most part, you write in Grade 2 braille and the Braille 'n Speak translates automatically to speak back what you brailled. However, you must be in the appropriate braille translation mode for you to hear words spoken correctly, instead of gibberish. The Braille 'n Speak comes from the factory with braille translation set to "off", except for the "calendar.brl" file, where braille translation is set to "on". If braille translation is set to "on", the Braille 'n Speak assumes that the contents of the currently open file is Grade 2 braille and it translates accordingly. For now, just remember that the Help file we're using for practice, included in your Braille 'n Speak from the factory, is a file that has braille translation set to "off". After we discuss how to read what's in a file, we'll come back to this issue of braille translation to show you how to switch between modes. Now let's find out how to read what's in your Braille 'n Speak. CHAPTER 3: READING YOUR FILES You have control over how much of the text in a file the Braille 'n Speak reads to you at any one time. You can command the Braille 'n Speak to read by paragraphs, by sentences, line by line, word by word, even character by character. Or, if you prefer, you can command it to read the entire contents of a file without stopping. The Braille 'n Speak can spell a word for you. You can specify how much punctuation you want announced as you read. It can even read you the translation of the Grade 2 braille contractions - for example, "in" for the Grade 2 contraction represented by dots 3-5. 3.1 The Cursor If you've ever worked with a Perkins brailler or a slate and stylus, you are familiar with the concept of a cursor, although you may not have ever called it that. In computer jargon, the "cursor", used for reading and writing, refers to the electronic equivalent of your stylus or the brailler's punching mechanism. The cursor is very important because it marks the place where this electronic "stylus" is resting. You can't feel it anywhere on the Braille 'n Speak, but you can move it via commands and you can find out where it is in your file and even what character is "under" it. When we talk about moving through a file to read by sentence, paragraph or whatever, it means that we're moving the cursor to a particular place in that file and commanding the Braille 'n Speak to read from that location. Naturally, you can move the cursor forward and backward through a file. * 3.2 Navigating through a File Moving through your files on the Braille 'n Speak is much faster than turning braille pages. You can move instantly to the top or bottom (beginning or end) of your file, search for a particular word or move by a specific number of lines, characters or words. When we talk about "moving", we mean just that - moving the cursor from one location to another. It's like lifting a pencil off of one place on a piece of paper and then placing it somewhere else - perhaps on the same page, perhaps on another. Let's practice moving around the Help file that is open automatically the first time you turn on your Braille 'n Speak. To move to the top or beginning of the file, press an l-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top of file". To move to the bottom or end of the file, press a dots 4-5-6-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "End of file". Once again, notice that it does not read any text, simply tells you where your cursor is in the file. Knowing where your cursor is in a file becomes crucial, as you'll see, in writing. The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you left off in each file, even after you turn it off and turn it on again. Whenever you reopen a file, your cursor will be wherever you last used it in that file. * 3.2.1 Moving by Blocks of Text Now suppose you know to what particular line, character, word, braille page or even print page you want to move in your file. Earlier revisions of the Braille 'n Speak only let you move a specified number of lines backward or forward in your document but now there's much more flexibility. When you press the number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-6-chord), the Braille 'n Speak says, "Move" and places you in a menu with several options. Press a c- chord to hear the first option, "braille page". Pressing the spacebar takes you through the rest of the choices: character, line, mark, print page, and word. You can jump quickly to a choice simply by writing its first letter - for instance, w for Word or l for Line. Then write the number you want, using dropped numbers as always when responding to a Braille 'n Speak command, and finally press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Please wait" and moves you to the place you specified, and reads to the end of that line. It's important to note that if you ask the Braille 'n Speak to move to, say, line 5, you'll be on line 5 of your file, not five lines from your starting point. Likewise, if you command it to take you to print page 6 with number- sign-chord, p6, e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak will take you to print page 6 of your document, not six print pages from your starting point. * 3.2.2 Moving by Relative Blocks of Text On the other hand, if you do want to move by a certain amount relative to where you are, there is a way to do this with the number-sign-chord command as well. Press the number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-6-chord). But this time write l+3 (remembering to use the computer braille dots 3-4-6 for the plus sign and a dropped number 3). Then press an e-chord. Now the Braille 'n Speak will move you three lines forward from your starting location and speak till the end of the line. But remember, if you press number-sign-chord and simply write a number (like 10, for example) without indicating the letter designation of one of the choices, and without a plus or a minus, the Braille 'n Speak assumes you want to move by lines and places you on line 10 of your file. Let's take a couple of examples using the currently open Help file. Get to the top of the file with an l-chord so we're all starting from the same place. Now let's tell the Braille 'n Speak to move us to the tenth line of this file. Press number-sign-chord, l10, e-chord. You should hear, "Please wait" followed by a click or two, and then "Carriage return: 4-6-chord, (new line command". Now suppose we want to jump directly to print page 3 of this file. Press number-sign-chord, p3, e-chord. You should hear, "Please wait", followed shortly by, "chord". It just so happens that the first line of print page 3 only contains the word "chord" and the Braille 'n Speak read you just till the end of that line. Well, now that we're on print page 3, we just want to go back about four lines, say, and so we can press number-sign-chord, l-4, e-chord. We'll hear, "Please wait" followed shortly by "Protect all macros: n-chord, p-chord". Just for clarity, let's take one more example. Press a number-sign-chord, 3, e-chord. This time you'll hear, "Please wait", a click or two, and then, "Writing Functions". Why? Well, remember that when you just respond to the "Move" command with a number, the Braille 'n Speak takes you to that line relative to the beginning of the document. If you want to go back or forward a number of chunks of text from your starting point, you must include a plus or a minus after the letter designation, and then the number of chunks you want to move. * 3.2.3 The Text Counter One very handy new feature related to the number-sign-chord command is that it lets you find out how many characters, lines, and words you have in your file. This is great when your professor asked for a term paper of no more than, say, 500 words. Using our Help file again as an example, press the number-sign-chord and this time write a w followed by a 0. