Hi, see below copy and pace text from the QRead website. I understand and see the needs of such reader exist on windows. But honestly, i have my doubt of it's place on Mac. Again, it does not solve the problem of not able to read protected ebook or DRM file. It also does not read BRF or any similar braille format. The only advantage that i can think of for now is the ability to read Daisy format using QRead.
Cheers Joanne QRead: The Accessible eBook reader for the blind QRead is an innovative and powerful eText reader for the Windows platform. Perfect for students, professionals, and casual readers alike, QRead provides access to a wide range of e-book formats with support for bookmarking, searching, and more all in a convenient and intuitive tabbed interface. Enjoy the power and freedom to read Have you read a good book lately? Are you tempted by the thousands of books online but can't figure out how to read them accessibly? You've probably heard that the way the world reads books is changing. EBooks, digital versions of print books, have exploded in popularity. While people still buy print books, many more buy electronic books online and read them with devices like computers, tablets, and phones. EBooks are often more affordable, are more portable, and are easily searchable, making them ideal for today's lifestyle. There are hundreds of thousands of eBook titles available in various formats these days, ranging from fun and lighthearted to serious scholarly works. There are books for students of all ages from childrens books to textbooks for postsecondary classes. There are all kinds of novels, mysteries, romances, as well as cookbooks, biographies, and self-help books. Many magazines offer online versions as well. For the blind, this wealth of new material has offered a mixed blessing. On one hand the amount of new books and magazines available for us to read is unprecedented. Until recently, the only ways to read a print book were to scan it or hope that one of the library services recorded it. Now that publishers are putting their books into digital form on the computer, scanning isn't necessary anymore. However, if you have any experience reading electronic books as a blind person, you've probably encountered some of the following hurdles: •Books are in a variety of formats requiring many different applications to open. •Some popular reading applications are difficult to use with a screenreader •Some reading applications only read with their built-in voice, not letting a person see how words are spelled or change the voice that reads the book. •There is no standard way of keeping your place in a book, especially if your computer crashes! •Navigation, particularly by large blocks of text such as pages or chapters is often impossible. My name is Christopher Toth, and I wrote QRead to make reading fun and easy again. I need the software myself, and I want to help other visually impaired people discover the pleasure of reading e-books. QRead lets the reader focus on the content of books without worrying about the mechanics of reading. It has comfort and flexibility at its core, fading into the background as you reach the climax in a thriller or romance. Book navigation is easy and uses keystrokes blind readers already use with their screenreader, so they can focus on what really matters. QRead Features QRead is both easy to use and powerful in several ways. Here is a list of features you'll love in QRead. •QRead saves your place in each book you read, even if your computer crashes while reading. No more struggling to find your place if you need to restart your machine for any reason. •QRead lets each user use his or her screenreader and the voice they like best for reading •Searching for text in a book is easy and fast. •QRead can open multiple books, so students can move easily between books while doing research. •QRead can set multiple bookmarks in each book, helping you move quickly to important content. •Readers can navigate by page, heading, chapter, section, or percentage in a book as long as its format supports the type of navigation they want to use. •Books open quickly, and QRead remembers which books have been opened recently. •Users can copy text from the QRead window to other applications. This is especially useful if you want to quote a book for a research paper or speech. •PDF files open more quickly than in Adobe Reader. •QRead works with daisy files from Bookshare whether you keep your files zipped or prefer to extract them to folders. •QRead's search feature supports using regular expressions for powerful searches. Supported formats QRead currently supports the following formats: •PDF: QRead has industry leading PDF parsing support for extracting text streams from PDF. •EPub: Easy access to all textual content from an unprotected ePub file. •Bookshare Daisy: Open both zipped and unzipped bookshare Daisy files with support for requesting the bookshare user password. •Microsoft Office Word 2007 DocX •Microsoft Compiled HTML Help CHM files •Plain text files, also known as ASCII text files Understanding Formats Many of