Table of Contents About This Manual 1 Introduction 3 Chapter 1 - Getting Started 4 1.1 THE FIRST TIME OUT 5 1.1.1 The Concept of Files 6 1.1.2 How to Use The Commands 6 1.1.3 The Concept of Menus 7 1.2 MAKING THE BRAILLE 'n SPEAK TALK THE Way YOU WANT 8 1.2.1 Volume, Rate of Speech, Pitch, and Tone 8 1.2.2 Announcement of Punctuation and Numbers 9 Chapter 2 - Working with Your Files 10 2.1 READING IN YOUR FILES 11 2.1.1 The Cursor 11 2.1.2 Navigating through a File 11 2.1.3 Reading Blocks of Text 12 2.1.4 Some Tips on Reading 15 2.2 SEARCHING FOR TEXT IN A FILE 16 2.2.1 The Location of the Cursor 16 2.2.2 Finding Text 17 2.2.3 Case Sensitive Searches for Text 18 2.3 WRITING IN YOUR FILES 20 2.3.1 The Files Menu 20 2.3.2 Creating a File 21 2.3.3 Room Left in Your File 22 2.3.4 Getting Help 22 2.3.5 Writing Text in Your File 23 2.3.6 Writing Control Characters into a File 23 2.3.7 Selecting your Writing Mode 26 2.4 EDITING TEXT 27 2.4.1 Overwriting a Character 27 2.4.2 Backspacing and Rubbing Out a Character 28 2.4.3 Deleting Text 28 2.4.4 Inserting Text 31 2.4.5 Copying Text into Your File 32 2.4.6 Deleting Marked Text from a File 34 2.5 MANIPULATING FILES 34 2.5.1 Getting a List of Existing Files 35 2.5.2 Navigating Through Your Files 36/ 2.5.3 Opening an Existing File 38 2.5.4 Opening an Existing File by Its Number 39 2.5.5 Renaming a File 41 2.5.6 Write-Protecting and Unprotecting a File 41 2.5.7 Deleting a File 42 2.5.8 Changing the Size of a File 43 2.5.9 Free Space in the Braille 'n Speak 46 2.6 SUMMARY 46 Chapter 3 - Working With Other Tools 47 3.1 THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR 47 3.1.1 The Clock 47 ** 3.1.2 The Calendar 49 3.1.2.1 Checking Today's Date 49 3.1.2.2 Setting Today's Date 49 ** 3.1.2.3 Getting a Date from the Calendar 50 3.1.2.4 Inserting a Date into Your Calendar 51 ** 3.1.2.5 Calendar Alert 52 ** 3.1.3 Information About Your Files 54 3.2 THE STOPWATCH AND THE TIMER 56 3.2.1 The Stopwatch 56 3.2.1.1 Starting and Stopping the Stopwatch 56 3.2.1.2 Reading Elapsed Time 57 3.2.1.3 Stopping and Resetting the Stopwatch 57 3.2.2 The Timer 58 3.2.2.1 Finding out Time Remaining 58 3.2.2.2 Timing In the Background 58 3.3 THE CALCULATOR 60 3.3.1 Basic Operations 60 3.3.2 Setting Precision 61 3.3.3 Inserting Calculation Results into a File 62 3.3.4 Performing Percentage Calculations 62 3.3.5 Storing and Using the Six Memory Locations 63 3.3.6 Extracting a Square Root 64 3.3.7 Error Messages and Tips 64 ** 3.4 WORD EXCEPTIONS 64 3.5 MACROS 66 3.5.1 What's a Macro, Anyway? 66 3.5.2 Recording a Macro 67 3.5.3 Executing an Existing Macro 69 3.5.4 How to Check a Macro 70 3.5.5 Pausing a Macro 70 3.5.6 Write-Protecting Macros 72 3.6 THE ONE-HANDED BRAILLE 'N SPEAK 73 3.7 REVIEW ONLY MODE 74 3.8 SUMMARY 74 Chapter 4 - Communicating with Other Devices 75 4.1 INTRODUCING TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND SETTINGS 75 4.1.1 Cables 75 4.1.1.1 Serial versus Parallel 76 4.1.1.2 Gender 76 4.1.1.3 Number of Pins 77 4.1.1.4 Null Modem Cable Requirements 77 4.1.2 Telecommunications Settings 77 4.1.2.2 Parity 79 4.1.2.3 Duplex 79 4.1.2.4 Data Bits 80 4.1.2.5 Stop Bits 80 4.1.2.6 Handshaking 81 4.1.2.7 The Interactive Mode 81 4.1.2.8 Rejecting Ornamentation 82 4.2 THE PORTABLE DISK DRIVE 83 4.2.1 The Physical Design of the Disk Drive 83 4.2.2 Retrieving a File from Disk 84 4.2.3 Storing a File from the Braille 'n Speak to the Disk Drive 86 ** 4.2.4 Transmitting Textfiles or Applications 87 ** 4.2.4.1 Sending Files to the Disk Drive 87 ** 4.2.4.2 Receiving Files from the Disk Drive 88 4.2.4.3 Adding an Application to the Braille ''n Speak 89 4.2.5 Reading the Directory from a Disk 90 ** 4.2.6 The Spellchecker 91 4.2.6.1 Adding a Word 92 4.2.6.2 Bypassing the Word for the Rest of the Document 92 4.2.6.3 Reading a Word in Context 92 4.2.6.4 Correcting a Word 92 4.2.6.5 Repeat a Word 93 4.2.6.6 Getting Help 93 4.2.6.7 Overlooking a Word 93 4.2.6.8 Suggested Replacement Words 93 4.3 PRINTERS, MODEMS, AND COMPUTERS 94 4.3.1 Serial Port Active 94 4.3.2 Appending Linefeeds 95 4.3.3 Physical Page Format Considerations 96 4.3.3.1 Double-Spacing 96 4.3.3.2 Page Length, Line Width, and Margins 96 4.3.3.3 Numbering Pages 97 4.3.4 Sending Blocks of Text to Another Device 98 4.3.5 Modems and Other Computers 100 ** 4.3.6 Using Sophisticated Modem Protocols in Transmission 102 4.4 THE BRAILLE 'N SPEAK AS A SPEECH SYNTHESIZER 106 4.5 SENDING BRAILLE 'N SPEAK OUTPUT TO YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN 110 4.6 SUMMARY 110 Appendix A - Troubleshooting 111 Appendix B - Quick Reference 120 Appendix C - Technical Information about Serial Ports 137 Appendix D - ASCII Braille Symbols 138 About This ManualAbout This Manual This manual is your "road map" as you explore the Braille 'n Speak's modes, features and functions. In each chapter, we discuss commands and the tasks they perform; and, we provide you with detailed examples of how to apply them in your daily life. Each chapter focuses on a specific topic area and takes you through all of the commands related to that topic in detail. We point out those features unique to the Braille 'n Speak 640, but most areas covered are applicable to both the Braille 'n Speak Classic and the Braille 'n Speak 640. Here is a key to the map: Introduction: Tells you what a Braille 'n Speak is. Chapter 1 - Getting Started: Explains what to do with the Braille 'n Speak when you take it out of the box for the first time. Chapter 2 - Working with Your Files: Walks you slowly and pain lessly, step-by-step, through the process of reading and writing in your files as well as manipulating them. Chapter 3 - Working with Other Tools: Gives you a guided tour of the Braille 'n Speak's built-in tools - the calendar, the calcu lator, the stopwatch, the timer, and much more - with practical examples of how you can optimize their power. Chapter 4 - Communicating with Other Devices: Works through the complicated business of file transfers, printing considerations and working with the external disk drive, all in simple language without the technobabble you usually find in discussions of telecommunications. Appendix A - Troubleshooting: Answers commonly asked questions about file recovery, file transfer screw-ups, and the like. Appendix B - Quick Reference: Provides a complete listing of Braille 'n Speak Classic and Braille 'n Speak 640 commands, organized by subject. Appendix C - Technical Information about Serial Ports: Provides technical specifications about the serial ports in the Braille 'n Speak for connecting the unit to nonstandard devices. Appendix D - Computer Braille Code: Provides a complete table for the ASCII character set in computer braille. By the time you finish exploring the Braille 'n Speak universe, you'll wonder how you managed without it. So let's get started! Introduction What Is a Braille 'n Speak? The Braille 'n Speak is a computer that lets you braille into it and responds to you with speech. It can translate your Grade 2 or Grade 1 braille into spoken words through its built-in speech synthesizer. Weighing less than one pound, and having its own internal, re chargeable battery and storage, this powerful computer can act as your notebook, your rollodex, your calendar, your calculator, your stopwatch, your timer, and much more. You can use a Braille 'n Speak comfortably and unobtrusively at a meeting, on a street corner or a subway, just as anyone uses a pencil and notepad. The Braille 'n Speak can "talk" with other computers - whether it's to store information on a disk or print it to a printer, or take information from another computer and store it for you to read later. It can also link you to a wealth of information through the phone by using an external modem: news, shopping, research, conversation with other computer users, and so on.). If you have a personal computer with a screen access program (ASAP, Vocal-Eyes, Jaws - just to mention a few popular ones), you can turn your Braille 'n Speak into a portable speech synthe sizer through its "speech box" mode. This can come in handy if you're on the go a lot and want to minimize the gear you carry or you suddenly have to access a computer at a colleague's desk (in a hurry). It's much easier to carry a floppy with your screen access program on it and your Braille 'n Speak than to carry around an extra speech synthesizer. There are two models of the Braille 'n Speak: the Braille 'n Speak 640 and the Braille 'n Speak Classic. The major difference between them is the capacity of the built-in storage. The 640 can store over six hundred physical pages of braille (or 640K of random-access memory) whereas the Braille 'n Speak Classic can store over two hundred physical pages of braille (or 180K). Most commands are the same in both units, although there are some features unique to the Braille 'n Speak 640. We will highlight these differences for you as they arise. Overall, explanations apply to both models. Chapter 1 - Getting Started Let's start by giving the Braille 'n Speak a physical to see what it looks like and to learn the basics about its use. The Braille 'n Speak is about the size of a video cassette. Its keyboard consists of the standard seven-key, Perkins-style braillewriter. The five rubber feet on its bottom prevent the machine from sliding around as you work. Place the unit in front of you with the spacebar closest to you - the usual position in which you operate your braillewriter. Find the right corner closest to you and slide your finger toward the back of the unit. About halfway, you'll find the "on/off" rocker switch. To turn the Braille 'n Speak on, rock the switch away from you; to turn it off, rock it toward you. Immediately in back of the "on/off" rocker switch is an earphone jack. You can also use this jack to connect your Braille 'n Speak to an external speaker or a patch cord to send the Braille 'n Speak's voice output to a tape recorder. Now, find the left corner of the unit that is closest to you. Slide your finger toward the back of the unit and find two rectangular openings with a bunch of little pins in each of them. These openings (called ports) are used to connect the Braille 'n Speak to other devices. The port closest to you is used to connect the Braille 'n Speak to a portable disk drive (also available from Blazie Engineering). Immediately in back of the disk drive port is a second port (called a serial port or an RS-232 port), which is used to connect the Braille 'n Speak to printers, other computers, and modems. In back of the two ports is the input jack for the A.C. power supply/battery charger. (WARNING: When charging the Braille 'n Speak's built-in battery, you should use the wall transformer supplied with the unit, designed to provide the necessary voltage and current. Substituting another transformer which looks or feels like the correct one but which has the incorrect voltage requirements could cause the destruction of chips or other critical parts of the Braille 'n Speak. Under normal usage, a fully-charged Braille 'n Speak functions properly under battery power from fifteen to twenty hours, and it only takes eight hours to fully charge a Braille 'n Speak. However, the length of time a Braille 'n Speak can function under battery power varies according to how you use it. For example, to use the Braille 'n Speak to communicate with another computer, you must activate the serial port. Heavy use of the serial port with the Braille 'n Speak on battery power rather than on A.C. drains the battery more quickly. (Note: We offer an emergency cable that lets you power the Braille 'n Speak from an external battery, should you be unable to charge your battery immediate ly.) There is a handy safety feature on the Braille 'n Speak relevant to battery usage. The Braille 'n Speak warns you when the battery starts getting low and continues to warn you every time you press a key, until you take action. Experiment with your individual machine to see how much time it actually operates after the "Battery Low" message first occurs. Operating your Braille 'n Speak for too long a time at this low voltage condi tion may cause the "scrambling" of data stored in the machine. Should this happen, you may be able to recover the data, as you'll see later. If you do decide to experiment with the length of battery usage and your data, don't have any data you desper ately need to keep - at least not until you are familiar with how to recover data on the Braille 'n Speak. The Braille 'n Speak comes fully charged from the factory. But eventually you'll need to recharge the battery. Once you have done so, you must remember to set the Battery Use Timer. We'll show you how to do that shortly. The optimal way to use the Braille 'n Speak is to keep it turned off most of the time when you are not in direct contact with it. In other words, if you are not reading, writing, computing or transmitting data, keep the unit turned off. The beauty is that turning it off does not erase your data and turning it back on instantaneously places you wherever you had stopped. In fact, the Braille 'n Speak does not like to be ignored and reminds you that it is still turned on with a "hello" message if 600you have not pressed a key within five minutes. And it continues to try to get your attention in this way until you react - either by pressing a key or by turning it off. Now, let's go to work. 1.1 THE FIRST TIME OUT Let's assume that you're starting from scratch, with the Braille 'n Speak set up as it comes straight from the factory. Turn the Braille 'n Speak "on" by flipping the "on/off" rocker switch away from you. The unit says, "Braille 'n Speak ready; Help is open." If this does not happen, flip the rocker switch back toward you to the "off" position and plug the A.C. power supply/battery charger into the A.C. jack and flip the switch "on" again. You should then hear the announcement, "Braille 'n Speak ready; Help is open". Once you're comfortable with the Braille 'n Speak, or if you're in a setting where the Braille 'n Speak's start-up prompt might disturb a meeting, for example, you may choose to start up the Braille 'n Speak silently. To do this, simply hold down the spacebar as you turn on the unit. A click indicates that the Braille 'n Speak is ready for use. 1.1.1 The Concept of Files Think of the Braille 'n Speak, as it comes from the factory, as a nearly empty, three-ring binder just waiting for you to fill it with your own personal data. Usually, a three- ring binder comes with tabs, or separators of some kind, to indicate the start of a new section in the binder. The Braille 'n Speak comes with a couple of "files" ready for your use: the Help file contains a summary of the commands you use to operate the Braille 'n Speak; the Clipboard is like a blank scratchpad (more on this later). The 640 includes an additional file, a calendar, for you to start filling up with your busy schedule. When you start up the Braille 'n Speak for the first time, after the announcement, "Braille 'n Speak ready", you hear the prompt, "Help is open." As we mentioned earlier, the Braille 'n Speak keeps your place for you wherever you left off whenever you turn it off. When you turn it on, it reminds you where you left off by announcing the name of the file that you left open. Since this is your first time turning the unit on, it announces that you have the Help file open. 1.1.2 How to Use The Commands All of the Braille 'n Speak's commands are produced by "chord ing". If you've ever played a piano or other keyboard instru ment, you know that a chord refers to any two or more keys pressed together. Isn't that what you do anyway when you braille, you might ask? Yes. But for our purposes, "chording" refers to the pressing of any combination of braille dots along with the spacebar. So, for example, if we say, "Press the l- chord", we mean, "Press the spacebar together with dots 1-2-3 (the braille letter l), making sure to press all the keys simul taneously. Whenever we refer to a chord for a braille symbol other than a letter of the alphabet, we will write out the exact dots to be pressed in parentheses for clarity. So, for example, when referring to an "ar-sign" in Grade 2 braille, we will also write out "dots 3-4-5" in parentheses. There are several levels of commands in the Braille 'n Speak: commands for menus of options, commands for navigating through your files and for performing various editing functions within those files, and commands for utilizing the Braille 'n Speak's built-in tools, such as running the stopwatch or storing to a floppy disk or computing a formula. We'll get to each of these in separate chapters. For now, let's just stick to the basic commands you'll use to get started. The Braille 'n Speak is pretty forgiving when it comes to abort ing the processing of a command. You usually press an e-chord to "enter" or "execute" a command, but most of the time, if you change your mind in midstream, you can cancel the process with a z-chord. Depending on what you are doing, the Braille 'n Speak responds to an e-chord either by performing some command or by exiting a menu that you have entered (more on this later). But if you do halt the processing of a command with a z-chord, the Braille 'n Speak announces, "Abort". Whew! 1.1.3 The Concept of Menus As we mentioned above, the Braille 'n Speak has a set of commands for working with menus. Just as a restaurant menu offers you choices of food, menus on a computer offer you choices of func tions to perform. And a "submenu" offers more levels of choice. Continuing our restaurant menu analogy, let's say that the major menu is for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Then if you pick the dinner menu, you'll see choices for appetizers, entrees, deserts and beverages. Clearly, you'll then need to check out each of those sets of choices for which appetizer, entree and beverage you want - and, if you're very good, you'll skip the set of desert choices. The Braille 'n Speak's menu system works very much like a restau rant menu: Basically, there is an Options menu, a Speech Parame ters menu, a Status menu and a Parameters menu. Like the desert menu, each menu in the Braille 'n Speak provides you with choices of its own. For example, from the Options menu, you can choose between Files, Date, Time, Stopwatch and Calculator. Some of the menus are for performing functions, and issuing commands. Some are for setting things to work to your specifications - like turning a setting on or off or switching among its various modes. We'll get into the menus as we need to in this manual. For now, just remember that when you first turn on the Braille 'n Speak, you'll always be in the last file you worked on wherever you had left off in that file. If you want to do something from a menu, you have to issue a command to get to the menu. What's nice is that when you're finished with the menu, the Braille 'n Speak remembers to put you right back into your file, just where you last used it. 1.2 MAKING THE BRAILLE 'n SPEAK TALK THE Way YOU WANT Before we look at the files that come in the Braille 'n Speak from the factory, let's get the unit talking in the way that is most comfortable for you. You can adjust the speech in the Braille 'n Speak in several ways: not only can you adjust the volume, the rate of speech and the pitch and tone of the voice, but you can also adjust how the Braille 'n Speak handles the announcement of punctuation and numbers. To change any of these speech parameters, we use a command to take us into a menu of options for setting speech parameters. Press ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5) to open the Speech Parameters menu. The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Set speech parame ters" and waits for you to enter an option. Should you enter an option that the Braille 'n Speak does not recognize, it prompts you with, "Invalid parameter" and waits for you to try again. To exit this menu, as you exit all menus in the Braille 'n Speak, press an e-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Exit". Let's run through the options available in the Speech Parameters menu: 1.2.1 Volume, Rate of Speech, Pitch, and Tone The speech parameters for volume, rate of speech, pitch, and tone are easy to manipulate. To make the Braille 'n Speak talk louder press dot 4, faster dot 5, in a higher pitched voice dot 6, with a higher tone dots 5-6. Conversely, to make the Braille 'n Speak talk softer press dot 1, slower dot 2, in a lower pitched voice dot 3, in a lower tone dots 2-3. Each time you press one of the above dot commands, the Braille 'n Speak announces what you have done while producing the desired effect. So, for example, when you press dot 4, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Louder" in a louder voice. When you press dot 2, it says, "Slower" in a slower voice, and so on. Naturally, there is a limit as to how soft/loud and how fast/slow and even how high or low you can make the voice. If you go too far in the "Softer" direction for volume, for example, you'll stop hearing the Braille 'n Speak announce "Softer". Don't panic. Just press dot 4 a couple of times to bring the volume back to where you can hear it again. Notice that we have not said, "Press dot 4-chord, dot 2-chord" or whatever. You are already in the menu since you pressed an ar- sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak knows that you are in a menu. Until you press an e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak thinks that any keys you press are attempts to make a choice in the Speech Parameters menu. Experiment with the volume, rate of speech, pitch, and tone to find a set of levels that is comfortable for you. The Braille 'n Speak remembers how you've set these parameters and keeps the voice set just as you leave it when you exit the menu and even after you turn off the unit and turn it on again. If you decide to return to the factory settings for speech, or anything else for that matter, there is a way to do that. We'll show you later. 