Hi Maria and John,
I do not understand what you mean when you said that there is a bug with
the column reading mode. I tried it in both Braille and text documents in
KeyWord and when reading messages I wrote and received in KeyMail, and it works
as it should. Maybe I should explain how the column reading mode works as
opposed to the way the line reading mode works, and let's see if we're talking
about the same observation or not.
When you are using the line reading mode, pressing SPACE with dot 4 will
move the cursor from wherever it is--whether it is at the beginning of a line
or somewhere in the middle--to the beginning of the next line. For example,
Maria's post started with these lines:
Hi All,
I believe it was John Goddard who brought up the problem with the Column
Reading Mode performing the same function as the Line Reading Mode as opposed
to doing what it was supposed to do. Well, this is a bug.
In line reading mode, if I start reading the message with the cursor on the
letter h of "Hi", then pressing SPACE with dot 4 will move me to the first
character after the hard return, which is "I". If I press SPACE with dot 4
again, the cursor will be moved to the first character after the soft return or
line-break, which with my page settings, is the b in "brought". In other
words, the cursor moves line by line, always being placed at the start of each
which can either follow a new line indicator or a line-break.
The new line indicator is displayed as dots 1246, p, and may or may not be
displayed automatically depending on your setting for it, but will be shown
when the cursor is moved to it. The line-break is displayed as dots 1246, l,
and will be displayed only when the cursor is moved to it or when you are using
Layout or Edit Mode. Its position will depend on your setting for the page
width and if you have Word Wrap turned on. It is not a real marker but one
that KeySoft inserts when wrapping lines to fit in the page width you have set.
You can move to the character after a line-break by pressing SPACE with dots
45.
Now, if I position the cursor on the letter a of "all" in Maria's post that
I quoted in part, then still in line reading mode, I press SPACE with dot 4,
the cursor will still be moved to the first character after the hard return.
Even if I move the cursor to the b in "believe", and press SPACE with dot 4, my
cursor will still be moved to the first character after the next soft return.
This is where column reading mode differs.
Using the same example, if we read it in column reading mode, the cursor
will move vertically as if you are reading a Braille page and moving your
finger from the top of the page down towards the bottom in a straight vertical
line. If the cursor was on the first character of a line, pressing SPACE with
dot 4 will take you to the first character of the next line. Based on our
example, the cursor will move from the h in "Hi" to the I in the next line to
the b in "brought".
But if the cursor is placed somewhere in the middle of a line, pressing
SPACE with dot 4 will take you to the character of the next line that would be
directly under it if we were reading a hardcopy Braille. To illustrate this,
place the cursor on the letter a of "all" in the first line. Press SPACE with
dots 156 and check the column number that will be announced for the cursor
position. It says "column 4" because the letter a in "all" is the fourth
character on the line "Hi all".
In column reading mode, press SPACE with dot 4. The BrailleNote will say,
"believe", but checking your cursor position, you are on the first e of the
word "believe". Pressing SPACE with dots 156 to check the column number again
says "column 4" because this letter e is the fourth character on the line, "I
believe it was John Goddard who". Remember that this is a line in computer
Braille so contractions and capital signs do not count in our example, but they
will if you use column reading mode in Braille documents. If you do not change
the cursor position and press SPACE with dot 4 again, the BN will say "brought"
but the cursor will be on the letter u in "brought" which is the fourth
character of the line, "brought up the problem with the column", that you can
verify by pressing SPACE with dots 156.
If you press SPACE with dots 14 in column reading mode, the whole line is
read as it would be in line reading mode, but this is because the whole line is
treated as the entire row. The manual says that column reading mode is used
for tables, so that you can read the entries in a column, and this means its
purpose is to take you from row to row--which is the same as moving from line
to line--while keeping the cursor in the same column. Now if I have the
following:
1 a
2 b
3 c
then using line reading mode will only let me read each row, "1 a, 2 b, 3 c".
In column reading mode, if I want to read the column of numbers, then I route
the cursor to the first entry of that column which is 1 and pressing SPACE with
dot 4 will read, "2, 3". If I place the cursor on the first entry of the
column of letters, then pressing SPACE with dot 4 will read, "b, c". If the
cursor is on the tab between the two columns, then pressing SPACE with dot 4
will say, "tab1, tab1".
Like I said, I tried this with Braille and text documents in KeyWord and
with messages in KeyMail, and it works as it should so I am puzzling over
Maria's post. A bug that I will point out that someone else had posted to this
list before is that if you select to read your email using line or column
reading mode, you need to select it every time you open that same message or
another because the default of sentence reading mode is always set. This is
not the same in KeyWord.
By the way, there are other commands used in column reading mode that you
can read in the 11th paragraph of section 7.6 of the manual.
I hope this helps,
Kirstyn