the formats mentioned in the list above may be familiar to you. I want to explain two of them in a little more detail. EPub is a new standard format many publishers use for their books. It's somewhat similar to daisy in that it can contain navigation by page, chapter, and section. EPub files can contain both text and images. QRead can read the text in ePub files. Some ePub files have encryption on them, also known as DRM. QRead can read unprotected ePub files. Pdf files are based on an older standard created by a company called Adobe. PDF files can contain text, forms, images, and graphs. Like EPub files, some PDF files are encrypted using DRM. QRead can read the text from unprotected PDF files. A common practice some companies use in their product manuals is to scan images of the print manual and put just the images in their PDF file. If they do this, there is no text for QRead to speak. If you open a PDF file that seems to be blank, this is often the cause. If this happens, you will need to use OCR software such as Kurzweil or Openbook to process and read the images. Test Drive QRead Would you like to see what QRead is like before buying it? That's a smart idea. We have a demo you can use with e-books you already have on your hard drive. If you're a parent or teacher of a blind child, our demo will let you try the software to see if the child responds well to the reading environment. The menus and hotkeys are simple enough that a child of 8 years or older should be able to operate the software comfortably. I want you to enjoy reading again and think you'll love QRead once you try it. Download the demo today. When you're ready to order QRead, our check-out system is easy to use and uses secure processing. You'll have your fully working copy of QRead in a matter of minutes and can focus on the pleasure of reading. On 03/12/2013, Littlefield, Tyler <ty...@tysdomain.com> wrote: > I have a few points here. > > First, my message was not an attack on Q or his software. I used qwitter > and while it was around it was useful. It had a lot of issues and rather > than rewrite it, it was abandoned for better horizons. Whether or not > you agree with this is sort of irrelivant as it happens all the time. If > it was freeware, then by all means the author can do what he or she > wants and that's done over and over again. If it was hope, I feel like > the author at least has some small obligation to the end-users. > > My points were that I do dismiss it, but not out of hand. I don't > believe it is fair to require $1200 in licensing fees from users before > you decide whether or not you'll make something. If I buy a piece of > software, I buy it based on the software itself. Having not tried it, I > will not pledge any money toward the future of something that may not > even be released or that I may not even like. > On 12/2/2013 10:12 PM, Alex Hall wrote: >> It's a book/file reader. It handles epub, daisy, pdf, and other formats, >> and can save your place automatically when you close a book. It has other >> features as well, but I'm not a user of the program so can't enumerate >> them. >> >> Yes, Qwitter was quite a big deal, but as I recall there were problems >> beyond users asking questions. Hope has not been updated, but honestly, it >> works well and is not lacking any features I can find, so does it really >> need an update? I'm not saying I would commit to buying Q-Read for Mac, >> since I know I would not use it enough (I read mostly on my iPhone) but >> look into this more before dismissing it out of hand. Yes, iBooks is now >> on the Mac, but can anyone really call using it a good reading >> experience? >> On Dec 2, 2013, at 9:55 PM, Teresa Cochran <vegaspipistre...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> I think I’d have to have a lot more information before I decide to >>> commit. For example, what books does it access. which formats. What are >>> its advantages over other readers? It sounds like a good thing in >>> principle, but what is it in practice? >>> >>> Teresa >>> >>> "We're made of star stuff."--Carl Sagan >>> >>> On Dec 2, 2013, at 4:43 PM, Dave O. <dave...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> Especially from a developer who's history is of abandoning software when >>>> his users start to ask questions regarding software bugs or features >>>> that he feels aren't important or worth his time. >>>> >>>> And I agree with Tyler. $30 is a lot to commit to for something when it >>>> doesn't exist. >>>> >>>> But personally, I don't give that developer a dime of my money. Not >>>> ever. >>>> >>>> Ask the users of Qwitter and Hope how they feel. >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "MacVisionaries" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>> an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> >> Have a great day, >> Alex (msg sent from Mac Mini) >> mehg...@gmail.com >> >> >> > > > -- > Take care, > Ty > http://tds-solutions.net > He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that > dares not reason is a slave. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