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Please wait" and after a few clicks, "3889". If this were our school assignment, we'd have to do some serious editing to get down to that 500-word limit. But luckily, this is the Braille 'n Speak's Help file and actually it's a very useful file to have around, even if it has a lot of words in it. All right, enough with the suspense. Let's look in detail at how to read what's in the Help file. 3.3 Reading Blocks of Text The commands for reading on the Braille 'n Speak are very easy to remember because they revolve around the position of the spacebar on the physical unit. To read the line, word or character where your cursor is currently resting, press a c-chord for current line, press a dots 2-5-chord for current word and press a dots 3-6-chord for current character. To move the cursor and read forward or backward by a line, word or character, press a dot 4-chord for next line and a dot 1-chord for previous line, press a dot 5-chord for next word and a dot 2-chord for previous word, and press a dot 6-chord for next character and a dot 3-chord for previous character. Notice how moving the cursor forward involves chords with the keys to the right of the spacebar and moving the cursor backward involves chords with the keys to the left of the spacebar. Another way to think of it is to say that chords involving dots closest to the spacebar are for lines, chords using the middle dots are for words and chords using the dots furthest from the spacebar are for single characters. If you want to move to the next or previous paragraph from where you are in your file, press a dots 5-6-chord for the next paragraph and a dots 2-3-chord for the previous one. The Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to the next or previous paragraph and reads you the first line of that paragraph. Again, notice that forward cursor movement involves a chord to the right of the spacebar and backward cursor movement involves a chord to the left of the spacebar. If you want the Braille 'n Speak to read you the entire contents of a file, or if you want to read from where you are in the file all the way to the end of the file, press an er-sign-chord (dots 1-2-4-5-6-chord). The Braille 'n Speak starts reading from your current cursor location, whether at the beginning of the file or not, and continues nonstop to the end of the file. Pressing a z- chord automatically halts the voice. If you're reading nonstop through a file and decide you want to stop at some particular point, pressing an e-chord shuts up the voice, and pressing a dots 2-5-chord stops the voice and reads you the word where the cursor is now resting. While you can't control the exact word on which the voice stops, you can control how close it stops to the word where the cursor is resting. The Status menu setting, Speak Words in Say-All mode, can make a difference. If the setting is turned off, speech is fairly smooth. Pressing an e-chord to halt speech places you at the beginning of a line of text, not necessarily anywhere near the last word you heard. If the setting is turned on, speech is somewhat choppy, but pressing an e-chord to halt speech places you pretty close to the last word you heard (if not right on it), depending on how fast a speech rate you have set. The faster your speech rate is set, the harder it is to halt it just exactly where you want. But you can get quite close. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Status menu" followed by the setting you last selected. Jump to the Speak Words in Say-All Mode setting by writing a right parenthesis (dots 2-3-4-5-6) in computer braille code. From the factory, this parameter is set to "off". Write a letter y to turn it on and exit the Status menu with an e- chord. Then go ahead and read from wherever you are in the currently open file with an er-sign-chord. Notice that the speech is somewhat jerky as you listen. Now press a dots 2-5-chord to stop the voice and check where it stopped. It should be either right on or very close to the last word you heard. You can turn the feature off again to regain a smoother speech quality by re-entering the Status menu and writing a letter n in response to the prompt for Speak Words in Say-All mode. Then exit with an e-chord. 3.3.1 Defining Blocks of Text This is a good a time as any to talk about the Braille 'n Speak's definition of "line" and "sentence". The Braille 'n Speak defines a "line" and "paragraph" based on the location of carriage returns or carriage return/linefeed pairs. (On a physical piece of paper, a carriage return moves you to the beginning of a line and a linefeed moves you down a line. You don't need linefeeds in a Braille 'n Speak document. You'll see why later.) The Braille 'n Speak sees all text between one carriage return and the next as a single "line" of text. It defines a "paragraph" to be all text between a set of two or more carriage returns and the next. It considers a "sentence" to be all text between one period, question mark, or exclamation point and the next instance of one of these punctuation marks. By the way, the Braille 'n Speak may issue a "plink" sound when you run across a set of two or more carriage returns. If you don't want to hear this, from anywhere in your currently open file, press an and-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4-6- chord). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Skip blank lines, enter y or n". Write a letter y. From now on, you won't hear any distinguishing sound to tell you that you've passed over extra carriage returns. (You can also change this setting from within the Status menu with the same and-sign command. See Appendix B.) In addition to reading by lines or sentences, you can read by blocks of text from 20 to 80 characters in length, referred to as "windows". (This is most useful when interacting with a computer or modem. See Chapter 15.) You can choose among these three reading modes: windows, lines, or sentences. To switch among modes, press a w-chord from anywhere in your currently open file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Speak windows, lines, or sentences". Whichever option you choose, a w, l or s, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". From then on, it will read you text in the mode you selected. Notice that you don't have to enter an e-chord to execute the command to switch among reading modes. This is one case where you don't need it. The Braille 'n Speak simply places you in your selected mode when you respond to the prompt. You can cycle among the three modes in a flash as you read. And the Braille 'n Speak even remembers the mode you selected last the next time you turn it on. As with reading lines, you move forward or backward a window or sentence at a time by pressing a dot 4-chord to move forward and a dot 1-chord to move backward. And of course, to read the current window or sentence, simply press a c-chord. Note: If you select the window option, you must also select the length of the window, preset to 80 from the factory. You can see its current setting by entering the Status menu with an st-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Status menu" and something like, "Interactive on". (Don't worry about that prompt right now. Just remember that whenever you enter the Status menu, besides the prompt confirming that you've entered it, you hear a prompt for the status of whatever setting you last checked.) For now just write a w to hear "window length 80". You may change the setting at this time to any number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak confirms your change by repeating it to you. Press another e-chord to exit the Status menu. Or, you can simply change the window length parameter from the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write a w to hear "window length 80". The number depends on how the parameter was set last. Change it to a number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay" to confirm. Now let's turn to another reading capability of the Braille 'n Speak. * 3.3.2 Having the Voice Spell Out Words What if you need a word spelled? Move your cursor to the word by pressing dot 2-chords (to go backward) or dot 5-chords (to go forward) until the cursor is resting on the word you want spelled. Press the chord for current word (dots 2-5-chord) twice to have the word spelled. In fact, you can continue having every word spelled as you move back and forth with dot 2-chords and dot 5-chords. Exit this "spelling" mode with any other chord. What if you need to identify a letter or braille character that is unclear? Letters like B, D, G, P, T, V and Z may sound alike when pronounced by a speech synthesizer. Press a dots 3-6-chord, the command to read the current character, twice to hear a clarification of the letter. The Braille 'n Speak first pronounces the letter and then gives you a word that starts with that letter for clarity. * So, for example, say you're on the letter c. Press dots 3-6-chord twice. The first time you hear, "c". The second time you hear, "Charlie". Pressing dot 3- or dot 6-chords now speaks each letter as a