Good idea. I've gotten used to it now, but it was certainly difficult to get used to in the beginning. tom Rash Yucaipa, Ca ----- Original Message ----- From: Doug Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: JFW mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: December 21, 1999 8:33 AM Subject: A way to make JAWS and Windows apps agree on what a word is > [Mailed to the JFW users' mailing list and to [EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > This is a proposal for a way to get JAWS to quit repeating words > unnecessarily when you use Word-Left and Word-Right commands in Word, > WordPad, or similar applications. > > > As many of you have surely noticed, JAWS considers a "word" to be all > characters surrounding the active cursor up to the nearest space in both > directions. In other words, JAWS considers blank space to be the only > word delimiter. Windows apps vary on this point: NotePad agrees with > JAWS, while WordPad and Microsoft Word consider punctuation marks to be > delimiters. More accurately (I think), Word and WordPad seem to consider > a "word" to be all characters around the active cursor which are in the > same character class as the character under the active cursor. A string > of punctuation marks, for example, is considered a single word by Word and > WordPad. > > How hard would it be to add a configuration option to JFW specifying what > JAWS should call a word? This would then be used on an app-by-app basis > to make JFW aggree with the app, thus avoiding a lot of word repeating > when using word-left and word-right commands. My new students often get > confused when hearing a word two or three times when using word-left and > word-right commands when there is only one copy of the word present in the > document. > > Considerations I can imagine: Some users might prefer the current > behavior. Those users could set the new option for each of their favorite > apps such that the behavior remains as it is now. There may be subtle > variations among apps as to what they skip over with word-left and > word-right commands, but I'd hate to require users to list word delimiters > manually. I envision this problem being solved by two new options rather > than one: A user-settable pair of radio buttons, like, "Words stop at > spaces," and, "Words stop at character class changes," and an option in > the JCF file, possibly not directly accessible in the Configuration > Manager, which lists the characters in each class. I suspect this second > option would not need changing much at all and could thus be set by > Henter-Joyce in the shipped product. > > Any comments, further suggestions, complaints, etc., to this idea? > > > -- > Doug Lee, Computer Instructor > Blindness: Learning In New Dimensions (BLIND), Inc. > http://www.blindinc.org > > - > Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net - Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
