I am a voiceover user using Leopard 10.5.5.
I have noticed this issue as far back as the first release of Tiger.
Basically, it's gonna be hard for me to type out what is happening,
being this is more an auditory based thing, so try to stick with me
on this. I really hope I don't confuse you all.
OK, I have a document up, o... let's just say, in, o? I dunno.
Text Edit,
we'll just say for sakes being.
OK, I have typed the following line of text in a new, blank text
document.
Please pay extremely close attention to how I've typed this both
gramatically, and also spelling:
The colors of tHe flag r red. white. and blUe?
Boy, this sentence is r'r'r'really! messed up!
Let's edit it.
OK, I go to the beginning of that line with command+left arrow.
I hear the word, The.
OK, so now I move word by word, with option right arrow.
The
colors
of
tHe
Whoops? We gotta booboo here. OK, so, I hit right arrow.
I hear space. UM? OK?
I hit left arrow. I hear again: Space. What in the heck?
I hit left arrow again. I hear E. aa, K. now we're getting there.
I left arrow again. I hear cap H. There we go. I need to delete
this and put a lower case h, instead of capital. So I hit the
delete
key, then type lower case h.
Now, if I read the current line with vo+L, I hear:
hhe colors of tHe flag r red. white. and blUe?
What? in the world? Why did it do? that!
I called a friend for help, and what he told me is the following.
I've
pasted his response below:
Wo wo wol Chris! Hold on here. Wol! Ur'r'r'rk?
Um? You're kind a failing to see something here: You're thinking
Windows again. Stop doing that. Voiceover, thank God, doesn't work
like JAWS.
You can't edit that way. The thing is, Chris, as you left and right
arrow, you know how in Windows, your insertion point is gonna be
right on the actual character that it speaks? Well, un?
fortunately,
in Voiceover, it's not quite that simple. In VO, it is actually
reading to you the character that your insertion point passes over,
rather than the way Windows does it, with jfw, by reading the
character you're sitting on.
This is why when you hit the left arrow then delete, it did what it
did.
Let's say, Chris, that you type the word Hello, but instead of h, e,
l, l, o, you did: h, e, k, k, o. Hekko? What the hell kind a word
is that!
So, you wanna get rid of those two k's, and replace them with l's.
Right?
OK, What I'd! do, Chris, is I would option right arrow, until I hear
Hekko. Now remember, Chris, you're not on the word Hekko. Because
you
were working to the right in the document, where are you really?
cor,
rect! You're to the right! of the word hekko. That is definitely
not
where we wanna be, is it? So hit option left arrow one time.
You'll hear
again: Hekko. Can you explain to me Chris, why that is? The
reason's, because now, you moved to the left! of the word Hekko.
See...
you're not
on the word actually. That's where you're getting confused. On the
Mac, unlike in Windows, there is! no such thing, as being quote,
unquote, on! a character/word. You have to be on either trailing
side of it, and depending on whether you've done left arrow, or
right
arrow, will determine which side you're on. OK, so now. We're to
the left of the word Hekko. hit you're right arrow. You'll hear
cap
H. however, watch this. read your current character with vo+C. Did
you see what it did? It said E. It didn't say H did it. ok, now
hit left arrow. What did you hear? You heard E again didn't you.
Now, hit vo C. Notice it said H?
See? it's telling you what your cursor passed over! not! what it's
actually on. so hit right arrow once. You heard E. Actually
though,
it passed the letter e, and since you're working to the right, it
now
is sitting on the right side of the letter E. So I betcha, if you
now hit vo C, it'll say K. See that? You're now actually sitting
on
the first letter K in Hekko. So, hit your delete key twice. now,
type ll.
Now read the current line with vo+L.
Hello
See? Mission accomplished!
End of response from my friend.
God! blessid! That confused me. I don't totally get what he's
saying about it passing over things etc. That's driving me to
drinking, as I can't hardly edit a document this way.
Is there any way to think about this differently, or at least, maybe
a way in a future update, maybe under navigation in the vo utility,
yall could make a checkbox, to make it behave more like Windows and
speak what it's actually under instead of what it passes? God. I'm
sure I'm not the first newly migrating user from Windows to a Mac,
who's ran into this. I dono if it's a bug, that yall didn't really
fix, as most people don't really seem to care, they just deal with
it, or if you all purposefully made it this way, but no offense. In
all do respect though guys, this! is outstandingly disgusting!
Ewww! Yoyk! You can imagine for people who have to work in other
languages that don't use the standard lattin based alphebet, you can
imagine for someone like that, how Godly hard this would be to edit.
Say in Arabic, you're wanting to type Allah.
Yes, you could do: A, l, l, A, h. but what if you're really typing
arabic.
Alif, lam, lam, heh.
now that is Not! gonna read with vo if you use the actual Arabic
letters, so, editting that? being you don't know what you're
literally, on, as it's passing things, not reporting what you're
sitting on? Now you got yourself a double! challenge. Trying first
to figure out what characters you got, and B, figuring out where
your
cursor really truely is sitting, not what it's passed over.
just, ya know:
Be aware of this. It is something that I really think you all may
wanna consider looking into as it's so confusing to me, it's almost
making me scared of Leopard, and really wanna use it less and less.
It just cfeels so awquard! Any suggestions?
Chris.