clarifying word, like "bravo" for b or "delta" for d. Exit this mode with any chord other than another dots 3-6-chord. * 3.3.3 What's the ASCII Value of the Character Under the Cursor In earlier versions of the Braille 'n Speak, three presses of dots 3-6-chord announced the ASCII value of the character under the cursor. But if you're not a techie, this can be confusing. So now the announcement of ASCII values is optional. The default value of this setting is "off" since most people couldn't care less that the capital A under the cursor is ASCII value 65 or whatever. For those of you who do care about such things, we have a setting you can turn on from the Status menu. Here's how it works. To check the current status of the "Say ASCII values" setting, enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord) and jump directly to the setting by pressing a dots 3-6-chord. You should hear, "Say ASCII values, off". Turn the setting on by writing a y and exit the Status menu with an e- chord. From now on, when you press dots 3-6-chord three times in a row, the Braille 'n Speak says the ASCII value of the character under the cursor - for example, 65 for the uppercase letter A or 97 for the lowercase letter a. Again, ASCII values are most meaningful to programmers, so don't worry if you don't understand the term or the two examples we provide. If you're interested though, a complete listing of ASCII values is in Appendix D, along with the computer braille code. Once you've turned "Say ASCII values" mode on from the Status menu, press dots 3-6-chord three times to enter ASCII values mode and go along pressing dot 3- and dot 6-chords to continue to hear each character's ASCII value. Exit the mode by pressing some other chord. When you no longer desire to have it active, turn off the "Say ASCII values" setting in the Status menu and return to friendlier-sounding, regular letters, punctuation, and such. In other words, when "Say ASCII values" is turned off, pressing dots 3-6-chord twice reads you each letter phonetically but a third press of dots 3-6-chord simply returns you to hearing letters and characters again and not their ASCII values. Are you confused yet? Hope not. Let's move on now to playing around with the reading commands we've explored thus far. Take a few moments to try out reading, using the currently open Help file. 3.4 Some Tips on Reading Here are a few things to keep in mind as you read your files. Depending on certain settings, your reading can be a breeze or a challenge. So read on. 3.4.1 The Automatic Braille Translator Remember that we said we'd come back to the issue of braille translation? Let's see what happens if braille translation is set incorrectly in a file. Get to the top of the Help file with an l-chord. Now press a c-chord to read the current line. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille 'n Speak 2000 Help File". Now let's play a trick on the Braille 'n Speak. Enter the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". Write the letter t (for translation). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille translator; enter y or n?" Write a y to turn on braille translation. The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you were in your file and returns you there after you're finished with a menu. So let's see what happens when we try to read the current line. Press a c-chord. You should hear something like, "Braille not Speak 2000 Help file". What happened? Well, the braille translator sees the "'n" and translates it into the word "not" - that's what. So the point is that if you ever get into a file that sounds like gibberish, chances are, you have braille translation turned to the mode opposite what it should be for that file. * Let's see what happens if braille translation is set incorrectly in a file. Get to the top of the Help file with an l-chord. Now press a c-chord to read the current line. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille 'n Speak 2000 Help File". Now let's play a trick on the Braille 'n Speak. Enter the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". Write the letter t (for translation). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille translator; enter y or n?" Write a y to turn on braille translation. The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you were in your file and returns you there after you're finished with a menu. So let's see what happens when we try to read the current line. Press a c-chord. You should hear something like, "Braille not Speak 2000 Help file". What happened? Well, the braille translator sees the "'n" and translates it into the word "not" - that's what. So the point is that if you ever get into a file that sounds like gibberish, chances are, you have braille translation turned to the mode opposite what it should be for that file. Let's get out of this, quick. Press a p-chord again to get back into the Parameters menu. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write the letter t. At the "Braille translator; enter y or n?" prompt, write an n. Now press a c-chord again. The Braille 'n Speak should read accurately again, with braille translation "off". The Braille 'n Speak remembers whether you want braille translation "on" or "off" for each of your files. When you go through your list of existing files, if braille translation is "on" for a file, the Braille 'n Speak reminds you by saying, "Braille file" after telling you its name. This issue of braille translation will come up again when we look at transmitting files from the Braille 'n Speak to a computer or vice versa, and it is a definite consideration when sending a Braille 'n Speak file directly to a printer. So it's worth taking a minute to practice moving back and forth between braille translation modes here in the Help file. It's safe. You can't damage this file even if you try to write in it. It is protected from overanxious beginners. When we get into writing, you'll see how you can protect files yourself. 3.4.2 Special Types of Characters The Braille 'n Speak can identify uppercase characters and control characters to you as you read through your file. Control characters are used largely for formatting purposes to instruct a printer where to place your text. Common examples include carriage returns, linefeeds, formfeeds and tabs. We'll show you how to write them later. As you're reading along in the Help file, practicing moving from line to line, paragraph to paragraph, and so on, notice that the Braille 'n Speak uses the normal inflections of speech - pausing at commas, periods and question marks. If you move your cursor forward or backward a character at a time though, the Braille 'n Speak reads an uppercase character in a significantly higher-than-normal pitch. If it sees a control character, it reads it to you as well. Now, take a few minutes to practice reading before you move on to learning about how to find text in your files. 3.5 Searching for Text in a File The Braille 'n Speak can look for a word faster than you could if you had a printout of the file. Since you can look for text going forward or backward in your file, it's probably a good idea to know where your cursor is located when you're starting your search. 3.5.1 The Location of the Cursor To find out where the cursor is currently resting, press a wh-sign-chord (dots 1-5-6-chord) from anywhere within your file. