Re: Old versions of super nova
I actually think older versions are kicking around on dolphin's website sinse I've downloaded them before.
@Brad, I can't speak for nvda, which I've never tried, but I did briefly (for about a day), have a go with Jaws and I'll explain a few of the things I liked in Supernovawhich jaws didn't seem to do and which people who I've later talked to about Jaws don't mention it doing, though of course bare in mind I didn't use Jaws for that long. Oh and pleeeease! lets not turn this into yet another "my screen reader can beat up your screen reader's grandma with one hand tied behind it's back!" type of stupid debates. Much as there is a lot I like about supernova I'll freely admit the fact that I've used the dam thing for close to 20 years probably plays a major part in it too, and likely other people could say as much about Jaws. the days when for example Supernova worked less well on the internet (betwee n versions 5 and 6), or Jaws couldn't handle unnscripted windows are largely gone.
firstly, Supernova is very very customizable in what it speaks.You can alter amount of punctuation spoken on different areas of the screen, in different focus modes etc. For example at the moment I have capitals spoken as I Type so when a word is spoken (sinse I have typing echo set to words), I hear when it's capitalized, but not when I use continuous document read or streight up web navigation, unless I go by character. Also, I have numbers spoken as words when I am reading in various modes, but spoken as didgits when I'm typing.
I do believe some of this sort of customization is possible in Jaws at least, but where in supernova the settings to do this are very obvious, I couldn't find the jaws settings at all.
Another thing, supernova doesn't reformat the screen at all. What you read with supernova when you read a webpage is exactl y the same layout that a sighted person gets. There are lots of keys to skip around of course, headings (and different levels of headings), visited or not visited links, buttons, check boxes, combo boxes, edit areas, bullet items, paragraphs, table elements, graphics, the same as most screen readers do and you can change the reading order of columns etc. But the actual on screen text will be the same, this means that when you say are talking about "on the right" you can physically move that way. Also, though supernova has map files which work similarly to script files, these often are not necessary. Mostly if something has text or has a mouse area to interact with, supernova will be able to interact with it, it also is great at columnizing information and coherently moving between objects even on none standard windows (hence why it works so well with the smugglers games). For example I heard people created scripts for the Kchess games from arc angles software f or Jaws and window eyes, Supernova had no problem just reading the screen, going through the bog standard menus and pressing controls.
Another major thing is mouse emulation, not just left clicks but the hole lot, wheel movements, drag and drop etc. AGain, I'm not sure how Jaws handles with that sort of thing, but it's why for example the wastes scroll window is only a mild annoyance, as well as being great for clicking hotspots or random controls on web pages or sometimes on flash panes even when they're not links and sometimes even when they're not correctly labeled.
Another supernova function I really like is the ability to find on screen or on window text and move the dolphin ccurser streight there, and indeed to retain in sn's memory this text.
So for example when I played puppet nightmares and there was no clear heading, paragraph or otherstandard object to navigate to where the game text began and all the navigation links stopped, I
just typed "help" into the find box, then all I needed to do was press f 4 to be skipped streight to the gameplay area.
Supernova doesn't do the key grabbing thing jaws does, neither do you need to put it to sleep or whatever, indeed you can keep supernova on all the time if you wish and just flick the voice off, or flick the keys off, indeed frequently I've done things like been playing entombed, paused the game, turned supernova's voice and keys back on, answered some e-mail then just alt tabbed back to the window.
This is actually really handy for say if I'm watching a dvd and want to tinker with the controls, or if I'm listening to music with winamp and want to alter the audio settings or read the title of a track but don't want supernova reading the window.
I have heard people say supernova has a rather steeper learning curve than some screen readers, though sinse I learnt it with my first machine I c an't say for certain. I do believe sn is less for auto speaking incoming text than for giving someone various tools for reading on screen content, though it'll of course do stuff like speak standard popupps, install windows etc.
The only mildly irritating thing with supernova is lack of streight off support for programs that pass text directly to screen readers, mostly because I will admit dolphin were a bit silly about hogging the Api for quite a few years, which is why for example Vipmud doesn't work with it, though with support in things like the tolk library that is changing these days, and even if not you can either read the screen or mostly use sapi, or use a combination of the two.
Oh, and nvda not withstanding, supernova is also half the price of Jaws, and Dolphin are rather better about license agreements, ie, once you've paid for supernova youwill never have to pay the full 600 quid for it ever again. Your license covers three ocmpute
rs and you get all sub versions eg 14.1, 14.2 etc free, and thefull version upgrade ie 14 to 15 is entirely optional, you pay 120 quid if you wants it and not if you don't, and your quite free to miss versions if the new version doesn't do anything you want, and will still be charged just 120 quid for the next version. I for example have version 13 sinse that is the last xp supported version, but if I ever decided to use windows 10 and bought version 15 or later version 16, it's just another 120 quid, even when my mum upgraded from version 9 to version 13. It's a bit more if your upgrading from a pre version 7 version because of the architecture change I believe, but most people won't have version 7.
Of course as I said, I've only briefly tried jaws, and not tried nvda so I might be incorrect, but there are some of the things I like about Supernova.
And of course, supernova is really really hard and could totally kick Jaws ass, even i
f jaws like got all his mates to help cos jaws is a wimp and a weed and a wolly and supernova is like the terminator crosssed with wolvareen crossed with bruce lee and is totally awesome so jaws should just like go off and cry like a big fat sissy cos Supernova is the bestest screen reader ever and anyone what doesn't say that is a stoopid headd, cos only stoopid people like jaws, cos jaws is a stoopid face! .
Okay, hopefully that gets the childish bit out of the way so we can actually have a serious discussion about this .
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