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Column 5, cursor at 119". This means that the cursor is resting on the fifth place on a line and that you are one hundred and nineteen characters into the file. If the cursor happens to be resting on a carriage return, you'll hear "Column 0" instead of any other number. Now let's search for text. 3.5.2 Finding Text You can search for text forward or backward through your currently open file. When you issue the Find command, you enter a "search buffer" - a scratchpad of sorts - until you press an e-chord. If you change your mind and decide not to search for this particular text after all, you can cancel the search with a z-chord. While in the scratchpad, you can write text (also referred to as a search string) of up to 63 characters in length. You can use the backspace (b-chord) to erase a character, just as you can when you're writing. And you can press a c-chord to see what you've written so far. Let's see how it works. Press an f-chord from anywhere within your file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find". Write a search string, the word "speech", for example, followed by an e-chord to execute the command. If the text is in your file, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to its beginning and reads forward to the next carriage return. If it does not find the text, you hear, "not found" and the cursor remains in the place where you started your search. If you want to reverse the search, start with an f-chord. But when you hear, "Enter text to find", write the text, followed by a th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6-chord). If the text is found, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to its beginning and reads forward to the next carriage return. If it does not find it, you hear, "not found". The Braille 'n Speak remembers the text you last asked it to find, even from file to file. This can be a handy feature when you're looking for the same text in a number of different files. Of course, turning off the Braille 'n Speak makes it forget the last text you asked it to find. Let's practice, using the Braille 'n Speak Help file as an example. Press an l-chord to move to the top of the Help file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top of file". Press a wh-sign-chord to see where we are in the file, just to make sure that we are where we think we are. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 0, cursor at 1". Good. That means that we are indeed at the very first character location in the file. Now, let's look for a word. Press an f-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find". Let's look for the word "read". Write the word "read", making sure to spell out each braille letter. Do not use Grade 2 braille. Remember? The Help file is not a "braille" file. It comes from the factory written as a print file in uncontracted braille. Now press an e-chord to execute the Find command. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Reading Functions". Notice that it found a variation of the word we were looking for, "reading". The Braille 'n Speak looks for the combination of characters we requested but it finds the first text it encounters that may include the combination of characters we asked it to find. If you had really wanted to find "read" and only that specific word, you should have searched for the string "space read space". For now, let's just use this example to find out whether there are more instances of the word "read" in this Help file. Press an f-chord again. Even though the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find" again, it still remembers that we last looked for the word "read". So let's just press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Read current line, c-chord". We could go along in this fashion, finding every occurrence of the word "read" or any variation of that word in the file, all without ever rewriting the word "read" at the prompt. In fact, even if we switched files, we could still look for the same word. Where are we in the file at this point? Assuming we stopped searching for "read" when the Braille 'n Speak found "read current line, c-chord", press a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Column 1, cursor at 1316, indicating that the cursor is at the first place on a line and that we are over one thousand characters into the Help file. Now let's press an f-chord. At the prompt, press a th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6-chord). You should be back at "Reading Functions". Press f-chord, th-sign-chord once more and you should hear the Braille 'n Speak say, "not found". All this means is that it did not find any instance of the word "read", searching backward through the file. That's fine. We knew that it wouldn't find one. But see how important it can be to know where the cursor is? Try finding a word or phrase on your own. Move to different places in the Help file as you search. Once comfortable with the process, you'll find that you can flip through a file and find a phone number faster than you can thumb through a rollodex. 3.5.3 Case-Sensitive Searches for Text The Braille 'n Speak disregards case when searching for text, unless you select it to be case-sensitive. To select case sensitivity in searching for text, before you issue the Find command, press a the-sign-chord (dots 2-3-4-6-chord). The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?" Write a letter y if you do want searches to be case-sensitive. Write a letter n if you don't. Most of the time, you won't want case sensitivity turned on for a search. Either way, the Braille 'n Speak responds, "Okay". From that point on until you change it, the Braille 'n Speak performs searches according to your selection. Here's an example, using our old friend, the Help file. Go to the top of the file with an l-chord. Now press a the-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?" Write a letter y and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". Now press an f-chord and, at the prompt, "Enter text to find", write "blazie" followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "not found". Either the word is not in the file or "blazie" is not in lowercase. Maybe it's in capital letters. To make the Braille 'n Speak let you write uppercase letters, press a u-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase". Press another u-chord to "lock" the Braille 'n Speak into uppercase mode. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Uppercase locked". This is like the shift lock on a typewriter or the caps lock on a Computer. Every letter you write on the Braille 'n Speak is now interpreted as an uppercase character. Press an f-chord. Now answer the prompt, "Enter text to find" by writing "BLAZIE" again, remembering that every character you're writing is in uppercase. The Braille 'n Speak comes back with, "not found". What's wrong now? It looks like "BLAZIE" is not in the file either. It must be that the word is spelled with only the first letter in uppercase. Let's unlock our uppercase and try again. To unlock uppercase, press a q-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase unlocked, okay". Now press an f-chord and at the "Enter text to find" prompt, press a u-chord, then write "Blazie". Remember, since you only pressed the u-chord once, only the first letter you wrote (the "B") is in uppercase. The "lazie" is in lowercase. Now press an e-chord to see if this time the Braille 'n Speak can find this elusive word. Yes. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Blazie Engineering". Well, that took some effort, didn't it? See why it's probably better to have case sensitivity "off"? Let's turn it off right now, shall we? Press a the-sign-chord. At the "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n" prompt, write an emphatic letter n. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". From now on, it should be easy again to find text without worrying about its case. The Click tip: When you have large files, you'll probably hear a ticking sound as the Braille 'n Speak is searching for text. The larger the file, the greater the distance the Braille 'n Speak may have to travel looking for your text, and the greater the number of clicks you will hear. But not to worry. Just be patient and it will find your text - if it is there to be found. Cancelling a Search: Even after you've pressed the e-chord that starts a search, you can cancel it with a z-chord. This can be handy with a long search in a large file. Well now. You're just about ready to start writing your own files. CHAPTER 4: WRITING IN YOUR FILES Before we can write anything in the Braille 'n Speak, we must create a file in which to write - or, in other words, open a blank page in our "binder" and give the file a name. And speaking of pages, let's talk for a minute about the Braille 'n Speak "Page": The Braille 'n Speak needs to know how many "pages" you want to use from the "binder" for each of your files. Each of these "pages" can hold up to 4,096 characters, something over four physical pages of braille. What's most important to keep in mind here is that you need to define the number of "pages" you want to use in your file. The Braille 'n Speak can hold over one hundred and eighty "pages". Remember, these are not physical braille pages, nor are they physical print pages. They are the Braille 'n Speak's version of "page". Later, you'll see how easy it is to determine how many physical braille or physical print pages are really in your file. By the way, remember from Chapter 1 that, when the Braille 'n Speak comes from the factory, it contains several files already. One of these is the file that holds your dictionary (called "spell.dic"). It is quite large, taking up 86 "pages" in your machine. While this still leaves you a lot of room to add your own files, you may decide to remove the spellchecker dictionary from your Braille 'n Speak to give you even more room for other files. It's simply a matter of how you use the machine and how often you use the Spellcheck feature. Even if you do remove it, you can always add the spellchecker dictionary again later. Also, even though you tell the Braille 'n Speak that you want, say, three "pages" in your file, you can change your mind later and add "pages" to your file or get rid of extra ones you don't need after all. The bottom line is that the Braille 'n Speak's "pages" are each 4,096 characters worth of space. Now, let's create a file and start writing. To do this, we first have to get to the Options menu and its submenu, the Files menu. 4.1 The Files Menu Like any powerful computer, the Braille 'n Speak lets you manipulate your files. From the Files menu you can: open an existing file and work in it, create a new file, rename an existing file, delete an unwanted file, even make an existing file bigger or smaller. One of the best features of the Braille 'n Speak is that you never have to "save" a file. Any computer user knows how it feels to work diligently in a file, creating a masterpiece, only to have it disappear into that dreaded, computer black hole. The Braille 'n Speak isn't like that. The instant you create a file and name it, that file is "saved" for you and anything you enter into it, is automatically saved, too - yes, even when you turn the unit off. As we have mentioned earlier, turning the Braille 'n Speak on and off does not affect your files in any way. It's like turning a radio off and turning it on again. Unless someone has come along and fiddled with the dial, you'll still be tuned to the same station when you turn it on again. * 4.2 Creating a File Let's create a file. To get to the Files menu, press an o-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Option". Now write a letter f. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "Enter file command". Notice that we didn't tell you to press an e-chord yet. The Braille 'n Speak is now in "menu" mode, waiting for a command. Only after you issue a command can you press an e-chord. Since our immediate goal is to create a file, let's write a letter c. The Braille 'n Speak now prompts you for the name of your file with, "Enter file to create". Let's call our file "practice". Write "practice", spelling out each letter, and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak now asks for the number of pages in your file with, "Enter the file size". Let's just write a number "1" for now. Remember to enter the number in ASCII or dropped number notation (dot 2) and press an e-chord. By the way, if you just want your file to contain one page, you can just press an e-chord at the prompt, instead of writing the number 1. Of course, if you want your file to have more than one page, you do have to specify the number of pages you want the Braille 'n Speak to set aside for the file you're creating. * Finally, the Braille 'n Speak asks whether you want braille translation to be in effect for this file with, "Use Grade 2 translator; enter y or n". The default setting is "on", so pressing an e-chord at this point accepts the default and opens the file for you. (Or, if you want to write in computer braille, answer the prompt with an n and Grade 2 braille translation will be off for this particular file. In either case, the Braille 'n Speak confirms that we have created the file by saying, "practice now open". You're in your file, a blank "page", ready to be filled with your personal data. But before we write in this new file, let's talk for a moment about file naming conventions. Filenames in the Braille 'n Speak may be up to twenty characters in length. We suggest that you name files with no Grade 2 braille contractions. (You'll see why later.) However, if you plan to send Braille 'n Speak files to a PC, modem, or our external disk drive, you must name your files using MS DOS file naming conventions to prevent confusion for yourself later. * And, if you name a file with a ".brl", ".bfm", or ".brf" extension, the Braille 'n Speak automatically turns on Grade 2 braille translation for you, assuming that the file is meant to be in Grade 2 braille. Let's briefly describe how MS DOS filenames work for those who may be new to the concept. Briefly, MS DOS filenames can have two parts: a "filename" portion of up to eight characters in length and an "extension" portion of up to three characters in length, separated by a period. For example, a file could be called "address.txt" or simply "address". But it's not a good idea to call a file "phonebook" because the PC will only recognize "phoneboo" and you may think your file "phonebook" never made it to the PC when you transmitted it. More on all this in Section 15.5 and Appendix A. For now, just be aware of the concept. Back in our newly created "practice" file, we're almost ready to write some text. But we still should check out some things first: We should find out where the cursor is, how much room there is in the file, and how to get help if we get stuck. 4.3 Where is the Cursor Press a wh-sign-chord (dots 1-5-6-chord). The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is empty". And it should be. We haven't written anything yet. Try going to the top of the file (l-chord) or end of the file (dots 4-5-6-chord). Try pressing a c-chord to hear what's on the current line. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "File is empty". 4.4 Room Left in Your File To see how much room there is left to write in your file (in other words, how much free space there is after the last character in the file), press an r-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Room left is 4,096." Good, that is the size of one Braille 'n Speak "page" and since we haven't written anything yet, we should have 4,096 free spaces left to use. As you start to fill up the file, this number will decrease. Don't worry about running out of room, though. We can make the file bigger, if we need more space. 4.5 Getting Help You may have figured out by now that the Help file is a brief listing of commands. It assumes that you know how to do things with the Braille 'n Speak and only want a tickler, a reminder, of the specific way to execute a command. It's very handy and is accessible from any file in your Braille 'n Speak. Just need to jog your memory about a command? Press a th-sign-chord from within any file. (By the way, the th-sign is a question mark in computer braille. This may help you to remember that chording the th-sign means help.) The Braille 'n Speak immediately jumps you into the Help file and says, "Help now open". Check through the Help file for what you need - with the Find command, say - and then press a z-chord to abort this procedure. You'll find yourself back in the file in which you were working. Try it out with your currently open file, "practice". 4.6 Writing Text in Your File Well, we're finally ready to start writing. Write the sentence, "This is a practice file to learn how to write in the Braille 'n Speak." Don't worry if you make mistakes. We can fix them. As you write, the Braille 'n Speak is saying every character you braille. And, are you remembering to write in Grade 2 braille? Let's see where your cursor is now. Do a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Column 56; cursor at 57" - assuming that you didn't make any mistakes and that you wrote in Grade 2 braille. We are at position 56 on the current line and we are 57 characters from the beginning of the file. Don't worry if your numbers for cursor location differ from ours. Remember, this is only an example. What's important is that the column number is greater than zero. Keep that in mind. Now do another r-chord and see how much room you have left in your file. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Room left is 4,039." You'll have to write quite a bit before you run out of room, trust us. Remember, you're using up Braille 'n Speak space, not physical space on a piece of paper. That's what's so nice. It's going to be important to know how to format your files for printing and for brailling. So let's take a look right now at how to do this before we write anything else. We'll look closely at preparing to transmit a formatted file to a printer or braille embosser in Chapter 15. Here we'll just focus on how you control what text goes on each line and each page, and in the next section, we'll work on preparing the layout of the text. 4.7 Writing Control Characters into a File In Section 3.4, we said that control characters are special characters used for formatting your files for printing. Basically, these special characters are actually codes that instruct the printer about things like, when to go to the next physical line on the page, when to go back to the left margin on a line, how many spaces to tab over, when to go to the next physical page, and so on. Some control code sequences get real fancy and we won't discuss them here. We'll concentrate instead on the ones you use the most in writing. A more complete list is in Appendix D in the back of this manual. Before we review the commonly used control characters and show you how to write them, let's backtrack for a minute to review the concept of word processing in general. Back in the days when you typed on a typewriter or a braillewriter, you were limited in many ways. You could never insert a word here, delete a paragraph there, change one word to another, copy text from one page to another, etc., without retyping. Word processing lets you do all that, true; but it also eliminates your having to worry about how many words fit on a line and where to hyphenate words, how many lines fit on a page, counting over spaces when writing in columns, setting margins, and so forth. One of the nicest features of word processing is this: the computer "wraps" words around lines for you, knows when to go to the next page, and even keeps track of the number of pages in a document. Let's take an example, using the sentence we just wrote in our "practice" file. At last check, our cursor was at column 56, or the fifty-sixth position on the line. And remember that the Braille 'n Speak defines a line as containing everything between one carriage return and the next. But anyone who reads and writes braille knows that the largest braille page can only accommodate at most forty characters on a line. When you print this file, the Braille 'n Speak knows how long to make each line because you will tell it with settings you control from the Status menu. (We'll show you more about that later.) The point is that you don't have to know where you are on a line as you're going along writing text. No bell goes off when you've reached a certain point on a line to warn you to go to the next line. Nothing alerts you that you're at the bottom of a page and had better take this one out and start on a fresh page. So how do you start on a new page, even if you've only written a few lines on the current page? How do you move down a couple of lines and indent to start a new paragraph? That's where control characters come on the scene. When the computer takes care of wrapping text from line to line and going from page to page, it is said to be doing "soft" carriage returns and page breaks. When you actually write a control character to force such an action, it is said to be a "hard" carriage return or a "hard" page break. A carriage return takes you back to the first physical position (or column) on a line - in other words, to the left margin. You write a "hard" carriage return on the Braille 'n Speak by pressing a dots 4-6-chord. Write a dots 4-6-chord now into your currently open file, "practice". The Braille 'n Speak says, "new line." Now do a wh-sign-chord. Notice that the Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 0; cursor at 58". This is because a carriage return brings you back to the left margin of a line. In other words, your cursor is now positioned at the beginning of a line, waiting for you to enter text. A linefeed by itself only moves you down one physical line but does not reposition you at the left margin of the line. You don't need to write linefeeds into the Braille 'n Speak at all, since the Braille 'n Speak has a way of appending them for you. This only becomes important when you're sending a Braille 'n Speak file to a printer or transmitting it to your computer. So we'll hold off on the discussion about how to add linefeeds until we talk about transmitting files in Section 15.1.2. A tab on the Braille 'n Speak moves you a certain number of spaces to the right on a line; you determine how many spaces. To tab on the Braille 'n Speak, press a dots 4-5-chord. Try it now. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column". Write a "5" and remember to write in ASCII notation (a dropped e). Press an e-chord to execute the command. Now press a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 4; cursor at 62". In other words, the Braille 'n Speak spaced over to the fifth position from the left margin and placed the cursor there for you to write something. Check this out by pressing dot 3-chords to move the cursor back a character at a time until you hear "return" when the cursor lands on the carriage return we wrote before. Now write, "Hello." and press a dots 4-6-chord to issue another carriage return. But wait. Don't we have to move the cursor forward to the end of the file to where we had previously tabbed? No. The Braille 'n Speak protects you from overwriting text. No matter where you last read in your file, when you write something, the Braille 'n Speak jumps to the end of the file and appends to it. So the "H" of the word "Hello." we just wrote is automatically placed on the fifth position of the line, just where we stopped when we tabbed before. The carriage return we just wrote after the word "hello" is now the last character in the file and anything further we write will be placed after that carriage return. A formfeed or "hard" page break control character forces your printer to go to the next physical page. This means that if you decide you want to start writing on a new physical page (not Braille 'n Speak "page"), you can write a control character so that when you print the file, text following the formfeed character will be printed on the next physical page. To write a formfeed, press an x-chord. The Braille 'n Speak does not prompt you at this point. Now write a letter l. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l". You have written a "hard" page break into your file. Now write, "This is Page 2." followed by a carriage return. By the way, you write most control characters in the Braille 'n Speak with an x-chord followed by a letter. Carriage returns and tabs are so commonly used that a single-key chord is provided for them. Later, when we talk about how to prepare a file for printing, we'll get into more specifics about page length, line length, and so on. All of those parameters, and more, can be adjusted as you need them on the fly. * 4.8 Writing Repeated Character Strings Before we start exploring how to format text, that is, how to make it appear visually pleasing, when printed or brailled, let's stop and look at a neat new feature that's very simple to understand and use. When you want to create a border or boundary between one block of text and another for emphasis or clarity, generally speaking, it's a good idea to write a line of repeated characters between the blocks of text you want to separate. Sighted people use this technique a lot more than blind people in writing because braille is so bulky anyway, why clutter it up with a whole row of stars or dashes or whatever. Even in braille though we see rows of dashes to indicate that a new print page is about to begin. We see rows of dots 2-3-5-6 (or parentheses marks) bordering certain texts in catalogs or math books. And certainly there are times when we want to leave a lot of blank spaces free on a line - not necessarily to center the text but maybe to leave space for someone to fill in a response, say, or to jot down comments about what's on the page. In any case, what we're talking about here is the ability to write the same character repeatedly for a specific number of places on the page. To do this, we can use the same command we used to create a tab, dots 4-5- chord. But this time instead of writing a number, which tells the Braille 'n Speak to tab over x number of places, we write the character we want repeated, followed by the number of times we want it repeated, and then press an e-chord to execute the command. Let's say we want a row of dashes to appear after the line where the title of a chapter appears. Let's use the title of this section as an example. In your practice file, go ahead and write a carriage return now to make sure you're on a new line and then write the title of this section, "Writing Repeated Character Strings" and another carriage return. Then press dots 4-5- chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column" and awaits your instruction. Write a dash (dots 3-6) and, for a print document, something like 65 (or for a braille document, perhaps 30). The number of repeats is entirely up to you of course and depends on the line length you have set. Make sure you write the number of times you want the character repeated in dropped number notation and then press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak instantly places you on the last of your repeated characters and awaits your next keystroke. You'll probably want to write a carriage return right away because otherwise you may end up wrapping the row of dashes you just created around to the line below and you probably don't want that. Technically speaking, you can't have more than 255 repeated characters but since that's well over one line anyway, chances are you won't want to use a number that high anyway and so you're unlikely to run into a problem with this limit. And of course, you can't use a number as a repeated character because when you press a dots 4-5-chord and write a number, the Braille 'n Speak assumes that number is the number of spaces you want to tab. As we stated earlier, this feature is most useful for creating visual borders around text you want to highlight in some way. Now let's move on to formatting in general, and there's a lot to discuss so we suggest you take a break now. Start that section with a fresh cup of coffee or perhaps tomorrow. There's a great deal to consider when creating well- formatted documents. 4.9 Formatting Text If you're already familiar with word processing, you know that you can control how text actually appears on paper. This is true both in braille and in print. You don't have to count out how many spaces are needed to center text. Even if you insert or delete whole blocks of text, page numbering is accurate when you finally print any portion of your document. You don't have to keep track of how many lines you've used up on each page for headers or footers to print out where they belong on each page. You can set up the margins however you want them and then readjust them for blocking text within your document. These are only just a few of the things a word processor can do for you. As to the physical appearance of the text, word processing can italicize text, underline it, put it in boldface, even change the shape of the characters you print. Depending on your printer, the selection of print types (fonts) can be huge. Of course, braille is rather limited when compared to the number of options you have in print. There is only one choice in braille for what an "a" looks like; whereas, in print, the choices are virtually endless. Italics, boldfacing, and underlining don't really exist in braille. But at least you can emphasize text with the dots 4-6 indicator. Nevertheless, there are many things you can do whether your document is meant to be printed or brailled - or both. You can center text, adjust margins, number pages, arrange for headers and footers to appear where they belong on each page, and so on. Therefore, although you have no control over the physical appearance of braille characters, you still have much to say about how text is laid out, even in braille. All of the things we've been talking about can be controlled using "formatting" commands. These are actual strings of characters that you write into your files to make the text come out looking as if you had physically typed it on a typewriter or braillewriter. Many of the commands we'll explore in this section work whether the file is a braille file - that is, a file written in Grade 2 braille, whether the file is written in computer braille, or whether you intend to print the file to an ink printer or braille it with a braille embosser. These commands affect the layout of the text more than anything else. Except for commands that change the appearance of characters, virtually all of them format either files to be printed or brailled. First, let's remind ourselves about the types of printers the Braille 'n Speak recognizes. We mentioned briefly early on that you can choose between Epson- compatible or Imagewriter-compatible printers on the Braille 'n Speak. We chose these two printers because they are among the most popular types of printers today. What do we mean by "compatible"? Well, here we have to get a bit technical for a minute but don't be put off. It's not so hard to understand the concept. Have you ever wondered how a printer or braille embosser knows when to go to the next line, to the next page, to center text, to underline it, and so on? As we discussed in Section 4.7, you can write control characters to instruct the printer to start a new page or move to the next line. You can also write special strings of characters into your file that instruct the printer about the layout and appearance of your document. These strings are not printed; rather, they signal the printer to pay attention and perform some command. But still, how does the printer know how many lines to travel to get to the next page? How does it know when it's at the end of a line and needs to move to the next line when you don't specifically instruct it to do so with a carriage return and linefeed? Printers are always busy counting: they count how many lines down the page have been printed and how many are left to be printed (or skipped). They can therefore tell when to change pages. They count how many characters (including spaces) have been printed on any given line and how many are left to be printed (or skipped) before it's time to move down to the next line. Even when you instruct a printer to skip lines or tab across a page, or to print some text in larger letters or "fine print", the printer is still keeping track of the physical space available on each page. That's all well and good. But unfortunately, complications may arise depending on your printer. Manufacturers program their printers to be able to receive our instructions. But most have done it in their own special way. The printer knows what to do because it has what are known as "escape sequences" that it understands. These are character strings much like the ones we talked about writing into your file but they are specific to a particular printer. So, in other words, printer x may use a certain escape sequence (or code) to perform a carriage return, but printer y may use an entirely different escape code in its internal programming to perform the same carriage return. In an effort to avoid confusion, many manufacturers are now programming printers to understand the escape codes that Epson printers and Imagewriter printers understand. So if you're printer is either of these, or if it is "compatible" with either Epson or Imagewriter - that is, if your printer can understand the same escape codes as Epson and Imagewriter printers do - then you're in business. Learning the formatting commands we're going to discuss is enough. Even if your printer is not immediately compatible, it may be possible to make it compatible by flipping a switch on your printer or by tricking it into thinking it's an Epson or Imagewriter. Check your printer manual, or with your dealer, or with the technical support staff of your printer's manufacturer. If your printer is not compatible with either of the types supported by the Braille 'n Speak, you'll need to learn the appropriate escape codes for your printer to format your documents properly for printing. In that case, rather than using the fairly uncomplicated commands we'll show you here, you'll probably need to use at least some escape codes in your files. Generally, escape codes begin with the "escape" character, a control character available to you, just like the control character for carriage return we've mentioned so often. To write an escape code that begins with the escape character, press an x- chord and then write an ow-sign (dots 2-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "escape". Then write whatever other characters make up the string. Remember, this is not a Braille 'n Speak command. So you don't end it with an e-chord. Probably a space is all you need to end the string. Having said all that, let's now return to formatting commands the Braille 'n Speak understands and that are supported by Epson and the Imagewriter printers. All of these commands begin with a $ sign (dots 1-2-4-6). Wait, isn't that the ed-sign? Yes, but it's also the dollar sign in computer braille. It's important to keep this in mind since, when numbers are part of a string, you must write them in computer braille. Also, you must surround all formatting commands with spaces. If you don't, the Braille 'n Speak assumes that you want to print the string because it assumes that the string is part of your text. Incidentally, in addition to using the dots 4-6-chord to force a carriage return (a hard return), or two of them to indicate a new paragraph, or a Control-L (x-chord followed by the letter l) to force the text to continue on a new page (a hard page break), you can use formatting strings. The string ' $l ' means "new line", the string ' $p ' means "new paragraph", and the string ' $f ' means "new page". Let's move on now to margins since they affect everything else. * 4.9.1 Setting and Adjusting Margins Whether you're intending to print or braille a document, you may want to adjust your margins - especially if you want to block off sections of text by indenting or outdenting it. In print, in particular, you may want to make all your text align to the right margin or to some left margin different from the one you normally use. You may want a bigger or smaller top or bottom margin. We have set certain defaults for you in the Status menu for creating ink print and braille documents. In a minute, we'll look at how to change these defaults with formatting strings. But here is how the formatting process works by default with respect to page lengths and line lengths. Brailling: By default, we assume a braille line length of 33 characters and a left margin of 1 character. Since you can have literally 34 characters across an 8-1/2 by 11 inch piece of braille paper, these defaults mean that you have 32 places across each line for printable text to appear. Your left margin is 1 and by default your right margin is also 1. In other words, the embosser will know that it must provide you with an empty space in the first place on the line, and then after printing up to the 33rd place on the line, it must wrap your text to the next line on the page. Likewise, we assume there are 25 printable lines on each braille page and a top margin of 1. Since there are a maximum of 27 possible lines on each braille page, your embosser will know that it must provide you with a blank line at the top of each page, then print up to 25 lines, provide another blank line for your bottom margin of 1 line, and then move on to the next physical page. Printing: It works more or less the same way for ink print documents, except that the defaults are a line length of 75 and a left margin of 10, giving you 65 places for printable characters going across the page and a right margin of 10. In addition, the default page length is 60 with a top margin of 6, giving you 54 printable lines of text. If page numbering is turned off in the Status menu, when the printer encounters the 60th line on a page, it forces the printer to go to the next physical page. If page numbering is turned on in the Status menu, when the printer encounters the 60th line on a page, it counts an additional 6 blank lines and then moves to the next physical page. In either case, you end up with a bottom margin of 6 blank lines. All of the formatting commands begin with the $-sign and most of the margin commands are followed immediately by the letter m, and then usually by some number specifying the number of spaces you want the margin to have. Let's take an example. The print defaults we provide assume that you have a print font whose size accommodates 10 characters per inch (going across the page) and 6 lines per inch (going down the page). Therefore, our defaults provide you with a one- inch margin all around the text on the page. There might be times, however, when you want to have different margins - say, half an inch instead of 1 inch margins. Let's see how this would work out with some sample numbers. Assuming you're starting with a left margin of 10 (which is literally 10 spaces from the left edge of the page and is the default setting for ink print documents), to set your left margin to 5 instead, write, 'space $-sign m l 5 space'. We place the single quotes around the exact string characters for clarity and readability. When written properly the string reads, $ml5 with a space written on either side of it. Our new left margin of 5 has actually brought the left margin closer to the left edge of the page by 5 spaces. Assuming your right margin is set to 0 (which by default is 10 places away from the right edge of the page), change your right margin by 5 with the string ' $mr5 '. For sample purposes, let's assume that page numbering is turned off, since this is the default in the Status menu anyway. With a starting top margin of 6 (which is also the default for ink print documents), let's change this margin to 3 with the string, ' $mt3 '. To change the bottom margin also to 3, write, ' $mb3 '. Since the printer's default pagelength is 60 with a top margin of 6 and we've now changed the top margin to 3, we should also change our page length to compensate for our new margins. The new page length should be 63, giving us a top margin of 3, 60 printable lines of text, and a bottom margin of 3. So our new settings provide half an inch margins all around the text on the page. If you want to increase the size of the margin you already have, and you already set it to 5, for example, you increase it by placing a plus sign (dots 3-4-6) before the number in your string. So you'd write, ' $ml+5 '. In our example, that would now give us a left margin of 10. If you increase the right margin by 5 with ' $mr+5 ', your right margin would be 10 spaces from the right edge of the page. When you want to return to a margin you had before, place a minus sign (dots 3-6) before the number in the string. So in our example, to return the left margin to 5 (5 spaces from the left edge of the page), you'd write, ' $ml-5 '. If you want to "outdent" text - that is, have text "stick out" on a line at the margin to the left of your current margin - write the string, ' $out '. The text following that string appears to the left of where you are by one tab stop. We'll talk about tabs in detail and how to set them later in Section 4.9.3. Suppose you started out with a left margin of 5 spaces and have now increased it 5 spaces further in from the left edge of the paper, giving you a current margin of 10. Then to make the first line of text "stick out" to the left of the rest of the text, write the string, ' $out '. Text on your current line begins at the 5th space from the left edge of the page, but then wraps back into your present margin of 10 on subsequent lines. This is especially effective for numbered items, like questions on a survey. You may have heard the word "justification". No, we're not talking about "justifying your actions". In computerese justification has to do with aligning text to margins. It really should be called "alignment". But since the lingo is "justification", we use it here, too, and the string that "justifies" text uses the letter j. Of course, text is normally "left-justified", or aligned to the left margin. Whether the left margin is at the left edge of the page, 5 spaces in (as we've set it), or however many spaces in from the left edge, text always aligns to the current left margin unless you do something specific to force it to align to something else. For example, you can tab at the beginning of a line to force text to start further in from the current left margin. When text "wraps" around to the next line, or when you force it to start on a new line with a "hard carriage return", however, it aligns itself to the current left margin. To "right-justify" text means to make it align to the right margin, however you have that margin set and regardless of how you have the left margin set. So, since we've set our right margin to 5 spaces from the right edge of the page, if you write the string, ' $jr ', all your text after that point will align itself to that margin. To return to a normal left-margin justification of your text, write the string, ' $jn '. To adjust text to align itself as much as possible both to the left and right margins (only in print, not in braille), you can w