1.2.2 Announcement of Punctuation and Numbers Another set of speech parameters that you can change to your liking in the Braille 'n Speak has to do with the way in which the Braille 'n Speak handles the announcement of punctuation marks and numbers. If you want to hear a total announcement of punctuation marks - all of them, regardless of what and where they are - write the letter t (total punctuation). To hear most punctuation announced, write the letter m and to hear only some punctuation, write the letter s. If you want to hear no punctua tion announced whatsoever, write the letter z. Remember, none of these settings is permanent. You can change them at any time. The Braille 'n Speak has two options for pronouncing numbers. You may prefer to hear numbers spoken as digits or as full words. Write the letter n to switch between these two modes. For exam ple, if you write the letter n and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Full numbers", this means that when you are reading a number, the Braille 'n Speak will say the full number, like "two thou sand". If you write the letter n again from within the Speech Parameters menu, the Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Digits". The next time you read a number, the Braille 'n Speak will pronounce each digit, like "two zero zero zero". You'll probably want to set the Braille 'n Speak to read in digits most of the time since phone numbers and addresses, zip codes and the like, are easier to listen to as digits. If you keep numerical data, such as money information for your bank account, in your Braille 'n Speak, chances are that you'll want the Braille 'n Speak to pronounce full numbers to you for those times when you need that specific information read to you. There are several other speech options available from the menu, which we will talk about in Chapter 4. They have more complicat ed uses. For now, the basic speech parameters outlined here will get you started using the Braille 'n Speak with the most comfort able voice for you. You are now ready to start reading and writing files. Chapter 2 - Working with Your FilesChapter 2 - Working with Your Files Before we can begin reading or writing anything in a file on the Braille 'n Speak, we need to talk about braille translation and ASCII. The Braille 'n Speak has a built-in braille translator for Grade 2 and Grade 1 braille. You may have heard the term "ASCII" (pro nounced ask-ee) from computer users. ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange - is a code used by most comput ers today that are accessible to blind users. You need to become familiar with some of this code in order to respond to prompts in the Braille 'n Speak. But wait! Don't panic. Basically, the ASCII character set consists of all the letters and numbers, punctuation marks, etc., with which you are already acquainted. You'll probably not need to learn the rest of the ASCII character set, unless you're into writing Greek letters and other unusual symbols. The braille equivalent of ASCII (known as computer braille code) consists of the braille alphabet you already know plus some twists for punctuation and numbers. It's important that you be able to write punctuation marks in computer braille as they differ from those you know in Grade 1 or Grade 2 braille. In addition, the digits 0 through 9 are written in the four lower dots of the braille cell. 1 is a "dropped A", 2 a "dropped B" etc. You don't need to precede any of these "dropped" numbers by a number sign. Punctuation marks differ from those used in literary braille but they are easy to learn. (See Appendix D at the back of this manual for a complete list of computer braille equiva lents to the braille ASCII character set.) For the most part, you write in Grade 2 braille and the Braille 'n Speak translates automatically to speak back what you brail led. However, you must be in the appropriate braille translation mode for you to hear words spoken back to you instead of gibber ish. The Braille 'n Speak Classic comes from the factory with braille translation set to "off". (Note: The 640 comes from the factory with braille translation set to "off" except for the "calendar" file, where braille translation is set to "on".) If braille translation is set to "on", the Braille 'n Speak assumes that the contents of the currently open file is Grade 2 braille and it translates accordingly. For now, just remember that the Help file we're using for prac tice, included in your Braille 'n Speak from the factory, is a file that has braille translation set to "off". After we discuss how to read what's in a file, we'll come back to this issue of braille translation to show you how to switch between modes. Now let's find out how to read what's in your Braille 'n Speak. 2.1 READING IN YOUR FILES You have control over how much of the text in a file the Braille 'n Speak reads to you at any one time. You can command the Braille 'n Speak to read by paragraphs, by sentences, line by line, word by word, even character by character. Or, if you prefer, you can command it to read the entire contents of a file without stopping. You can have it spell a word for you. You can specify the level of punctuation you want announced as you read. It can even read you the translation of many of the Grade 2 braille contractions or at least tell you what dots make up a character - for example, "in" for the Grade 2 contraction represented by dots 3-5 or "3-4" for the Grade 2 braille contrac tion for "st". 2.1.1 The Cursor If you've ever worked with a Perkins brailler or a slate and sty lus, you are familiar with the concept of a cursor, although you may not have ever called it that. In computer jargon, the "cur sor", used for reading and writing, refers to the electronic equivalent of your stylus or the brailler's punching mechanism. The cursor is very important because it marks the place where this electronic "stylus" is resting. You can't feel it anywhere on the Braille 'n Speak, but you can move it via commands and you can find out where it is in your file and even what character is "under" it. When we talk about moving through a file to read by sentence, paragraph or whatever, it means that we're moving the cursor to a particular place in that file and commanding the Braille 'n Speak to read from that location. Naturally, you can move the cursor forward and backward through a file. 2.1.2 Navigating through a File Moving through your files on the Braille 'n Speak is much faster than turning braille pages. You can move instantly to the top or bottom (beginning or end) of your file, search for a particular word or move by a specific number of lines. Moving to a desired location does not automatically mean that the Braille 'n Speak will read you what is there. Let's practice moving around the Help file that is open automati cally the first time you turn on your Braille 'n Speak. To move to the top or beginning of the file, press an l-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top of file". To move to the bottom or end of the file, press a dots 4-5-6-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "End of file". Once again, notice that it does not read anything, simply tells you where your cursor is in the file. Knowing where your cursor is in a file becomes crucial, as you'll see, in writing. The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you left off in each file, even after you turn it off and turn it on again. Whenever you reopen a file, your cursor will be wherever you last used it in that file. Now suppose that you know how many lines you want to move forward or backward in your file. Press a number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5- 6). The Braille 'n Speak asks, "Enter number of lines to move". Write a number, using the "dropped" braille notation we discussed at the beginning of this chapter, followed by an e-chord (to execute the command). To move backward a number of lines, simply respond to the "Enter number of lines to move" prompt by writing a minus sign (dots 3-6) before the number, followed by an e- chord. The Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor backward or forward the number of lines you requested and reads you the line where the cursor is now resting. All right, enough with the suspense. Let's look at how to read what's in the Help file. 2.1.3 Reading Blocks of Text The commands for reading on the Braille 'n Speak are very easy to remember because they revolve around the position of the spacebar on the physical unit. To read the line, word or character where your cursor is currently resting, press a c-chord for current line, press a dots 2-5-chord for current word and press a dots 3- 6-chord for current character. To move the cursor and read forward or backward by a line, word or character, press a dot 4- chord for next line and a dot 1-chord for previous line, press a dot 5-chord for next word and a dot 2-chord for previous word, and press a dot 6-chord for next character and a dot 3-chord for previous character. Notice how moving the cursor forward involves chords with the keys to the right of the spacebar and moving the cursor backward involves chords with the keys to the left of the spacebar. Another way to think of it is to say that chords involving dots closest to the spacebar are for lines, chords using the middle dots are for words and chords using the dots furthest from the spacebar are for single characters. If you want to move to the next or previous paragraph from where you are in your file, press a dots 5-6-chord for the next para graph and a dots 2-3-chord for the previous one. The Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to the next or previous paragraph and reads you the first line of that paragraph. Again, notice that forward cursor movement involves a chord to the right of the spacebar and backward cursor movement involves a chord to the left of the spacebar. If you want the Braille 'n Speak to read you the entire contents of a file, or if you want to read from where you are in the file all the way to the end of the file, press an er-sign- chord (dots 1-2-4-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak starts reading from your current cursor location, whether at the beginning of the file or not, and continues nonstop to the end of the file. Pressing a z- chord automatically halts the voice, leaving the cursor at the last word spoken. This is a good a time as any to talk about the Braille 'n Speak's definition of "line" and "sentence". The Braille 'n Speak defines a "line" and "paragraph" based on the location of carriage returns or carriage return/linefeed pairs. (On a physical piece of paper, a carriage return moves you to the beginning of a line and a linefeed moves you down a line. You don't need linefeeds in a Braille 'n Speak document. You'll see why later.) The Braille 'n Speak sees all text between one carriage return and the next as a single "line" of text. It considers all text between a set of two or more carriage returns and the next set of two or more carriage returns to be a "paragraph". It defines all text between one period, question mark, or exclamation point and the next instance of one of these punctuation marks to be a "sentence". By the way, the Braille 'n Speak may issue a "plink" sound when you run across a set of two or more carriage returns. If you don't want to hear this, from anywhere in yor currently open file, press an and-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Skip blank lines, enter y or n". Press a letter y. From now on, you won't hear any distinguishing sound to tell you that you've passed over extra carriage returns. (This mode may also be changed from the Status menu with the same and-sign command. See Appendix B.) In addition to being able to read by lines or sentences, you can read by blocks of text from 20 to 80 characters in length, referred to as "windows". (This is most useful when interacting with a computer or modem. See Section 4.3.) You can choose among these three reading modes: windows, lines, or sentences. To switch among modes, press a w-chord from anywhere in your currently open file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Speak windows, lines, or sentences". Whichever option you choose, a w, l or s, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". From then on, it will read you text in the mode you selected. Notice that we didn't say to enter an e-chord to execute the com mand to switch among reading modes. This is one case where you don't need to press an e-chord to execute the command. The Braille 'n Speak simply places you in your selected mode when you respond to the prompt by saying, "Okay". You can cycle among the three modes in a flash as you read. And the Braille 'n Speak even remembers the mode you selected last the next time you turn it on. As with reading lines, you move forward or backward a window or sentence at a time by pressing a dot 4-chord to move forward and a dot 1-chord to move backward. And of course, to read the current window or sentence, simply press a c-chord. Note: If you select the window option, you must also select the length of the window, preset to 80 from the factory. You can see its current setting by entering the Status menu with an st- sign- chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Status menu" and something like, "Interactive on". (Don't worry about that prompt right now. Just be aware that whenever you enter the Status menu, besides the prompt confirming that you've entered it, you hear a prompt for the status of whatever setting you last checked.) For now just write a w to hear "window length 80". You may change the setting at this time to any number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak confirms your change by repeating it to you. Press another e-chord to exit the Status menu. Or, you can simply change the window length parameter from the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord. At the "Enter parame ter" prompt, write a w to hear "window length 80". The number depends on how the parameter was set last. Change it to a number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay" to confirm. Now let's turn to another reading capability of the Braille 'n Speak. What if you need a word spelled? Move your cursor to the word by pressing dot 2-chords (to go backward) or dot 5-chords (to go forward) until the cursor is resting on the word you want spelled. Press the chord for current word (dots 2-5-chord) twice to have the word spelled. In fact, you can continue having every word spelled as you move back and forth with dot 2-chords and dot 5-chords. Exit this "spelling" mode with any other chord. What if you need to identify a letter or braille character that is unclear? Letters like B, D, G, P, T, V and Z may sound alike when pronounced by a speech synthesizer. Press a dots 3-6-chord, the command to read the current character, twice to hear a clarification of the letter. The Braille 'n Speak first pro nounces the letter and then gives you a word that starts with that letter for clarity. So, for example, say you're on the letter c. Press dots 3-6-chord twice. At the first dots 3-6- chord, you hear, "c", at the second dots 3-6-chord you hear, "Charlie". Take a few minutes to experiment with reading, using the current ly open Help file. 2.1.4 Some Tips on Reading The Automatic Braille Translator: Remember that we said we'd come back to the issue of braille translation? Let's see what happens if braille translation is set incorrectly in a file. For sample purposes, we'll work with the Help file in the 640 but the lesson applies to both models. Get to the top of the Help file with an l-chord. Now press a c-chord to read the current line. The 640 says, "Braille 'n Speak 640 Help File". Now let's play a trick on the Braille 'n Speak. Enter the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". Write the letter t (for translation). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille transla tor; enter y or n?" Write a y, to turn on braille translation. The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you were in your file and returns you there after you're finished with a menu. So let's see what happens when we try to read the current line. Press a c-chord. You should hear something like, "Braille not Speak 640 Help file". What happened? Well, the braille translator sees the "'n" and translates it into the word "not" - that's what. So the point is that if you ever get into a file that sounds like gibberish, chances are that you have braille translation turned to the mode opposite what it should be for that file. Let's get out of this, quick. Press a p-chord again to get back into the Parameters menu. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write the letter t. At the "Braille translator; enter y or n?" prompt, write an n. Now press a c-chord again. The 640 should read accurately again, with braille translation "off". The Braille 'n Speak remembers whether you want braille trans lation "on" or "off" for each of your files. When you go through your list of existing files, if braille translation is "on" for a file, the Braille 'n Speak reminds you by saying, "Braille file" after telling you its name. This issue of braille translation will come up again when we look at transmitting files from the Braille 'n Speak to a computer or vice versa and it is a definite consideration when sending a Braille 'n Speak file directly to a printer. So it's worth taking a minute to practice moving back and forth between braille translation modes here in the Help file. It's safe. You can't damage this file even if you try to write in it. It is protected from overanxious beginners. When we get into writing, you'll see how you can protect files yourself. Special Types of Characters: The Braille 'n Speak can identify uppercase characters and control characters to you as you read through your file. (Con trol characters are used largely for formatting purposes to instruct a printer where to place your text. Common examples include carriage returns, linefeeds, formfeeds and tabs. We'll show you how to write them in yourself later.) As you're reading along in the Help file, practicing moving from line to line, paragraph to paragraph, and so on, notice that the Braille 'n Speak uses the normal inflections of speech and pauses at commas, periods and question marks. If you move your cursor forward or backward a character at a time, the Braille 'n Speak reads an uppercase character in a significantly higher- than- normal pitch. If it sees a "control" character, it reads it to you as well. The Braille 'n Speak doesn't normally bother to read control characters to you if you're just going along reading paragraphs or lines in your file. But as you move the cursor a character at a time, it does read them to you when it encounters them. Now, take a few minutes to practice reading before you move on to learning about how to find text in your files. 2.2 SEARCHING FOR TEXT IN A FILE The Braille 'n Speak can look for a word faster than you could if you had a printout of the file. Since you can look for text going forward or backward in your file, it's probably a good idea to know where your cursor is located when you're starting your search. 2.2.1 The Location of the Cursor To find out where the cursor is currently resting, press a wh- sign-chord (dots 1-5-6) from anywhere within your file. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Column 5, cursor at 119". This means that the cursor is resting on the fifth place on a line and that you are one hundred and nineteen characters into the file. If the cursor happens to be resting on a carriage re turn, you'll hear "Column 0" instead of any other number. Now let's search for text. 2.2.2 Finding Text You can search for text forward or backward through your current ly open file. When you issue the Find command, you enter a "search buffer" - a scratchpad of sorts - until you press an e- chord. If you change your mind and decide not to search for this particular text after all, you can cancel the search with a z- chord. While in the scratchpad, you can write text (also re ferred to as a search string) of up to 63 characters in length. You can use the backspace (b-chord) to erase a character, just as you can when you're writing. And you can press a c-chord to see what you've written so far. Let's see how it works. Press an f-chord from anywhere within your file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find". Write a search string, the word "speech", for example, followed by an e-chord to execute the command. If the text is in your file, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to its beginning and reads forward to the next car riage return. If it does not find the text, you hear, "not found". The cursor remains in the place where you started your search and the Braille 'n Speak reads you from that cursor location to the next carriage return. If you want to reverse the search, start with an f-chord. But when you hear, "Enter text to find", write the text, followed by a th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6). If the text is found, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to its beginning and reads forward to the next carriage return. If it does not find it, you hear, "not found". The Braille 'n Speak remembers the text you last asked it to find, even from file to file. This can be a handy feature when you're looking for the same text in a number of different files. Let's practice using the 640 Help file as an example. Press an l-chord to move to the top of the Help file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top of file". Press a wh-sign-chord to see where we are in the file, just to make sure that we are where we think we are. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 0, cursor at 1". Good. That means that we are indeed at the very first character location in the file. Now, let's look for a word. Press an f-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find". Let's look for the word "read". Write the word "read", making sure to spell out each braille letter. Do not use Grade 2 braille. Remember? The Help file is not a "braille" file. It comes from the factory written as a print file in uncontracted braille. Now press an e-chord to execute the Find command. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Reading Functions". Notice that it found a variation of the word we were looking for, "reading". The Braille 'n Speak looks for the combination of characters we requested but it finds the first text it encounters that may include the combination of characters we asked it to find. If you had really wanted to find "read" and only that specific word, you should have searched for the string "space read space". For now, let's just use this example to find out whether there are more instances of the word "read" in this Help file. Press an f-chord again. Even though the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find" again, it still remembers that we last looked for the word "read". So let's just press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Read current line, c-chord". We could go along in this fashion, finding every occurrence of the word "read" or any variation of that word in the file, all without ever rewriting the word "read" at the prompt. In fact, even if we switched files, we could still look for the same word. Where are we in the file at this point? Assuming that we stopped searching for "read" when the Braille 'n Speak found "reading functions", press a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Column 13, cursor at 52", indicating that the cursor is at the thirteenth place on a line and that we are fifty-two characters into the Help file. Now let's press an f-chord. At the prompt, press a th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "not found, reading functions". All this means is that it did not find any instance of the word "read" searching backward through the file. That's fine. We knew that it wouldn't find one. But see how important it can be to know where the cursor is? Try finding a word or phrase on your own. Move to different places in the Help file as you search. Once comfortable with the process, you'll find that you can flip through a file and find a phone number faster than you can thumb through a rollodex. 2.2.3 Case Sensitive Searches for Text The Braille 'n Speak disregards case when searching for text un less you select it to be case-sensitive. To select case sensi tivity in searching for text, before you issue the Find command, press a the-sign-chord (dots 2-3-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?" Write a letter y if you do want searches to be case-sensitive. Write a letter n if you don't. Most of the time, you won't want case-sensitivity turned on for a search. Either way, the Braille 'n Speak responds, "Okay". From that point on, until you change it, the Braille 'n Speak performs searches according to your selection. Here's an example using our old friend, the Help file. Go to the top of the file with an l-chord. Now press a the- sign- chord (dots 2-3-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?" Write a letter y and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". Now press an f-chord and, at the prompt, "Enter text to find", write "blazie" followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "not found; Braille 'n Speak Help file" (or "not found; Braille 'n Speak 640 Help File"). Either the word is not in the file or "blazie" is not in lowercase. Maybe "blazie" is written in capital letters. To make the Braille 'n Speak let you write uppercase letters, press a u-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase". Press another u-chord to "lock" the Braille 'n Speak into uppercase mode. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Uppercase locked". This is like the shift lock on a typewriter or the caps lock on a computer. Every letter you write on the Braille 'n Speak is now interpreted as an uppercase character. Press an f-chord. Now answer the prompt, "Enter text to find", by writing "blazie" again, remembering that every character you're writing is assumed to be in uppercase. The Braille 'n Speak comes back with, "not found; Braille 'n Speak Help file" (or "not found; Braille 'n Speak 640 Help file".) What's wrong now? It looks like "BLAZIE" is not in the file ei ther. It must be that the word is spelled with only the first letter in uppercase. Let's unlock our uppercase and try again. To unlock uppercase, press a q-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase unlocked, okay". Now press an f-chord and at the "Enter text to find" prompt, press a u-chord, then write "blazie". Remember, since you only pressed the u-chord once, only the first letter you wrote (the "B") is assumed to be in uppercase. The "lazie" is assumed to be in lowercase. Now press an e-chord to see if this time the Braille 'n Speak can find this elusive word. Yes. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Blazie Engineering". Well, that took some effort, didn't it? See why it's probably better to have case- sensitivity "off"? Let's turn it off right now, shall we? Press a the-sign-chord. At the "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n" prompt, write an emphatic letter n. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". From now on, it should be easy again to find text without worrying about its case. The Click tip: When you have large files, you'll probably hear a ticking sound as the Braille 'n Speak is searching for text. The larger the file, the greater the distance the Braille 'n Speak may have to travel, looking for your text, the greater the number of clicks you will hear. But not to worry, just be patient and it will find your text - if it is there to be found. Cancelling a Search: Even after you've pressed the e-chord that starts a search, you can cancel it with a z-chord. This can be handy with a long search in a large file. 2.3 WRITING IN YOUR FILES Bfore we can write anything in the Braille 'n Speak, we must create a file in which to write - or, in other words, open a blank page in our "binder" and give the file a name. And speak ing of pages, let's talk for a minute about this: The Braille 'n Speak "Page" The Braille 'n Speak defines a file as having a predefined number of "pages". In other words, it needs to know how many "pages" you want to use from the "binder" for each of your files. These "pages" each can hold up to 4,096 characters, something over four physical pages of braille. The thing that is most important to understand here is that you need to define the number of "pages" you want to use in your file. The Braille 'n Speak Classic can hold forty-five "pages" and the 640 can hold over one hundred and fifty of them. Remember, these are not physical braille pages, nor are they physical print pages. They are the Braille 'n Speak's version of "page". Later, you'll see how easy it is to know how many physical braille or physical print pages are really in your file. Also, even though you tell the Braille 'n Speak that you want, say, three "pages" in your file, you can change your mind later and add "pages" to your file or get rid of extra ones you don't need after all. The bottom line is that the "pages" are each 4,096 characters worth of space. Now, let's create a file and start writing. To do this, we first have to get to the Options menu and its submenu, the Files menu. 2.3.1 The Files Menu Like any powerful computer, the Braille 'n Speak lets you manipu late your files. From the Files menu you can: open an existing file and work in it, create a new file, rename an existing file, delete an unwanted file, even make an existing file bigger or smaller. One of the best features of the Braille 'n Speak is that you never have to "save" a file. Any computer user knows how it feels to work diligently in a file, creating a masterpiece, only to have it disappear into that dreaded, computer blackhole. The Braille 'n Speak isn't like that. The instant you create a file and name it, that file is "saved" for you and anything you enter into it, is automatically saved, too - yes, even when you turn the unit off. As we have mentioned earlier in this chapter, turning the Braille 'n Speak on and off does not affect your files in any way. It's like turning a radio off and turning it on again. Unless someone has come along and fiddled with the dial, you'll still be tuned to the same station when you turn it on again. 2.3.2 Creating a File Let's create a file. To get to the Files menu, press an o-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Option". Now write a letter f. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "Enter file command". Notice that we didn't tell you to press an e-chord yet. The Braille 'n Speak is now in "menu" mode waiting for a command. Only after you issue a command can you press an e-chord. Since our immediate goal is to create a file, let's write a letter c. The Braille 'n Speak now prompts you for a name for your file with, "Enter file to create". Let's call our file "practice". Write "practice", spelling out each letter, and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak now asks for the number of pages in your file with, "Enter the file size". Let's just write a number "1" for now. Remember to enter the number in ASCII or dropped number notation (dot 2) and press an e-chord. Finally, the Braille 'n Speak asks whether you want braille translation to be in effect for this file with, "Use Grade 2 translator; enter y or n". Let's write a letter y. The Braille 'n Speak confirms that we have created the file by saying, "practice now open". We're in our file, a blank "page", ready to be filled with our personal data. Notice that we didn't have to press an e-chord after answering the prompt about braille translation mode. The Braille 'n Speak assumes that if you're creating a file, you want to open it and write in it immediately. So it opens the file for you. Before we write in this new file, let's talk for a moment about file naming conventions. Filenames in the Braille 'n Speak may be up to twenty characters in length. We suggest that you name files with no Grade 2 braille contractions. (You'll see why later.) However, if you plan to send Braille 'n Speak files to a PC, modem, or our external disk drive, you must name your files using MS DOS file naming conventions to prevent confusion for yourself later. Briefly, this means that your filenames may consist of two parts: a "filename" portion of up to eight characters in length and an "extension" portion of up to three characters in length separated by a period. For example, a file could be called "address.txt" or simply "address". But it's not a good idea to call a file "phonebook" because the PC will only recog nize "phoneboo" and you may think your file "phonebook" never made it to the PC when you transmitted it. More on all this in Chapter 4 and Appendix a. For now, just be aware of the concept. Back in our newly created file "practice", we're almost ready to write some text. But we still should check out some things first: Where is the cursor in our file? Press a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is empty". And it should be. We haven't written anything yet. Try going to the top of the file (l-chord) or end of the file (dots 4-5-6-chord). Try pressing a c-chord to hear what's on the current line. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "File is empty". We should also find out how much room there is in this file and how to get help if we get stuck. 2.3.3 Room Left in Your File To see how much room there is left to write in your currently open file (in other words, how much free space there is after the last character in a file), press an r-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Room left is 4,096." Good, that is the size of one Braille 'n Speak "page" and since we haven't written anything yet, we should have 4,096 free spaces left to use. As you start to fill up the file, this number will decrease. Don't worry about running out of room, though. We can make the file bigger if we need more space. 2.3.4 Getting Help You may have figured out by now that the Help file is a brief listing of commands. It assumes that you know how to do things with the Braille 'n Speak and only want a tickler, a reminder, of the specific way to execute a command. It can be very handy and is accessible from any file in your Braille 'n Speak. Just need to jog your memory about a command? Press a th- sign- chord (dots 1-4-5-6) from within any file. (By the way, the th- sign is a question mark in computer braille. This may help you to remember that chording the th-sign means help.) The Braille 'n Speak immediately jumps you into the Help file and says, "Help now open". Check through the Help file for what you need - with the Find command, say - and then press a z-chord to abort this procedure. You'll find yourself back where you were in your file. Try it out with your currently open file, "practice". 2.3.5 Writing Text in Your File Now write the sentence, "This is a practice file to learn how to write in the Braille 'n Speak." Don't worry if you make mis takes. We can fix them. Notice as you write that the Braille 'n Speak is saying every letter as you braille it. And, are you re membering to write in Grade 2 braille? Let's see where your cursor is now. Do a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Column 56; cursor at 57" - assuming that you didn't make any mistakes and that you wrote in Grade 2 braille. We are at position 56 on the current line and we are 57 characters from the beginning of the file. Don't worry if your numbers for column and cursor location differ from ours. Remem ber, this is only an example. What's important is that the column number is greater than zero. Keep that in mind. Now do another r-chord and see how much room you have left in your file. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Room left is 4,039." You'll have to write quite a bit before you run out of room, trust us. Remember, you're using up Braille 'n Speak space, not physical space on a piece of paper. That's what's so nice. It's going to be important to know how to format your files for printing. So let's take a brief look right now at how this is done before we write anything else. We'll take a more detailed look at physical page formatting in Chapter 4. 2.3.6 Writing Control Characters into a File In Section 2.1.4 we said that control characters are special characters used for formatting your files for printing. Basical ly, these special characters are actually codes that instruct the printer about things like when to go to the next physical line on the page, when to go back to the left margin on a line, how many spaces to tab over, when to go to the next physical page, and so on. Some control code sequences get real fancy and we won't discuss them here. We'll concentrate instead on the ones you use the most in writing. A more complete list is in Appendix D in the back of this manual. Before we review the commonly used control characters and show you how to write them, let's backtrack for a minute to review the concept of word processing in general. Back in the days when you typed on a typewriter or a braillewrit er, you were limited in many ways. You could never insert a word here, delete a paragraph there, change one word to another, copy text from one page to another, etc., without retyping. Word pro cessing lets you do all that, true; but it also eliminates your having to worry about how many words fit on a line and where to hyphenate words, how many lines fit on a page, counting over spaces when writing in columns, setting margins, and so forth. One of the nicest features of word processing is this: the computer "wraps" words around lines for you, knows when to go to the next page, and even keeps track of the number of pages in a document. Let's take an example using the sentence we just wrote in our "practice" file. At last check, our cursor was at column 56, or the fifty-sixth position on the line. And remember that the Braille 'n Speak defines a line as containing everything between one carriage return and the next. But anyone who reads and writes braille knows that the largest braille page can only accommodate at most forty characters on a line. When you print this file, the Braille 'n Speak knows how long to make each line because you will tell it with settings you control from the Status menu. (We'll show you more about that later.) The point is that you don't have to know where you are on a line as you're going along writing text. No bell goes off when you've reached a certain point on a line to warn you to go to the next line. Nothing alerts you that you're at the bottom of a page and had better take this one out and start on a fresh page. So how do you start on a new page, even if you've only written a few lines on the current page? How do you move down a couple of lines and indent to start a new paragraph? That's where control characters come on the scene. When the computer takes care of wrapping text from line to line and going from page to page, it is said to be doing "soft" carriage returns and page breaks. When you actually write a control character to force such an action, it is said to be a "hard" carriage return or a "hard" page break. A carriage return takes you back to the first physical position (or column) on a line - in other words, to the left margin. You write a "hard" carriage return on the Braille 'n Speak by press ing a dots 4-6-chord. Write a dots 4-6-chord now into your currently open file, "practice". The Braille 'n Speak says, "new line." Now do a wh-sign-chord. Notice that the Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 0; cursor at 58". This is because a carriage return brings you back to the left margin of a line. In other words, your cursor is now positioned at the beginning of a line, waiting for you to enter text. A linefeed by itself only moves you down one physical line but does not reposition you at the left margin of the line. You don't need to write linefeeds into the Braille 'n Speak at all, since the Braille 'n Speak has a way of appending them for you. This only becomes important when you're sending a Braille 'n Speak file to a printer or transmitting it to your computer. So we'll hold off on the discussion about how to append linefeeds until we talk about transmitting files in Chapter 4. A tab on the Braille 'n Speak moves you a certain number of spaces to the right on a line; you determine how many spaces. To tab on the Braille 'n Speak press a dots 4-5-chord. Try it now. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column". Write a "5" and remember to write in ASCII notation (a dropped e). Press an e-chord to exe cute the command. Now press a wh-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 4; cursor at 62". In other words, the Braille 'n Speak spaced over to the fifth position from the left margin and placed the cursor there for you to write something. Check this out by pressing dot 3-chords to move the cursor back a character at a time until you hear "return" when the cursor lands on the carriage return we wrote before. Now write, "Hello." and press a dots 4-6-chord to issue another carriage return. But wait. Don't we have to move the cursor forward to the end of the file, to where we had previously tabbed? No. The Braille 'n Speak protects you from overwriting text. No matter where you last read in your file, when you write some thing, the Braille 'n Speak jumps to the end of the file and appends to it. So the "H" of the word "Hello." and carriage return we just wrote is automatically placed on the fifth posi tion of the line, just where we stopped when we tabbed before. A formfeed or "hard" page break control character forces your printer to go to the next physical page. This means that if you decide that you want to start writing on a new physical page (not Braille 'n Speak "page"), you can write a control character, so that when you print the file, text following the formfeed charac ter will be printed on the next physical page. To write a formfeed, press an x-chord. The Braille 'n Speak does not prompt you at this point. Now write a letter l. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l". You have written a "hard" page break into your file. Now write, "This is Page 2." followed by a carriage return. By the way, you write most control characters in the Braille 'n Speak with an x-chord followed by a letter. Carriage returns and tabs are so commonly used that a single-key chord is provided for them. Later, when we talk about how to prepare a file for printing, we'll get into more specifics about page length, line length, and so on. All of those parameters, and more, can be adjusted as you need them on the fly. 2.3.7 Selecting your Writing Mode By this time you may be wondering how to write so that each character isn't spoken back to you as you braille. Let's show you a couple of options. You can have each word spoken as you complete brailling it instead of hearing each character spoken as you braille it. Also, you can have the keys click as you braille, or you can have a totally silent keyboard as you braille. Get into the Speech Parameters menu with an ar-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Speech parameters". Press the spacebar. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Key Click on". Press an e-chord. The Braille and Speak says, "Exit". Now try writing something in your file. You'll hear a short click each time you press a key and the characters are no longer spoken as you braille. Enter the Speech Parameters menu again and press the spacebar. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Silent keys". Exit the Speech Parameters menu and write something in your file. Notice that the Braille 'n Speak is totally silent as you write. While having a totally silent keyboard may be great in a meeting, you may want some feedback about what you're writing. Of course, you could always read what you have written in the usual manner, with current line or sentence commands, and so on. But you might find it convenient to hear words spoken as you braille them into your file. Press a g-chord from anywhere in your file. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Interactive, okay". Try writing some thing. Words are now spoken as you braille. You can turn this feature off again simply by issuing another g-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Off, okay". Try writing in both modes to find the one that is most comfortable for you. Earlier we said that "no bell goes off to tell you that you're at the end of a line ..." when you're writing in the Braille 'n Speak. While this is true when you take the machine out of the box for the first time, you can change this setting. Get into the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a q. The Braille 'n Speak prompts, "Beep at column, 0". You can change the setting to the position on the line where you want to be alerted as you write. Remember to use dropped numbers. Enter the change with an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak repeats your change to you. Exit the Status menu with another e-chord. From then on, as you write, you'll hear a distinct "plink" as you pass over that position on a line. Finally, you may be more interested in tracking what you're reading than what you're writing in a file. For example, if you have a set of notes in the Braille 'n Speak to which you're responding, you might want to write your comments at the end of the file but not lose your place as your reading the notes. In such a scenario, you want the cursor not to track what you are writing. Turn cursor tracking off from either the Status menu or the parameters menu. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a c. You hear, "Cursor tracking, on". Respond with an n and exit the Status menu with an e-chord. From now on, what you write is appended to the end of your file as always, but you'll be able to continue reading elsewhere in the file. Turn cursor tracking back on by re-entering the Status menu and responding with a y to the prompt, or simply enter the Parameters menu with a p-chord and write a c. At the prompt, "Cursor track ing, enter y or n", write a y The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Okay" to once again track what you are writing. Practice writing. Don't worry about braille mistakes for now. We can fix them, as you'll see in the next section. 2.4 EDITING TEXT Like any good word processor, the Braille 'n Speak lets you revise what you have written. You can overwrite text already written, insert new text in between existing groups of text, even delete text you no longer want. The Braille 'n Speak takes care of moving text aside to make room for new text you're inserting and it squeezes things back together again should you decide to get rid of some text. And, as we alluded to earlier, it takes care of reformatting your pages so that the layout of your text still looks fine when you print. First, let's try overwriting some text. 2.4.1 Overwriting a Character When you're writing in the Braille 'n Speak, you are always appending text to the end of the file unless you specifically invoke the Insert or Overwrite commands. The Braille 'n Speak lets you overwrite only one character at a time. To do this, you need to move your cursor onto a character you want to overwrite. Write a couple of carriage returns to separate this practice sec tion from your previous one. Then write the words, "Today it is warm.", remembering to write in Grade 2 braille. Now move your cursor back to the second character of the word "today". The best way is probably to move back a word at a time with dot 2-chords until the Braille 'n Speak says the word "it". Press a dot 3-6-chord to see what character you're on. It should be the "x" that represents the word "it" in Grade 2 braille. Now press a dot 3-chord twice to position your cursor on the d of "td", which in Grade 2 braille represents the word "today". We're going to change the "today" to "tonight" by overwriting the d with an n. Press an ow-sign-chord (dots 2-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Overwrite". Write the letter n. That's all. Now read the current word with a dots 2-5-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Tonight". In Chapter 3 we'll show you how to overwrite more than one character at a time using a "macro". But for now, when you wish to overwrite a character, stick to the procedure just described. 2.4.2 Backspacing and Rubbing Out a Character Now write the word "file". Recall that the Braille 'n Speak takes you forward to the end of the file and what you write gets appended to the last character in your file. So, in the present example, since the last word we had written was "warm.", this means that we've just added the word "file" right after the period of the previous sentence. That won't do at all. We could simply delete this last word "file", couldn't we? Well, not the way it is now, we couldn't. It's attached to the previ ous word. The Braille 'n Speak isn't smart enough to know that "warm.file" is two words separated by a period. That's our mis take. We'd better delete this word "file" by backspacing over each character and deleting it as we backspace. To do this, make sure that you're at the end of the file with a dots 4-5-6-chord. Then press a b-chord. The Braille 'n Speak does not say anything but check out what the current character is with a dot 3-6-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "l". That means that it back spaced over and erased the e in "file" and the cursor is now on the l. Press three more b-chords and then a dots 3-6-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should now say, "low d". That of course is the Grade 2 braille sign for period. Try backspacing over a few more characters, putting some back and backspacing over them again, maybe even overwriting some of them. Our next challenge is deleting text. So let's move along. 2.4.3 Deleting Text You can delete blocks of text regardless of where the text may be located. The Braille 'n Speak lets you delete one or more chunks of text at a time. You can throw away characters, words, lines or sentences, and paragraphs. You can even delete from the current cursor location to the end of the file or empty out the file completely by deleting its entire contents. Careful with that. The text you delete from your file goes into a temporary trash can (the Clipboard file we talked about earlier, remember)? But that trash can is always being emptied out so you may not always be able to retrieve something from it if you change your mind. We'll talk about how to recover data in general in Appendix A "Troubleshooting". Right now, let's look at how to delete text within our currently open file, "practice". Since deleting text can be a tricky business, the Braille 'n Speak makes you work a little when you want to delete something. To delete text, you must first move your cursor onto the text you want to delete. You don't have to be at the beginning of the text you want to delete. But you do need to be very clear about how much text you want to delete. You then need to enter the "Delete Parameters" menu. Let's start by moving to the top of our file with an l-chord. Now read the current line with a c-chord. It should say, "This is a practice file to learn how to write in the Braille 'n Speak." Find out where the cursor is with a wh-sign- chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Column 0, cursor at 1". Now enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter delete parameter". Let's write a c (for character). In other words, we're telling the Braille 'n Speak that we want to delete a character - not a word, not a sentence, a character. When we write the c, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Character". It's now waiting for us to tell it how many characters we want to delete. If we only want to get rid of one character, the one currently under the cursor (which happens to be the dot 6 that capitalizes the word "this" in our text), all we have to do at this point is press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak will assume that we meant to delete only the character under the cursor. Try that now. Press an e-chord. Press a dots 3-6-chord to read the character under the cursor. The Braille 'n Speak says, "th". That means that it worked. We deleted the dot 6 capitalizing the word "this". Now let's suppose we want to delete a few words. We want to get rid of the words "this is a". So let's re-enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord and at the prompt, "Enter delete parameter", let's write a w. This time, however, when the Braille 'n Speak says, "Word", let's write a 3 (remember to write an ASCII 3, a dropped c) and press an e-chord. Now do a dots 3- 6-chord to see what character the cursor is on. The Braille 'n Speak says, "p". Press a dots 2-5-chord to read the current word. The cursor is on the p of the word "practice". To delete lines, at the prompt, "Enter delete parameter", write an l. To delete sentences, write an s. To delete paragraphs, write a p. (And remember that the Braille 'n Speak thinks of a paragraph as all text between two or more carriage returns.) All of these parameters work the same way as outlined above in the examples of deleting a character and deleting words. In summary, to delete a single chunk of text, you place your cursor somewhere within the text you want to delete, enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord, write the appropriate parameter - for character, word, line, sentence or paragraph - and press an e-chord. To delete groups of characters, words, lines, sentences and paragraphs, you need to follow the parameter letter designa tion with a number, and then press an e-chord. Incidentally, when deleting sentences, you don't have to be in Read by Sentence mode. However, when you delete lines, it's a good idea to be in Read by Lines mode - to be on the safe side. Oops, we changed our minds and don't want to delete anything after all. Or, we do want to delete something but realize we haven't placed the cursor on the text we want to delete and we've already pressed a d-chord. The easiest way to abort a delete command is to press a z-chord from wherever you are in the deleting process. Of course, once you've pressed an e-chord, it's too late. The Braille 'n Speak has executed your delete command. As mentioned earlier, you might be able to recover from such a mistake if you move fast. But we won't complicate matters here with that procedure. Just know that you might be able to retrieve text out of the trash can if you haven't closed the lid yet, so to speak. Pressing the z-chord has that effect. What if we want to delete everything from the current cursor location to the end of the file? Or, let's say that we want to wipe out the contents of this file - sort of like erasing a blackboard. Understand that we're not talking about deleting the file itself here - just its contents or everything from a certain point in the file to the end of the file. To delete "all" text from the current cursor position forward, wherever you are in your file, enter the Delete Parameters menu in the usual way with a d-chord. Let's go through an example. Get to the physical Page 2 that we created a little while ago. We'll erase everything that's on that page. First, get to the top of the file with an l-chord so that we're all starting from the same place. Find the "hard" page break control character. Remember how to use the Find command and how to write control characters? Press an f-chord. At the prompt, "Enter text to find", press an x-chord followed by an l. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l". Then press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "This is Page 2." Yes, that's what we had written after that control-l. Good. Let's get rid of the junk that we wrote for practice on Page 2. Check what's under the cursor first, though. Press a current character chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l". Do we want to get rid of the formfeed character? No. We still want to have a physical Page 2. We just want to get rid of all the text on it. So let's move a character to the right with a dot 6- chord. Now we should be on the dot 6 of the first word after the control l. Enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord. When the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter delete parameter", write a z. The Braille 'n Speak says, "All". Press an e-chord. Now the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay." Where's the cursor? Check it out with a dots 3-6-chord. It should be on the control l. We suggest that you practice deleting text for a bit. Write some junk text into this practice file. Then move your cursor to various places within the file and delete different portions of text. Write a couple of sentences and get into "Read by Sen tence" mode. Then delete a sentence. Try deleting the entire contents of the file, too. After all, this is only a practice file. You can't lose any really important data here. Next, we're going to look at inserting text. So we'll assume that you're starting with a blank practice file again. Remember, to delete all the text in your file, simply move the cursor back to the beginning of the file and use the z parameter in the Delete Parameters menu. Now let's check out how to insert text in your file. 2.4.4 Inserting Text As we have pointed out, when you write in your file, text is appended to the end of the file unless you specifically issue a command to overwrite existing text or to insert text prior to the end of the file. You can insert up to 255 characters at one time anywhere in your currently open file. When you issue the Insert command, you enter an "Insert buffer" - a scratchpad of sorts. Text is not actually entered into your file until you press an e-chord. If you decide to cancel the insertion, you can press a z-chord at any time and no text is inserted into your file. While in the schratchpad, you can use the backspace (b-chord) to erase charac ters, just as you can when you're writing). And you can see what you've written thus far by pressing a c-chord. Let's go through an example. First, let's write a sentence in our empty file, "practice". Make sure that you're at the top of the file with an l-chord and that it is empty with a c-chord. If the file is empty, when you press a c-chord you will hear, "File is empty". Write, "This is a practice session on how to insert text into a file." Let's add the word "learning" before the word "how" to make the sentence read better. Move your cursor back to the word "how" by pressing dot 2-chords until the Braille 'n Speak says, "how". Press a dots 3-6-chord to see where the cursor is. It should be on the "h" of "how". Now press an i-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Insert mode active". Write the word "learning" followed by a space, then press an e-chord to let the Braille 'n Speak insert the text. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay." Now check where your cursor is. It should be on the space, the last character you inserted. Read the entire sentence with a c-chord. It now says, "This is a practice session on learning how to insert text into a file." Later, you'll see how easy it is to insert calculation results or calendar information into your file without retyping it. We'll discuss those more sophisticated features in their respective sections in Chapter 3. Practice writing text and inserting things within it, deleting text, etc. Get comfortable with these word processing basics before you move on to the next section on "cutting and pasting" text. 2.4.5 Copying Text into Your File The Clipboard is not only a trash can for text you've thrown away. It can also be a temporary storage area for text you want to copy from one place to another in your file, or text you want to move from one place to another in your file, or even text you want to copy or move between files. For now, we'll look at copying and moving text within our currently open file, "prac tice". When you're going to copy or move a chunk of text, you must first mark one end of it. Then you can work with the block of text preceeding or following the mark. Start out with a clean slate. Empty out your file of any prac tice data you have in it and write the sentence, "This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a file." Fol low this sentence with two carriage returns to prepare us for a new paragraph. Now let's copy the text, "This is a practice session ", including the space after the word "session". We'll put it after the two carriage returns. To do this, find the beginning of the text we want to copy. In this case, it's easy. Simply go to the top of the file with an l-chord. To mark the beginning of the text, press an m-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Marked, okay." Now move your cursor forward with dot 5-chords until you're on the word "on". Essentially, what we're doing is marking the beginning of the text we want to work with and marking its end by placing the cursor where we want to stop. To copy this marked text into the Clipboard, press a gh-sign-chord (dots 1-2-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Copied." If we went to the file called Clipboard now we'd see that our marked text, "This is a practice session ", is stored there. Let's copy this marked text. By the way, notice that the text is not removed from your file. If you press a c-chord, you will hear, "This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a file." Press a dots 4-5-6-chord to get to the end of the file. Then press an ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6). Here we have some differences between the 640 and the Classic. The 640 says, "Paste what?" while the Classic simply says, "Okay" and copies the text from the Clipboard into your file. This is because in the 640, you can choose to paste other information than that stored in the Clipboard. If you're using the 640, you must respond to the prompt "Paste what?", in this case with a c (for Clipboard). If Interactive mode is on, the 640 says, "This is a practice session, okay". If Interactive mode is off, it just says, "Clipboard, okay". Where is the cursor? With a dots 3-6-chord you'll see that the cursor is on the dot 6 of the word "This". But wait a minute? Didn't we say earlier that the Braille 'n Speak always appends text to the end of the file? Why did we have to do a dots 4-5-6-chord to get to the end of the file before copying the text from the Clipboard? Let's find out. Go back to the top of the file with an l-chord. Press an ing- sign-chord (and if using a 640, write a c). Now read the current line. We think you'll hear, "This is a practice session This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a file." What happened? The Braille 'n Speak inserted the text where your cursor was, not at the end of the file. Text gets appended to the end of the file only when you are writing it, not when you're copying it. What a mess we have. Let's get rid of this extra garbage before we get thoroughly mixed up. 2.4.6 Deleting Marked Text from a File Just as we mark text for copying, we can mark it for deletion and work with the block of text preceeding or following the mark. Get to the top of the file with an l-chord and press an m-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Marked, okay." Now move the cursor to the second occurrence of the word "This". Enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord. At the prompt, "Enter delete parameter", write an m. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Mark". Enter an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay.". Now read the current line. You'll hear, "This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a file." Whew! That extra text is gone. We suggest that you practice with the concepts of copying text from one place to another and deleting marked text from your file. In the next section, you'll discover how to manipulate files themselves. But before you tackle that, get real comfort able with all of the concepts discussed so far in this chapter. We've covered a lot of ground. 2.5 MANIPULATING FILES As you've seen, the Braille 'n Speak lets you create files to en ter your personal data. Soon you'll have many files in your Braille 'n Speak and will need to do things like rename them, change their size, and simply open them to read and write in them. You might want to look at a list of your files, delete ones you no longer need and create new ones. All of these options are handled through the Files Menu. Let's use our currently open "practice" file as a starting point to explore the Files Menu. What's the name of the currently open file? When we turn the Braille 'n Speak on, we hear, "Braille 'n Speak Ready, filename is open". Recall that the Braille 'n Speak remembers what file you were in and where your cursor was within that file the last time you turned it off. So when you turn the Braille 'n Speak on again, the announcement of the name of the currently open file is very helpful. But what if you're working in a file and get interrupted by a long phone call, or if you can't remember what file you were working in before lunch (and you forgot to turn the Braille 'n Speak off). Hopefully, you weren't running on battery, wasting valuable battery time. But regardless of the circumstances, you want to find out the name of the currently open file. You could press a z-chord (normally used to abort commands) from anywhere within your currently open file to hear its name, size and whether braille translation is on for this file. But since we're concentrating on the Files menu options in this section, let's see how to find out its name from there. Enter the Files menu. Remember how we did this before to create our "practice" file? First, enter the Options menu with an o-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Option". Then write an f and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file command". Write a t and we hear "practice, one page, braille file is open; enter file command." This tells us that the currently open file where we can read and write data is our "practice" file, that it is one Braille 'n Speak "page" in size, and that it is a "braille" or Grade 2 file. In other words, the Braille 'n Speak is reminding us that braille translation is "on". Finally, the Braille 'n Speak is providing us with the Files menu prompt again, "Enter file com mand". To get back into our file wherever we left off, all we have to do is exit the Files Menu with a letter e. Notice that you don't have to press an e-chord, just an e. "Exit" is one of the choices on the Files menu. Any time you want to exit the Files menu to return to your currently open file, simply write an e and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Exit". (By the way, pressing an e- chord or a z-chord also exits the Files menu.) Right now you should have very few files in your Braille 'n Speak: some from the factory and the "practice" file we have created. But as we keep stressing, it won't be long before you have many files in your Braille 'n Speak. So let's see how to get a listing of the files you have and how to move from file to file. 2.5.1 Getting a List of Existing Files Note: In both models of the Braille 'n Speak you can check out your existing list of files from the Files menu by writing the letter l. But in the 640, you can also get a "quick" list (just the filenames) by writing a q or a "verbose" list (with all relevant file information about each file spoken) by writing a v from the Files menu. We'll emphasize the letter l option here since both models provide that command. Let's check out how many files we have. You should be in your "practice" file. It doesn't matter what text you have in it right now. We'll just assume that you're starting from there. Get into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by the letter f. At the prompt "Enter file command", write an l. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like this: "File list; Help, 3 pages; Clipboard, 1 page; Calendar, 1 page, braille file; 43 pages remaining (or 154 pages remaining, for the 640). Enter file command." The number of "pages" remaining varies with the model of the Braille 'n Speak you have, of course, and also depends on the sizes of your files. This is just an example. Notice that the list ends with, "Enter file command." Let's check that our "practice" file is still the currently open file with a t. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "practice, one page, is open, braille file. Enter file command." For practice purposes, let's create a couple of new files before we look at how to move from file to file. Create a file called "temp" for "temporary" and another called "names". We'll use the "names" file as an address book later on. We'll walk you through creating the "temp" file and let you create "names" by yourself. To create the file "temp", press an o-chord and at the "Option" prompt, write an f to enter the Files menu. At the prompt "Enter file command", write a c. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file to create." Write "temp" and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter the file size". Let's make this a file with two Braille 'n Speak "pages" so that we can play with the size of this "temp" file later. Write a 2 (dropped b) and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Use Grade 2 translator, enter y or n". Write a y. The Braille 'n Speak says, "temp now open." Go ahead and create the "names" file. You'll be in that file ready to write something when you finish creating it. If you like, you may enter a few names and addresses, phone numbers, etc. A good idea is to write a single carriage return between each part of an entry and a double carriage return between en tries. For example, "Jane Doe, carriage return, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. carriage return, Washington, DC, double carriage return; John Doe, single carriage return, 555-1234, double carriage return ..." This way, you can move from entry to entry by simply pressing dots 5-6-chords to move forward or dots 2-3-chords to move backwards. We'll assume that you're in the file "names" as we proceed with our next topic, showing you how to move from file to file. 2.5.2 Navigating Through Your Files Now let's explore moving from the beginning to the end of our ex isting files, checking out the names of each file along the way. We know how to get a list of all the files, but how do we quickly find the first file, or the last one or one somewhere in the mid dle. Each file in the Braille 'n Speak is numbered, starting with 0 for the Help file. Moving to a file does not mean that you can read it or write in it. All we're doing is "pointing" to files - physically moving to the place in the Braille 'n Speak's memory where the file is located, something like finding the "tab" in our "binder" of files. When you find a tab, you check out its name and either turn to the pages within it or you move to the next tab, or the previous one, or skip to the last one or the first one in your binder. That's all we're doing here. To move from file to file, get into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by an f. At the "Enter file command" prompt, you can do the following: To move to the first file, write an l-chord. To move to the last file, press a dots 4-5-6-chord. To move back one file from where you are presently, press a dot 1-chord and to move to the one following where you are presently, press a dot 4-chord. To see the name of the file you're currently pointing to, press a c-chord. To spell out the name of the file you're pointing to, press a dots 2-5-chord. Does anything sound familiar in these commands? They sound suspiciously similar to the commands for navigating around a currently open file - finding the top of a file with an l-chord, reading the current line with a c-chord, spelling the current word with a dots 2-5-chord. You can memorize the commands to move from file to file quickly by remembering how similar they are to the ones you already know. The major difference is that these commands used within the Files menu point to files (reading you their names, how big they are, and whether they have braille translation active). The commands you already know take you from place to place within your currently open file. Let's practice. (We'll use the 640 file list as an example. With the Classic, you'll hear some slight differences: the Help file is shorter and there is no calendar file.) From your currently open file, "names", press an o-chord followed by an f to get the prompt, "Enter file command". Now press an l-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "File number 0, Help, 3 pages." Now press a dot 4-chord to hear, "Clipboard, 1 page." Press another dot 4-chord to hear, "Calendar, 1 page, braille file." Press a dot 1-chord to go back a file and hear, "Clipboard, 1 page." Press a dots 2-5-chord to hear the name of this file spelled out, "File number 1, Clipboard, c l i p b o a r d, 1 page." Just for fun, let's see what happens when you write a t. (Maybe you can't remember which file you last opened.) The Braille 'n Speak should say, "names, 1 page, is open, braille file. Enter file command." Now press a c-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Clipboard, 1 page." Why? Even though our currently open file is "names", we're looking at the "tab" for the file called "Clip board". See the difference? The file we're pointing to may not be the one that's open. If we want to open the file we're pointing to, we have to tell the Braille 'n Speak to open that file with an o-chord. Knowing whether the file you're pointing to in the Files menu is currently open is crucial. Basically, a command that affects a file issued from within the Files menu can be invoked in one of two ways: if the file you want to affect is already open, you issue a command to affect it by writing the first letter of the command (for example, r for Rename). But if the file you want to affect is not open, you must point to it first and issue the command from the Files menu with its corresponding letter-chord command (for example, an r-chord for Rename). Let's look at how to open a file next. 2.5.3 Opening an Existing File So we're moving along, checking the names of our files and run across the one we want to open, even though we already have "names" open. We stopped at "Clipboard". That's not a good file to open because that's the Braille 'n Speaks trash can, scratch pad and temporary holding area. Let's get back into our old "practice" file. At the prompt "Enter file command", press a few dot 4-chords until you hear, "practice, 1 page, braille file." Press an o-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "practice now open". We can go ahead and read or write here. What happened to "names"? How nice that the Braille 'n Speak took care of closing it and saving that file for us without our having to do anything. This is a departure from the usual procedures you follow with files on your standard personal computer. The Braille 'n Speak is unique in that you never have to save a file - not when you go to open another file, not when you turn the unit off. Seems okay to open a file by moving to it as just described and opening it with an o-chord when you have just a few files. But think about what it would be like to have thirty files and having to do that. What's an easier way? If you know the name of the file you want to open, all you have to do is tell the Braille 'n Speak its name and the unit will find the file for you and open it. You're in the file "practice" and want to go back to the file, "names". Press an o-chord fol lowed by an f to get to the Files menu prompt, "Enter file command". Then write the letter o. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file to open". Write out the name of the file and press an e-chord. Almost instantaneously the Braille 'n Speak says, "names now open". For practice, try opening a file that doesn't exist. At the prompt, "Enter file command", write "hello" and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Can't find that file. Enter file command." This means that the file doesn't exist or that you wrote an incorrect name. If you really think you have a file by the name you wrote, it might be that you spelled it differently. So you can always list your files to check whether a file by the name even exists and if it seems to be there, then you can move around from file to file with dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords until you're pointing to it, then hear its correct spelling with a dots 2-5-chord and then open it with an o-chord. And speaking of file names and how you spell them, take care how you name your files. What do you think will happen if you name a file "Sharon" using Grade 2 braille? The Braille 'n Speak will let you name your file that way. It's not smart enough to know that you're writing Grade 2 braille when you're in the Files menu. Braille translation works only from within a file. What happens when a file called "Sharon" written in Grade 2 braille is pointed to, opened, appears as part of a file list, etc.? The Braille 'n Speak says, "comma percent greater on." It sees the dot 6, the "sh" and "ar" signs all as ASCII symbols, not as contracted braille. So we suggest that you always name your files using uncontracted braille. Oh, oh. Did you use Grade 2 braille when you created "names"? If so, don't worry. You'll see how to rename it shortly. But first, let's check out another way to open files, using a short cut, numbers. 2.5.4 Opening an Existing File by Its Number Did you notice when we moved from file to file that file numbers were spoken by the Braille 'n Speak as well as file names? When we go to the beginning of the file list from the Files menu with an l-chord or to the end of the list with a dots 4-5-6-chord and even when we press a c-chord to see the name of the file current ly being pointed to, the Braille 'n Speak always said something like, "File 0, Help, 3 pages". This is because files in the Braille 'n Speak's memory are numbered sequentially. You can have a maximum of 41 files in the Classic and 77 in the 640, assuming that each file is only one Braille 'n Speak page long. Of course, the actual number varies with the sizes of files you have at any given time in the Braille 'n Speak. If you have a file that has thirty Braille 'n Speak pages in it - a substantial size, by the way - chances are the total number of files you'll be able to fit in the Braille 'n Speak will be far less than the upper limits we provide here. We suggest that you create small files and add Braille 'n Speak "pages" to them as needed rather than have valuable space taken up with blank Braille 'n Speak "pages". But to get back to the original point of this section: The Braille 'n Speak numbers files sequentially. The Help file is 0, the Clipboard is 1, and so on. If you frequently need to get into a certain file, instead of using the methods we described above for opening an existing file, you could open the file by its number. Let's look at an example. Get into the Help file from whatever file you're in right now. What's the easiest way, remember? Press a th-sign-chord and the Braille 'n Speak jumps into the Help file with the prompt, "Help is open". For example, let's say that you want to get into the fifth file on your Braille 'n Speak. That should be the file we created a little while ago called "temp". From the Help file, press an o-chord and you'll hear the prompt, "Option". Now instead of getting into the Files menu as we've been doing, simply write 04, remembering to use dropped numbers. (Why 04? The numbers of the files start with 0 for the Help file; there fore, the fifth file in the Braille 'n Speak is numbered 04.) The Braille 'n Speak says, "Temp now open." It's that easy. You don't even have to press an e-chord. In this case, the Braille 'n Speak doesn't need it. What happens if you write the number for a nonexistent file, like 9 (given our present number of six files)? No problem. The Braille 'n Speak merely says, "File doesn't exist" and leaves you exactly where you were in your currently open file. Of course, if you try to write the number in Grade 2 braille, the letter i, instead of the ASCII dropped i, the Braille 'n Speak will really reject your request, saying, "Invalid input" and still leave you exactly where you were in your currently open file. The thing to be careful of in using the o-chord from within a file to get to the Options menu is that if you write a letter that the Braille 'n Speak thinks of as a real option, like the letter f that we've been working with, it will take you to that option. In the case of the letter f, we already know that; it's the Files menu. Now let's move forward with several housekeeping file commands. 2.5.5 Renaming a File How about changing the name of our file called "temp" to "drill". We're just going to practice doing things to this file as if it had data, so we can play with it without danger of messing up anything important. We'll assume that your currently open file is "temp". Let's enter the Files menu in the usual way with an o-chord followed by an f. At the "Enter file command" prompt, write an r. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter filename". Write the filename "drill" and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay, enter file command." Note that we're still in the Files Menu. To get back into the currently open file, now called "drill", all we have to do is write an e to exit the Files menu. But what if you want to change the name of another file, one that is not currently open? The first thing to do is to "point" to the file. Remember how that's done? Let's change the name of the file "names" to "address". We don't have to open that file. We just have to point to it. So from the Files menu, at the "Enter file command" prompt, press a couple of dot 4-chords until you're on "names". Then press an r-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file name". Write "address" followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Okay, enter file command" just as it did before. Where will you be when you press the e to exit the Files menu? Right. Back in the file "drill" because that is the currently open file. Notice the difference in the two commands just discussed for renaming a file: You issue the command with an r if the file is currently open and with an r-chord if you are pointing to the file but it is not currently open. Keep this in mind as we move through the next few commands. They work the same way. 2.5.6 Write-Protecting and Unprotecting a File To guard against a serious blunder, such as accidentally deleting your address file, you can "protect" files from deletion or from being overwritten in some way. For files that are absolutely essential, it is a good idea, especially if you want to try out a new command on the Braille 'n Speak that affects files (for example, changing its size). Protecting a file is like putting a "lock" on it in effect, safeguarding yourself against losing or scrambling its contents. Once again, the Protect and Unprotect commands work the same way as many other commands within the Files menu. If a file is already open, writing a p from the Files menu protects the file. If the file is not already open, point to it first, then issue a p-chord command to protect it. The corresponding command pair is the letter u and u-chord for Unprotecting files. Let's go through an example. Open your file called "drill", if you're not already in it. Now get into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by an f. At the "Enter file command" prompt, write a p. The Braille 'n Speak says, ""File is write-protected; enter file command." Exit the Files menu with an e and try writing something in your "drill" file. Every time you write a character, the Braille 'n Speak says, "File is write-protected." Oh, you can read the file just fine. But now you can't write anything in it. In fact, our "drill" file has nothing in it right now anyway. But if it did, you would only be able to read its contents, not write in the file. Let's protect our "address" file, shall we? You wouldn't want to lose that. Get back into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by an f and at the "Enter file command" prompt, press some dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords until you're pointing to "address". Now press a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is write-protected; enter file command". Great. Even though the "address" file is not currently open, we were able to protect it by pointing to it first and then issuing a p-chord. Now let's get back to our "drill" file and Unprotect it in case we want to write something in it or do something else with the file. All you have to do is exit the Files menu with an e. Remember, you never opened your "address" file, just protected it. So now you should be back in "drill". Get to the Files menu and at the "Enter file command" prompt, write a u. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Unprotected; enter file command." That's fine. Simply exit the Files menu with an e and write something in your "drill" file. You should be able to do that with no hitches now that the file is unprotected again. Next, we'll see how to delete a file you no longer need. 2.5.7 Deleting a File Let's delete the file called "drill". After all, it's just a junk file we're using for practice. We'll assume that you're currently in the "drill" file as we go through this example. Get into the Files menu and at the "Enter file command" prompt, write a d. The Braille 'n Speak says, ""Enter file to delete". Write the name of the currently open file, "drill", and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Delete drill, are you sure; enter y or n?" Press a y. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Okay, Help now open; enter file command." Since you just deleted the file you had open, the Braille 'n Speak put you back into the Help file. But now, let's look at a slightly different scenario where the file you want to delete is not the file that is currently open. Let's get rid of our file, "practice". First, get into your file, "address". It should still be pro tected from when we worked through that example. Don't worry that you can't write in it for now. Get into the Files menu and at the "Enter file command" prompt, write a d. At the prompt, "Enter file to delete", write "prac tice" followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Delete practice, are you sure; enter y or n?" Write a y. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay, enter file command." Where do you think you'll be when you exit the Files menu with an e? Right. Back in your "address" file. Why? Because the file you just deleted is not the file you had open. So the Braille 'n Speak went out into the binder and found the file you wanted to delete, chucked it and returned you to your currently open file. It's like tossing something in the wastebasket under your desk. One more example of file deletion: This time, let's look at what happens when we don't have a file open, but are pointing to a file we want to delete. Open up the Help file with a th-sign- chord. Get into the Files menu and at the prompt "Enter file command", use dot 4-chords till you reach the file "address". You're pointing to it, but it is not open. Press a d-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is write-protected". Good. Remem ber, we had protected the "address" file from just this kind of potential disaster? If the "address" file had not been protected, though, the Braille 'n Speak would still have a safeguard for you. The prompt would have been, "Delete address, are you sure; enter y or n?" All you'd have to do is write the letter n, and the Braille 'n Speak would simply say, "Enter file command" and you'd still have the Help file open. The last thing we'll look at related to manipulating files is changing their size. Let's play with this concept next. 2.5.8 Changing the Size of a File Throughout this chapter we've talked a lot about the Braille 'n Speak "page". Let's briefly review this concept. A Braille 'n Speak "page" is really a block of Braille 'n Speak memory consisting of space equal to four thousand and ninety-six characters. If you consider that a standard eleven by eleven- and-a-half inch piece of braille paper can hold a maximum of one thousand characters, you can see that four thousand and ninety- six is a lot. It is like having four pieces of braille paper each filled with characters, every single cell. And of course, that's not how braille pages are filled. You have spaces, which by the way, are considered to be characters by computers, and you have blank lines for formatting purposes, etc. Blank lines to a computer are expressed by the control characters we mentioned earlier, carriage returns and linefeeds. Since the Braille 'n Speak's memory is not "pieces of paper", but instead, a continu ous space to be filled with characters, and since the Braille 'n Speak doesn't care whether those characters are text or control characters, the blocks of four thousand and ninety-six characters worth of memory called "pages" are hefty chunks of memory. Usually, when you create a Braille 'n Speak file it's a good idea to create it with only one "page". Unless you know that you're going to be filling up the file very rapidly with data, why waste valuable Braille 'n Speak memory by creating a file that has many "pages"? But the time will no doubt come when you do need to add a "page" to an existing file. The Braille 'n Speak lets you add space to a file, but only in chunks or "pages" of four thousand and ninety-six characters worth of space. Let's see how this works. We're going to make our "address" file bigger. Even though right now it's big enough, let's practice adding a "page" to it. First we have to unprotect it because otherwise the Braille 'n Speak won't let us do anything to the file. Find the file "address" from your Files menu and open it. Don't worry that the Braille 'n Speak tells you that the file is write- protected. Get into the Files menu and Unprotect the "address" file with a u at the "Enter file command" prompt. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Unprotected; enter file command." Now just write an e to exit the Files menu and get back into your "address" file. Check out how much room there is left in the file at this point with an r-chord. It should be considerable, over thirty-five hundred characters worth, anyway, unless you have entered lots of names and addresses. Under normal circum stances, we'd say, fine. Leave the file as is and don't add to it. But for practice, let's make the file bigger. Get into the Files menu and at the prompt, write a b. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter number of pages to expand." Press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay." And where do you suppose you are? Yes. Right where you left off within your "address" file. The Braille 'n Speak simply gave you another "page" worth of memory and put you back where you were in the file. If you want to increase the size of your file by more than one page at once, you would answer the prompt with a dropped number, indicating how many extra pages you want. But unless you know that you're going to be filling a file with a lot of data quickly - such as a file from your computer - it's probably better to increase pages one at a time so that you don't waste valuable Braille 'n Speak space. How much room do you have in the "address" file now? Press an r- chord. The number should be well over eight thousand. Now let's return the "address" file to its original one-page size. This is really too big for our purposes right now. Get back into the Files menu and write an s at the "Enter file command" prompt. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter number of pages to subtract". Press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay" and once again leaves you back in your file, just where you had left off. As with increasing the number of pages, if you want to decrease the size of a file, writing a dropped number at the prompt indicating ho many pages you no longer need removes them from the file. Incidentally, when the Braille 'n Speak adds or subtracts "pages" from your file, it's important for you to understand that the block being added or subtracted is being added to or subtracted from the end of your file. You can't, for example, be five lines into a file, and decide that you want a blank chunk of space between where you are and the next block of text you already had in this file. Or, that you have a chunk of text that you no longer want and therefore you'd like the Braille 'n Speak to subtract that block using the commands just described. How do you add and delete text? We covered that earlier. You use the Insert command or the Delete command within your file for those kinds of activities. The command described in the present section have to do with big chunks of Braille 'n Speak memory. Can you see how crucial it is to keep track of free space in a file and to know how many characters are actually in that file before removing pages from the end of your file? Just as with previous commands within the Files menu, you can make a file bigger or smaller, adding or subtracting Braille 'n Speak "pages", when those files are not open. As with other Files menu commands, you point to the file first and then issue a b-chord or s-chord (for bigger and smaller respectively) and follow the prompts to make the file being pointed to bigger or smaller. Practice with the commands we've gone over in these last few sections. The only thing left to do in the present chapter is to find out how much room we have free in the Braille 'n Speak. 2.5.9 Free Space in the Braille 'n Speak As you add and delete files and change their sizes, the amount of free space in the Braille 'n Speak varies. From time to time it's good to check out just how much free space you do have left, especially if you're about to add a biggie. From the Files menu you can simply write an f at the "Enter file command" prompt and the Braille 'n Speak will tell you that you have x-number of "pages" left. For example, it will say some thing like, "One hundred forty-five pages remaining; enter file command." That's in the 640, of course. The number of "pages" remaining in the Braille 'n Speak Classic should never be greater than forty-five "pages". 2.6 SUMMARY We've covered a considerable number of ideas in this chapter. It's worth reviewing them until you're thoroughly comfortable with them. There are other Files menu commands yet to examine. And, there are other things we can do within files: add a date from the calendar, or a calculation result from the calculator, figure out the number of physical braille or print pages that are in a file, etc. We'll cover these sophisticated concepts in detail in the next two chapters. We'll examine a bunch of very handy features the Braille 'n Speak provides for you. Neverthe less, if you've mastered the concepts ub the present chapter, you're well on your way to making the Braille 'n Speak an indis pensable tool. Chapter 3 - Working With Other Tools Now that you've mastered working with the most important feature of the Braille 'n Speak - reading and writing files - it's time to learn about the handy tools that are also available to you in the Braille 'n Speak. Think of the Braille 'n Speak as if it were your desktop, com plete with all the tools you usually find there: a notepad, a calendar, a calculator, a looseleaf binder, a clock, even a telephone. (Well, the Braille 'n Speak isn't a telephone; but it does let you hook up to one. We'll leave that for Chapter 4.) For now, we'll learn about the other tools that come already built into the Braille 'n Speak. In this chapter we'll discuss: the clock and the calendar, the stopwatch and the timer, the calculator, and a few of other handy features, including the macro and word-exceptions checker utili ties. Some of the features we'll look at are unique to the 640, and we'll point that out when we discuss them. For the most part, the functions we'll see in this chapter are choices from the Options menu, just as we saw that the Files menu is a choice from the Options menu. So let's get started. 3.1 THE CLOCK AND THE CALENDAR Note: In the following discussion, unless otherwise indicated, features are available in both the Braille 'n Speak Classic and the 640. However, most of the functions related to the calendar are only available in the 640. We all rely on our watches and the clocks and calendars on our office walls to keep us on track during the day. The Braille 'n Speak has both a built-in clock and calendar for your conve nience. (The Classic only has the clock and today's date avail able.) Not only can you use the clock to see what time it is right now and the calendar to check out how many days away you are from that long-awaited vacation, but also, the clock keeps track of the time and date when you created a file and the calendar can even "tickle" your memory to remind you when impor tant things are happening. Let's look at the clock first. 3.1.1 The Clock The Braille 'n Speak's clock lets you do the things all clocks do. You can check on the current time and you can set the time. You have a choice about whether to set the time in either Ameri can or European time. With American time, hours are announced from one to twelve with a.m. or p.m. With European time, hours are announced from zero to 23 and a.m. and p.m. are not spoken. If you have set punctuation announcement to Most Punctuation from the Speech Parameters menu, hours and minutes are announced sepa rated by the word "colon". If you have it set to Some Punctua tion, time is announced just as a person might say it. First, let's check out what the Braille 'n Speak thinks is the current time. We'll work with an example. It's anybody's guess what your unit might be set to from the factory. Enter the Options menu from anywhere in your currently open file with an o-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Option". Write a t. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "The time is 1 a.m.". You'll still be right where you left off in your file. Now let's see the difference between American and European methods for announcing the time. Press an o-chord and at the "Option" prompt, write the letter s. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Set." Now write an e. The Braille 'n Speak says, "European time set." Check the time with an o-chord t. The Braille 'n Speak should now say something like, "The time is 1." Notice that it did not tell you whether it's a.m. or p.m. That's because we set the Braille 'n Speak to the European method of announcing the time. When you're setting the time in this mode, you are not prompted for a.m. or p.m., of course, since you're on a 0 to 23 hour cycle. Let's return to the American method for announcing the time. Press an o-chord s and at the "Set." prompt, write an a. The Braille 'n Speak says, "American time set". For purposes of our example, we'll use this mode for announcing the time. Let's set the clock to the real time, shall we? We'll use an arbitrary time here, but set your Braille 'n Speak to the real clock so that files you create will have accurate times associat ed with them. Press an o-chord and at the "Option" prompt, write an s followed immediately by a t, no spaces. You're telling the Braille 'n Speak that you want to set the time. The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Enter time hh mm". Write something like, "1215" (remembering to use dropped num bers). The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Enter a or p for a.m. or p.m." Write p. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "The time is 12:15 p.m.". Great. Now we have the correct time. But how about the date? Let's look at the calendar next. ** 3.1.2 The Calendar Note: This feature is unique to the 640, except for the ability to check today's date and insert it into a file, which is avail able in both models. The Braille 'n Speak's calendar runs like a clock in the sense that it automatically keeps pace with the clock as each new day arrives. It's impor tant that the date be set correctly to maintain accuracy, of course. The calendar has some great features which we'll examine in detail below. For example, not only can you check today's date, but you can also check on what day of the week a certain date falls, go backward or forward a number of days to see what the date was or is going to be, insert a particular date in your personal calendar, and nicest of all, set the Braille 'n Speak to remind you when an important date on your personal calendar ar rives. 3.1.2.1 Checking Today's Date3.1.2.1 Checking Today's Date Note: This feature is available in both models. To see today's date, simply press an o-chord d. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "The date is December 25, 1992". It should be set correctly from the factory but, like the clock, this is not always the case. So let's look at how to set the date. 3.1.2.2 Setting Today's Date3.1.2.2 Setting Today's Date Note: This feature is available in both models. To set the date, press an o-chord to get into the Options menu. Now write the letter s and the Braille 'n Speak responders with, "Set". Write a letter d and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter date, mm/dd/yy". Now write today's date using only numbers and no spaces and skipping the century, something like, "010193", and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak immediately responds, "The date is Friday January 1, 1993". From now on, the Braille 'n Speak will count forward based on the current time and change dates as the clock cycles through each twenty-four hour period. But let's suppose that you want to check back on a date or you want to see on what day of the week a future date falls. Since the Braille 'n Speak knows today's date, this process is quite simple for it to calculate for you. (Note: While the Classic can't tell you what day a certain date falls on like the 640 can, it does let you set the day of the week. Enter an o-chord followed by the letters s w. The Classic responds, "Enter a number for the day of the week." Using dropped numbers, you can write numbers from 1 to 7 (Sunday being 1). Thereafter, the Classic will track not only today's date, but what day of the week today is. This is useful for pasting today's date into a calendar.) ** 3.1.2.3 Getting a Date from the Calendar** 3.1.2.3 Getting a Date from the Calendar Note: This feature is unique to the model 640. Let's say that you want to know what day a certain date fell on because you think you have an extra charge from your hairdresser, who you visit only on Wednesdays. We'll assume our sample date of December 25, 1992 as today's date. Press an o-chord for the Options menu. Now write a letter g to "get a date" from the calendar. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter number of days or a date mm/dd/yyyy". Depending on what you enter, the Braille 'n Speak responds differently. First, what happens if you just pressed an e-chord? Try it now. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Day number 360." Oh, it's telling us that today, (Christmas Day in our example) is the three hundred sixtieth day of the year. That's a handy feature to have. But let's continue with our example. Press an o-chord followed by a g again and at the prompt, "Enter number of days or a date mm/dd/yyyy", write "11251992" and press an e-chord. Remember to write all the numbers in ASCII (dropped numbers) and without spaces. The Braille 'n Speak should answer, "The date is Wednesday November 25, 1992." Oh-oh. Guess you did have an appointment that day. Better pay this bill. What about if you know how many days away from today's date a date is and want to enter it into your calendar. Let's see another way to get a date from the calendar. Now let's suppose that you just got a call from your boss who wants to set up a meeting for the day before New Year's. Have to go over those end-of-year budget figures one more time. What a Scrooge calling on Christmas Day for such a thing. Oh well. Better put it in the calendar. Let's see. That makes it six days from today since New Year's Day falls exactly one week from Christmas Day. Press an o-chord g and at the prompt, "Enter number of days or a date mm/dd/yyyy", this time simply enter a dropped number 6 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "The date is Thursday December 31, 1992". Incidentally, you can have the Braille 'n Speak count backward a number of days by preceding the number with a dash or minus sign (dots 3-6). Sighing, you decide to enter this meeting into your personal calendar. 3.1.2.4 Inserting a Date into Your Calendar3.1.2.4 Inserting a Date into Your Calendar Note: This feature is available in both models, but in the Classic, the only date you may insert into a personal calendar is today's date. The Braille 'n Speak 640 comes with a file called "calendar" (you might want to create one for yourself if you have the Classic). Let's get into that file now with an o-chord followed by the dropped digits 02. Assuming you have not deleted it, the calendar file set from the factory should be the third file in your Braille 'n Speak 640 and should be accessible as we've just described. If you can't find it, if you have deleted it, or if you have the Classic Braille 'n Speak, then go ahead and create yourself a file called "calendar". With the file "calendar" open, let's insert this date for the meeting next week into the calendar before we forget. Press an i-chord and at the "Insert" prompt, simply press an e-chord. (If you're using a Classic and try this procedure, you'll be insert ing today's date into your file.) Now read your current line. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Thursday December 31, 1992". It remembered the date you last accessed in its memory and conve niently placed it in your file without your having to write it. Now go ahead and press a dots 4-6-chord (a hard carriage return) and then write yourself a note about this silly meeting. Could n't it wait till after the first of the year? Oh well. To insert today's date into your calendar, with your "calendar" file open, simply press an i-chord followed by an e-chord and today's date is pasted into your calendar file. A couple of words of caution: It's a good idea to enter three hard carriage returns (dots 4-6- chords) between one date and the next on your calendar. After each date, you'll want a carriage return followed by whatever notes you make to yourself about that date. But after you finish making notes about a date, place three carriage returns. This is because the Braille 'n Speak erases the last character you entered in your file when it inserts a date into your calendar and replaces it with a space. The easiest way for you to avoid confusion is to place three carriage returns between dates. To move from date to date in your calendar then is very simple. You can move forward or backward through your calendar by press ing dots 5-6-chords or dots 2-3-chords (the next and previous paragraph commands respectively). The other important thing to keep in mind when inserting a date into a file is that the 640 remembers the last date it spoke to you. Unless you have used the Insert command for something else, pressing an i-chord e-chord inserts that date into your file. If you have used the Insert command for something else, pressing i- chord e-chord inserts today's date into your file. On the other hand, the Classic remembers only today's date and so it can only insert today's date into your file when you press i-chord e- chord. A quick way to get today's date and/or time into a file in the 640 is with the ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6). Recall that in Chapter 2 we talked about this command with regard to pasting text from the Clipboard. In the 640 you can also use the ing- sign-chord to paste today's date or the present time into a file. Press ing-sign-chord and at the prompt "Paste what?", write a d (for date) or a t (for time). The 640 pastes the information into your file and (if Interactive is on) speaks it to you after saying, "Okay". Practice the calendar commands before moving on to our next topic, (unique to the model 640), how to get the Braille 'n Speak to remind you of a date on your calendar. ** 3.1.2.5 Calendar Alert** 3.1.2.5 Calendar Alert Note: This feature is unique to the model 640. The Braille 'n Speak can be set to remind you of important dates you've written into your calendar file. This is a feature that you can turn on and off through the Status menu. When Calendar Alert is activated, every time you turn on the Braille 'n Speak, if today's date is marked in your calendar file, the Braille 'n Speak warns you that you have something in your calendar for today and gives you a choice as to whether to look at it immediately. Let's see how this works. To set up an example, let's enter today's date into our calendar file and make a note to ourselves. Turn your Braille 'n Speak on and open the calendar file. Now press an i-chord e-chord. When you read the current line, you should see today's date (in our example, "Friday December 25, 1992"). Enter a carriage return followed by a note that says, "Today I am learning about the calendar." Follow this with three carriage returns. Now enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Status menu". Depending on where you were last within the Status menu, the Braille 'n Speak might say something in addition to this." But let's just work with the simplest case. Write the letter j. The Braille 'n Speak should tell you the status of calendar alert. So it should say something like, "Calendar check off". We want to activate it. So write a y. The Braille 'n Speak should now say, "Calendar check on." Exit the Status menu with an e-chord and turn the Braille 'n Speak off. Now turn the Braille 'n Speak on again and listen carefully to what it says. You should hear something like, "Braille 'n Speak ready, Calendar alert. Do you want to open the calendar. Enter y or n?" The Braille 'n Speak will not let you do anything else until you have responded to this prompt. We'll write a y because we want to see what's so important about today in the calendar. The Braille 'n Speak says today's date and immediately places us in that point in the calendar. If you check your current line, you'll see that it is right on today's date and the following line says what you wrote as a message about today. Okay, you may go ahead and erase this if you like. Or, if it's important for you to keep old calendar dates around for a time, you might want to keep it. Just remember that for today at least, every time you turn on the Braille 'n Speak, you'll have to respond to this question about the calendar. The Braille 'n Speak isn't smart enough to know that you've already checked the calendar once today. Besides, you might just want to check it again later in the day to make sure you did everything you had written for today. Now let's suppose that you had answered with an n to the prompt, "Braille 'n Speak ready, calendar alert. Enter y or n?" In that case, the Braille 'n Speak would act as it always has in the past, placing you in the file where you last worked and with the cursor where you last had it. To turn the calendar alert feature off again, simply re- enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a j. At the prompt "Calendar check on", write an n. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Calendar check off." Press an e-chord to return to your cur rently open file. The Calendar Alert feature, when active, can be somewhat annoying if you have something in your calendar for today and you're constantly turning the Braille 'n Speak on and off. But it's benefits far outweigh this small inconvenience. And you can always turn it off temporarily. We suggest that unless you're not going to be using a calendar very much, it's probably a good idea to activate the Calendar Alert feature. Even if you do have the Calendar Alert feature turned off, you can still check out whether you have something marked for today in your calendar, however. Basically, this is a choice from the Options menu and works essentially the same way as we described a moment ago. Press an O-chord a (for alert) from anywhere within a file and you'll hear the familiar Calendar Alert prompt, "Calendar alert, do you want to open the calendar; enter y or n?" Of course, you'll only hear this prompt if something is marked in the calendar file for today. If not, nothing happens and you're right where you were in the file before you issued the O-chord a command. You respond to the prompt just as we've described above. This is a good alternative to having the calendar alert feature active from within the Status menu. You can also paste any date you wish by entering the 346 chord followed by the letter G. Think of g for get date. Entering the 346 chord causes Braille 'n Speak to say "paste what?" Press the letter G. You should hear "enter a number of days or a date, mmddyyyy". Does this sound familiar? It's the same prompt that you hear when you activate the smart calendar. As an example, let's say that you want to paste the date January 20, 1993 into your calendar file. Enter 346 chord followed by the letter g. At the prompt write 012093 followed by e chord. That date is now pasted in your file. Now, suppose that you have pasted various dates into your file, and you need to see if a specific date is there. There is an easy way to do this. Enter f chord to find the date. Once you hear "enter text to find" write a g chord. You should hear the prompt asking for a number of days or a date. This is the same prompt that you hear when you activate the smart calendar. Now enter the date you wish to find. To find January 20, 1993 write 012093 and then type e chord to search for the date in a forward direction, or you can type dots 1456 chord to search for the date in a backward direction.' ** 3.1.3 Information About Your Files Note: This feature is unique to the 640. Before we leave the clock and the calendar utilities altogether, let's look at a very handy "side effect" of the built-in clock and calendar. You might need to know the date on which you created a file. Maybe you want to replace it with new content or delete the file altogether but you're not sure how old the file is. Or maybe you have a backup of a file on a floppy disk and want to compare that file's date or size with that of a file on the Braille 'n Speak to see which is more current. Get into the Files menu in the usual way by pressing an o-chord f and at the "Enter file command" prompt, first write a t to see what file you currently have open. For sample purposes through out this section, we'll say you have the Help file open. Now press an i-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Help 3 pages; Date 12/22/92; Time 10:38; 10,196 bytes; enter file command". Not only do you get information about the exact date and time when this file was created, but you get the number of Braille 'n Speak pages in the file, how many "bytes" (characters) it con tains, and for files which are write-protected, you would get that information, too. If the file were a braille file, that is, one where your text is in Grade 2 braille and the braille trans lator is on, you would also hear that information. Finally, if you want to use this feature for a file which is not currently open, from the Files menu simply write the letter i. The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Enter filename". Write the name of the file you want to check and press an e-chord. You immediately hear all relevant information for that file as in our example above, ending with the prompt, "Enter file command". As always when leaving the Files menu, write an e to exit and return to your currently open file. What if you just want the time and date, or just the number of bytes in a file? There are two options from the Files menu that can help: the "m" and "wh-sign" commands. Let's check them out one at a time. To get the time and date when a file was created, from the Files menu write an m (for the currently open file) or an m-chord (for a file not currently open). Using the Help file as the currently open file, you hear something like, "Help; Date: 12/22/92; Time: 10:38. Enter file command". If you write the letter m, instead of chording it, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter filename" and waits for you to tell it which file you want checked. Once you write the file's name, say, the "address" file we created back in Chapter 2, the Braille 'n Speak should tell you that file's creation date and time and leave you back in the Files menu waiting for you to issue another command. Exit with an e or an e-chord. To get the "byte-count" of a file, that is, the number of charac ters in the file (including spaces and carriage returns and everything), from the Files menu press a wh-sign-chord. Still using the Help file as our currently open file, you hear some thing like, "Help, 10,196 bytes. Enter file command". Bytes become important when you're transmitting data and have a disk that's almost full and you're trying to fit one more Braille 'n Speak file onto that disk, for example, or when you're transmit ting a file over a modem and need to tell the person at the other end what size file to expect. As we said earlier, if you want to check out the byte count of a file not currently open, from the Files menu write the wh- sign to hear the prompt, "Enter filename". Writing the name of the file whose byte count you want followed by an e-chord quickly produces the information for you. As usual, you are left in the Files menu. Exit with an e or e-chord to return to your currently open file. Now that we've seen the different ways to get file information, let's move on to the stopwatch and timer, yet another bonus built into the Braille 'n Speak. 3.2 THE STOPWATCH AND THE TIMER The stopwatch and the timer work "hand in hand" on the Braille 'n Speak; that is, you use the same choice from the Options menu to select either one. Basically, making the choice for "Watch" from the Options menu brings you into a mode where you can use either the stopwatch or the timer. It's interesting to note that the function of a stopwatch is in effect the opposite of the function of a timer. While a stopwatch times the duration of an event for you, the timer counts down the duration you have set for an event. Let's look at the stopwatch first. 3.2.1 The Stopwatch The Braille 'n Speak's stopwatch performs all the functions you expect: it counts down the time you set, it tells you how much time has elapsed since you set it, and so on. To enter the stopwatch mode, you make a choice from the Options menu. Enter an o-chord as usual to bring up the prompt, "Op tion", then write a w (for watch). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Stopwatch ready". When you are in the stopwatch mode you can perform only stopwatch tasks. That is, you cannot ask for the date, the time of day, perform calculations, read or write text, etc. In order to perform those functions, you have to exit the stopwatch mode with a z-chord. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Exit " and leaves you back in whatever file you were last working. 3.2.1.1 Starting and Stopping the Stopwatch3.2.1.1 Starting and Stopping the Stopwatch You can run the stopwatch without setting it to a specified time. Enter the stopwatch mode with an o-chord w and at the "stopwatch ready" prompt, press dot 6. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Running". Sit back, relax, count backwards from ten slowly, then press dot 6 again. The Braille 'n Speak announces a time interval followed by the word "stopped", something like, "25 seconds 3 tenths stopped". Next, press dot 6 again. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Running". As you press dot 6, start naming the days of the week. When you have finished, press dot 6 again. The Braille 'n Speak says a number followed by the word "stopped". Notice that the number is bigger than the number spoken when you timed your count-down. The stopwatch has added the time you took to recite the days of the week to the time you took to run your count-down. An excel lent use of the stopwatch is for calling "time-out" during an event. 3.2.1.2 Reading Elapsed Time3.2.1.2 Reading Elapsed Time Let's repeat our count-down from ten backwards but this time start the stopwatch by pressing dot 6. Once the Braille 'n Speak says "Running", recite your count-down. After speaking each number, press the spacebar. Each time you do, the Braille 'n Speak announces a new time. You are observing the passage of time. Each time you press the spacebar, the stopwatch announces the time at the instant the key is pressed. With the stopwatch in the stopped condition, if you press the spacebar, The Braille 'n Speak announces the present time followed by the word "stopped". It might say something like, "7 seconds 8 tenths stopped". Now let's suppose you have pressed the spacebar to read the stopwatch but are interrupted by a slamming door. You need to hear this last announcement again. Write a c to hear the most recent time announced again and again. Press c as often as you like. Even with the stopwatch still running, the time you heard last when you pressed the spacebar is announced. Now go ahead and press the spacebar again. Notice that some time has elapsed since we started. Probably you'll hear something like, "5 minutes 30 seconds 3 tenths", for example. But how do you stop the watch from running and how do you set it? Let's check that out next. 3.2.1.3 Stopping and Resetting the Stopwatch3.2.1.3 Stopping and Resetting the Stopwatch We have learned that pressing dot 6 stops and starts the stop watch without resetting the time to 0. The final stopwatch command we'll look at does both. With the stopwatch running, press dot 3. The Braille 'n Speak says the time elapsed since you started the watch running fol lowed by the words "stopped reset". Suppose you did not hear the time announcement portion of the message. Will writing a c let you hear it again? Yes, it will. What happens if you press the spacebar? In that case, you'll hear the message, "stopped". Pressing c again also causes "stopped" to be repeated. By the way, the stopwatch does not operate only when the Braille 'n Speak is turned on. If you have the stopwatch running when you turn off the unit, when you turn it back on, the stopwatch will pick up its time right where it left off. The stopwatch has a capacity of 23 hours 59 minutes 59.9 seconds. Chances are, you won't need it to be running for a whole day, though. 3.2.2 The Timer In a sense, the count-down timer is similar to an alarm clock or kitchen timer. Once you start the count-down timer, you can cancel it but you cannot put it on "hold". You need to be in Stopwatch mode to use the timer. Press an o- chord w if you're not in it already. To start the timer, enter a braille number-sign (dots 3-4-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter count-down minutes". Using "dropped numbers", write a 2, then write an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "enter count-down seconds". Write the number 15, then press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak should now say, "Counting". Now just sit back and wait. In one minute and fifteen seconds, the Braille 'n Speak will say, "one minute". If you continue to wait, at the end of two minutes the Braille 'n Speak will say, "time is up, stopwatch ready". 3.2.2.1 Finding out Time Remaining3.2.2.1 Finding out Time Remaining Let's see how to determine how much time remains on the timer. Return to the count-down timer and enter 2 minutes 15 seconds again. Then enter an e-chord and listen for the Braille 'n Speak to say, "Counting". After a few seconds, press the spacebar. The Braille 'n Speak might say something like, "0 minutes 30 seconds remaining". Pressing the spacebar repeatedly tells you how much time remains to be counted down. 3.2.2.2 Timing In the Background3.2.2.2 Timing In the Background If you are timing an event, you may have better things to do than staying with your Braille 'n Speak and pressing the spacebar every so often to see how much time remains. As long as you leave the unit turned on, you are free to write or read text and perform other activities as long as you end your count-down request by writing an e-chord twice. Here's an example. Set your count-down timer to 1 minute 20 seconds. When you have written the 20, write an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Counting". Write another e-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay" and returns you to whatever file you were last working in before you entered the Stopwatch mode and to the exact place where you were working. Even if you're just reading, and it's a long file, after the end of the minute and twenty seconds, the Braille 'n Speak will stop reading and say, "time is up". However, it will not say, "stop watch ready", as it did before. You're still in your file, exactly at the place where the timer interrupted to let you know it had stopped. How nice that you don't actually have to be standing in the kitchen waiting to hear the timer to go off on your microwave. Set it on the Braille 'n Speak instead and keep working in your living room. When dinner is ready, the Braille 'n Speak will let you know. 3.3 THE CALCULATOR The Braille 'n Speak's calculator performs all the usual calcula tor functions: it can add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate percentages and extract square roots. You can store results of calculations in its six memory locations, whose letter labels can facilitate the calculating process. 3.3.1 Basic Operations The calculator uses the standard Nemeth braille symbols for the basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, divi sion, calculating percentages and computing square roots. We list these braille symbols here for your convenience. addition - dots 3-4-6 (ing-sign) subtraction - dots 3-6 (hyphen) multiplication - dots 1-6 (ch-sign) division - dots 3-4 (st-sign) percent - dots 1-4-6 (sh-sign) square root - dots 3-4-5-chord (ar-sign) decimal point - dots 4-6 To enter the calculator mode, you make a choice from the Options menu as usual. This time you press an o-chord c. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Option, Calculator ready". When you're finished with the calculator, you can return to the file in which you were working by simply pressing a z-chord, just as we did to exit both the count-down timer and stopwatch. When you do, the Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Exit". Now let's run through some examples of using the calculator. We'll assume that you're in calculator mode. To perform any computation with the calculator, you write an arithmetic expression including all appropriate operations symbols (like a plus sign, for example) and you end the expres sion with an e-chord. You never include spaces in your computa tion as you might when writing something out on a piece of paper. You use only "dropped" numbers to calculate and the Braille 'n Speak recognizes the operations symbols listed above as a command to perform the particular operation. Entering an e-chord tells the Braille 'n Speak, "Okay, go and figure this out and tell me the answer, please." Write 2+2 followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "4" or "four period". The response varies with how your speech parameters for punctuation announcement are set. To do another calculation, you do not have to clear the calculat or. The Braille 'n Speak assumes that when you enter a number after you have obtained a result with an e-chord, you are start ing another calculation. Write 375-157 followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak responds, "218". To be absolutely sure that the calculator is cleared for another computation, simply press a 0-chord (dots 3-5-6) and the Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Clear". Now go ahead and try a few sample calculations on your own, using some other operations, like multiplication. Try decimals, try big numbers. A couple of notes: When working with negative numbers, you must clear the calculator between one computation and the next. (Negative numbers are often used in algebraic expressions. If you're not familiar with their use, don't worry about it.) Otherwise, the effect of your calculations is cumulative. When you enter the sign of operation for addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, the Braille 'n Speak announces the word "plus, minus, times divided by". 3.3.2 Setting Precision So far, the calculations in our examples have come out even. There have been no remainders. If you divide 100 by 14, the Braille 'n Speak's response varies according to the number of decimal places to which your calculator is set. This is referred to as the "precision" of the calculator. Usually, two decimal places is enough since that's all you need for currency. But occasionally you'll want a more precise response. Here's how to change the decimal precision on the calculator. From within calculator mode, press a p-chord. At the Braille 'n Speak prompt, "Enter precision", write 3 followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Okay" to confirm your new set ting. Now the calculator is set to compute out to three decimal places. Let's check it. Write 100/14 followed by an e-chord. You should hear, "7.142". You can set the calculator to a maximum precision of twelve decimal places. However, be aware that the calculator drops 0's at the end of a result. For example, if you divide 300000 by 1190 and you have precision set to 2, you will get 252.1 as a result. If you set the precision to 3, you will still get 252.1 as a result. When you increase precision to 4 you discover that your result is 252.1008. The second and third decimal places were 0 and were not spoken. 3.3.3 Inserting Calculation Results into a File Work in your file as you normally do, writing text, cutting and pasting text, inserting and deleting text. When you're ready to insert the result of a calculation into your text, simply get into calculator mode at that point. Then perform your calcula tion. Next, having obtained the desired result, with an e-chord, exit the calculator with a z-chord. Finally, press an i-chord followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak remembers that you just calculated something and immediately inserts it into your open file and places you there, ready to continue working. 3.3.4 Performing Percentage Calculations Many people find dealing with percents baffling, to say the least. Nevertheless, we provide a couple of examples here for your convenience. Besides, we all use percentages far more than we realize in daily transactions. We'll assume that you're in calculator mode, ready to compute something. To determine what percent one number is of another number, first write the value of the percentage, then write the percent sign, and finally write the number whose percentage you want to calcu late. As usual, finish the computation with an e-chord. For example, to find 50 percent of 26, write 50 % 26 e-chord (remembering not to put spaces in between each part of the expression). The Braille 'n Speak responds, "13". Make sense? Fifty percent of something is half of it, so clearly thirteen is half of twenty-six. By the way, for those of you who are considering using the Braille 'n Speak for algebraic calculations, the Braille 'n Speak does not come ready to do that "out of the box". It can't, for example, perform calculations within parentheses. This is a relatively simple machine and if you need that sort of result, you will have to perform the calculations within parentheses one at a time and perhaps store the results in the Braille 'n Speak's calculator memory locations. However, there is a Scientific Calculator on disk with its own documentation (free when pur chased with Blazie's external disk drive) which you can add to the 640 that does allow you to get rather fancy. 3.3.5 Storing and Using the Six Memory Locations The Braille 'n Speak calculator has six memory locations where you can store results of computations. These MEMORY locations are labeled A, B, C, D, E, and F. Results you store in them are saved after exiting the calculator mode and turning off the Braille 'n Speak. There are two ways to store a number in a memory location: One way is to store the result of a calculation. First write an arithmetic expression and press an e-chord to compute its result. Then press an s-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Store". Write the letter of the memory location where you want to store it, for example, A. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Okay". A second way is to start with a cleared calculator memory and simply write a number followed by an e-chord. Then press an s-- chord followed by the letter of the memory location where you want it stored. To read the contents of a memory location, simply write the letter of that location followed by an e-chord. If you have stored a number in a memory location, you can use that number within a calculation. Write the letter of the memory location where you stored the number as part of the expression to be calculated. For example, write 3-2 followed by an e-chord. At the response, "1", press an s-chord A to store the result in memory location A. Write 3-1 followed by an e-chord. At the response, "2", press an s-chord B to store this result in memory location B. So now you have numbers stored in memory locations A and B. Write a+b followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak looks up the number stored in each memory location and calcu lates, "3". You were able to add the numbers using only the letter labels of the memory locations. There is a special memory location we haven't mentioned yet, the letter R. Recall that to press an e-chord at the end of a calculation produces a result. You can store a result in its own special memory location by simply writing the letter R. You don't have to use the s-chord at all. Then you can use it the same way we described above for the other memory locations labeled A through F. With a bit of practice, you can use the memory locations to store long numbers, or important ones (like the amount of your pay check), so that you can track how it's dwindling as you go through the week. 3.3.6 Extracting a Square Root To xtract the square root of a number, press an ar-sign- chord (dots 3-4-5) immediately following the number. For example, to extract the square root of 25, simply write the number "25" followed by an ar-sign-chord. You don't even need to press an e- chord to hear the Braille 'n Speak say, "5". 3.3.7 Error Messages and Tips If you set the calculator an impossible task, such as dividing 17 by 0, the Braille 'n Speak rejects the expression with, "Error". If you use an incorrect chord for an e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak says, "not valid calculator command". You can use the backspace (b-chord) to make corrections. For example, if you want to add .5 and .5 but write .4 as your second entry, press a b-chord to erase the 4 and then write the 5 followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak responds to your corrected entry with, "1". If you haven't pressed an e-chord yet, you can hear the calcula tion you have written thus far by pressing a c-chord. Once you press the e-chord, however, pressing c-chord is ineffective. Finally, pressing an f-chord toggles you between speaking numbers as digits or full words from within Calculator mode. You can see that the calculator is quite a bonus. Now let's turn to some other handy tools that come with the Braille 'n Speak. ** 3.4 WORD EXCEPTIONS** 3.4 WORD EXCEPTIONS Note: This section is unique to the 640. The Braille 'n Speak is obviously a very handy device for so many tasks. But oh, how frustrating that it can't pronounce certain things just right! Well, that's the price you pay for mechanical speech, isn't it? Not really. You can get the Braille 'n Speak to pronounce things just the way you want. The word exceptions dictionary takes care of funny-sounding words, proper names and abbreviations. You can create a special file containing unusual words or letter combinations (acronyms) that the Braille 'n Speak may not recog nize. Take, for example, the letters "USA" - a very common abbreviation, isn't it? Yet, the Braille 'n Speak can't be expected to take everything into account. Get into an existing file or create a new one for practicing with this concept. For our example, we'll use our "practice" file from Chapter 2. Get into it now. Let's start with a clean slate. We'll assume that your "practice" file is empty. If it isn't, delete whatever practice junk you have in it at this time. Write "USA" and notice that the Braille 'n Speak says, "use- ah" as if it were a word. We'll create a file called "word.fix" to keep track of such anomalies so that when we write the abbrevia tion, the Braille 'n Speak will pronounce it correctly. Get into the Files menu and create a file called "word.fix" having one Braille 'n Speak page and having braille translation "off". Within this new file, write in ASCII only, not in Grade 2 braille, the letters "USA" just as before except this time follow the letters immediately by an ASCII equals sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5- 6) and then write each letter separated by spaces. So your text should look like this: (We spell this out precisely in braille terms for clarity.) "usa dots 1-2-3-4-5-6 u space s space a". Now press a carriage return, a dots 4-6-chord. You have just created your first "word exception". Go back to your file called "practice" where you had the text that caused this havoc in the first place. Does the Braille 'n Speak now say "U.S.A." or does it still say "use-ah"? It may or it may not. That depends on whether the Braille 'n Speak is awake and looking out for word exceptions. Check the Status menu to see whether Word Exceptions is "on" or "off". You do this by pressing an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4) from any point in your work. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Status menu". To find out whether Word Exceptions is in effect, write a letter e (for Exceptions). The Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Exceptions check on". To turn it off, simply press an n, to turn it on, press a y. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord. What's important about the word exceptions dictionary is that you must be using computer braille when you write in it. You write the word or phrase or acronym followed immediately by an ASCII equal sign and then the correction. This feature of the Braille 'n Speak is especially nice for proper names and for all those alphabet soup acronyms that are part of life nowadays. Next, we'll look at macros, and no, we don't mean fish. 3.5 MACROS If you already work with computers, you are probably already familiar with the concept of macros. As with previous concepts in this manual, we assume that you may not be familiar with a concept when we first introduce it. The Braille 'n Speak is such a versatile, yet user-friendly device, that many of you may be first-time users. Those of you who know about macros may wish to skip this introductory section and go directly to the section on how to create and execute macros. 3.5.1 What's a Macro, Anyway? Have you noticed that there are some key sequences we perform all the time? For example, we're always telling you to "get to the Files menu", which usually means pressing an o-chord f. Big deal. That's only two keystrokes. But what if you check your calendar several times a day, for example, or if you jump in and out of a certain file all the time to look up a phone number? The several keystrokes involved may be a nuisance to repeat and maybe you just don't want to take the time. Granted, the Braille 'n Speak shuts up as soon as you press a key during the processing of a command. You don't necessarily have to listen to it speak an entire prompt before you respond to it - a time-saver. But it's convenient to simply use a two-keystroke command that performs some things automatically for you that would otherwise be tedious. Let's look at an example. Suppose you constantly need to access your address file to look up a phone number. That's probably the most practical use of a macro that readily comes to mind. Ordinarily, you would do the following, as you'll recall from Chapter 2: Press o-chord. At the "Option" prompt, write an f. At the "Enter file command" prompt, write an o. At the "Enter file to open" prompt, spell out the name of the file followed by an e- chord. At the "filename now open" prompt, press an l-chord to get to the top of the file. At the "Top of file" prompt, press an f-chord. At the "Enter text to find" prompt, write the name of the person whose number you want to find. Then press an e- chord. Assuming the name is found, the Braille 'n Speak says the name. Then press a dot 4-chord to hear the phone number follow ing the name. Then press an o-chord followed by an f followed by an o followed by the name of the file you were in before, fol lowed by an e-chord to get back there. A fatiguing exercise when repeated regularly, no matter how fast you are. The Braille 'n Speak can help make the whole business a lot easier with a macro. Yes, you could eliminate some of the steps above if you know that the address file is file number 5 and you press an o-chord followed by a dropped "05" to get there, etc. But overall, you're still dealing with a lot of keystrokes. The power of a macro is its ability to reduce significantly the number of keystrokes you have to perform in order to accomplish a task that you perform repeatedly. Now let's see how it all works. 3.5.2 Recording a Macro Although every aspect of macros we discuss below is available in both models of the Braille 'n Speak, the Classic stores macros internally rather than in a separate file. However, when you create a macro for the first time in the 640, it automatically creates a file called "macros.sys" and places it at the end of your file list. The "macros.sys" file stores the macros you create so that when you want to perform (or execute) them, the Braille 'n Speak can find them. You can create a macro of up to 63 keystrokes (for the 640) and up to 41 keystrokes (for the Classic). During the process of recording a macro, about six keystrokes before the maximum allowed, you are alerted with a beep. The number of macros you can create is limited only by the number of characters in your braille repertory. You can name a macro by a letter of the alphabet; or, you can name it by any braille symbol, like the- sign (dots 2-3-4-6). We suggest, however, that you keep to naming your macros by letters of the alphabet that have some significance to you later on. For example, a macro for your calendar should probably be named by the letter c. A word of caution: When you are creating (or recording) a macro, that is literally what you are doing. You are performing the sequence of keystrokes that you want to automate and "recording" that sequence at the same time. So we strongly recommend that you record a macro very slowly and carefully to avoid writing erroneous keystrokes. This is especially important if part of the macro is supposed to delete or add text or files. Imagine your surprise if you accidentally delete the wrong file as you're recording your macro. It could be a costly mistake. Oh, it won't matter by the time you go to execute the macro. You'll already have deleted the file. So remember that recording a macro is like recording on your tape recorder with a live micro phone. Unwanted conversation or extraneous noises can creep into a recording. Likewise, unwanted keystrokes can creep into a macro if you're not very careful. We'll start with a very simple example of recording a macro. Let's get into the file called "practice" and go to the end of the file. We'll create a macro that simply adds one day to today's date and inserts that date into our file. You might use this at the end of each day to "move your calendar forward a day". We start by checking today's date. For sample purposes, we'll say that today is Friday, January 1, 1993. To begin recording the macro, we suggest that you first run through all the steps of the macro to make sure that each step does exactly what you want. Remember that when you're actually recording the macro, you are in fact performing the steps that you are recording. So, it's best to plan carefully. The steps to the process we've described in our sample are as follows: (Note: This example assumes that you are using the 640; you may need to substitute another example if you have a Classic.) o-chord g followed by a "dropped" 1, e-chord, i-chord, e-chord. Those steps do the following: o-chord g gets you into calendar mode. Writing the "1" moves the calendar forward a day from today's date. Pressing an e-chord causes the Braille 'n Speak to announce that date. Pressing an i-chord gets you into Insert mode and pressing the final e-chord inserts the date just spoken by the Braille 'n Speak into your file. Now let's perform the actual recording. Make sure that you're at the end of your file and that the last three characters are hard carriage returns (dots 4-6-chords). If they are not, write them in now. To start recording a macro, press an n-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Macro, enter a key." We'll enter a letter c (for calendar). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Recording." Go ahead and perform the steps we described above and don't worry about the Braille 'n Speak prompts. If you make a mistake during the process, simply abort the recording with a z-chord. Assuming that you enter all the steps correctly, you should have entered the following. We place a comma in between each entry merely for clarity: o-chord, g, 1, e-chord, i-chord, e-chord. Press another n-chord to complete the recording of this macro. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Macro end." Notice that when you check the last line of your currently open file, you do indeed have tomorrow's date. So, as we advised, the Braille 'n Speak not only recorded your macro but also performed the steps within it. Now let's look at how to execute this macro again. We'll pretend that it's now tomorrow and that we want to add the following day to our calendar. 3.5.3 Executing an Existing Macro To invoke a macro that you've already created is a matter of two simple keystrokes, the first of which is always a j-chord and the second of which is the letter (or other braille symbol) that you named your macro. If you are recording a macro and want to incorporate an existing one into it, as you're recording, press a j-chord at the point where you want the previously existing macro to "take over", instead of pressing an n-chord to complete the recording process. Then write the character that represents the name of the previ ously existing macro. Let's see how to execute the macro we just recorded. Get to the end of your "practice" file and write in three hard carriage returns. Execute the macro for calendar update by pressing a j-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Macro". It's waiting for the character designation. Now write the letter c. Whether the Braille 'n Speak actually voices each step in the processing of the macro depends on whether the unit is set to speak macros. For now, we'll assume that it is speaking the steps as it performs them. Notice that the Braille 'n Speak finishes the whole process far faster than you could have. You should be at the point in your file that says tomorrow's date. What? Shouldn't it say the day after tomorrow? Well, remember that we were pretending that tomorrow is already here and that we were adding another day to our calendar. The Braille 'n Speak doesn't know about our game and so it simply added one day to today's date and inserted that date into your file. If it were tomorrow, you'd find that this macro would add the next day to your file. Remember that the Braille 'n Speak keeps time and knows what date today is. Try this macro again tomorrow and you'll see that it works as we suggest. Incidentally, we added those extra hard carriage returns because the Braille 'n Speak inserts a date by replacing the last charac ter in your file with a space. If you had not placed those hard carriage returns at the end of your file, you might have ended up with the date being part of the last line of text that was already in your file. 3.5.4 How to Check a Macro You can control whether the Braille 'n Speak voices the steps of a macro as it executes it. From anywhere within a file, you can "Kill" macro speech with a k-chord or "verbalize" macro speech with a v-chord. Whether to include k-chord and v-chord commands in your macro when you record it is a matter of choice. Once you become accustomed to using macros, you'll probably want speech turned off as a macro is executing. Certainly, the task you set the macro to perform is accomplished much faster if the Braille 'n Speak doesn't have to run through its prompts as it's perform ing the task. But until you're very comfortable with macros, we suggest that you press a v-chord to have the macro voice what it's doing. This is also helpful if you forget what a macro is supposed to do and want to check that out. Next we'll talk about how to pause the processing of a macro so that you can respond to a prompt or enter text and then let the macro continue. This is where the full power of macros becomes self-evident. 3.5.5 Pausing a Macro In our introduction to macros, we suggested a rather elaborate example of a macro where you search for text in your address file. Let's see how this works. The assumption underlying the process here is that the macro will pause long enough for you to enter the text you're trying to find and then go find it for you. To pause a macro while it's executing, you issue a special command as you record the macro at the point where you want to pause the processing of the macro. Press a ch-sign-chord (dots 1-6) once to pause the macro for you to enter a single character. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Pause". Or, press ch-sign-chord twice to pause the macro for you to enter a full line of text. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Line pause". When pausing the macro so that you may enter more than a single character, you tell the macro to continue processing with an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Pause end." Let's go through an example. We won't make this as complicated as the one we suggested earlier. Let's simply automate the Search process to become a "Search and Replace" process. Get into your "practice" file and delete all of its contents. (Make sure there's nothing you need to keep first, of course.) We want to start with an empty file for this example. Now write the following: "Mary had a little lamb." Silly, yes. But for sample purposes, it will do the job. We're going to write a macro that will find specific text and replace it with other text. We don't know what text specifically we want to find at this point; nor do we know with what text we'll want to replace it. All we know is that we want to find text, delete that text and then replace it with new text. So our macro will have the following steps in it: l-chord (top of file), f-chord (the command to find text), ch-sign-chord, ch-sign-cord (to pause the macro for us to enter the text we want to find), e-chord, e-chord (the first to end the pause, the second to go and find the text), d-chord w (to delete the word that was found), i-chord (to place us in Insert mode), ch-sign-chord, ch-sign-chord (to pause the macro again for us to write the word with which we are replacing the old one), e-chord, e-chord (the first to end the pause, the second to enter the word we are replacing into the file and exit Insert mode). That's the end of the macro. Since this macro has prompts we need to hear, press a v-chord to verbalize macro speech before starting the recording process. Go ahead and record this macro starting and ending with an n-chord and naming it with the letter s (for Search). As you are record ing it, answer the prompt, "Enter text to find" with, "mary" and answer the prompt, "Insert" with, "jane ". Notice that we ended "Jane" with a space. Remember that the Braille 'n Speak can't know whether we're inserting a single word or a line or what. So since we know that another word follows the old word we deleted in the sentence, we have to include a space in our replacement. After pressing the final n-chord that completes the recording of your macro, read what's in your file. You should hear "Jane had a little lamb." Let's execute this macro with a j-chord s and see what happens. You should hear, "Top of file, enter text to find, line pause." Write "lamb" and press an e-chord to let the macro continue. You'll hear, "Pause end". Then you should hear, "Okay, Delete parameter, Word, Okay, Insert mode active, line pause." Write "dog" followed by an e-chord to let the macro finish. You'll hear, "Pause end". Now read what's in your file. You should hear, "Jane had a little dog." You now have a "Search and Replace" facility that didn't come from the factory. You created it yourself with the power of macros. Incidentally, you could turn the macro we just created into a full "search and replace" facility for the entire file by having "chained" it to itself. Recall that we said you could end the recording of one macro with a j-chord followed by the name of a previously existing one that you wanted to "take over" at a certain point. If you were to re-record the macro we just created and ended it with a j-chord s, instead of an n-chord, you would have a macro that will continue running throughout the file. Of course, you can cancel it anywhere in the process with a z-chord. It might be useful to experiment with this concept with a junk file and a simple macro. Getting back to our original, "search and replace" macro, what would happen if the text you are searching for is not found? The macro simply aborts at that point. So you don't even have to worry about having words accidentally deleted by invoking this particular macro. 3.5.6 Write-Protecting Macros Since we've created such a masterpiece of a macro, let's make sure we protect it. What if you forgot, for instance, that you already have a macro labeled with the letter s. You could acci dentally start recording a new macro, erasing the one we so painstakingly created before. To avoid this potential hazard, you might consider protecting your macros. Press an n-chord as if you were going to record a macro. At the prompt, "Macro, enter a key", press a p-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Write-protected". Now if you try to write over an existing macro, the Braille 'n Speak stops you with, "Write- protected". In fact, you won't be able to create any new macros while in this mode. It's similar to write-protecting your impor tant files. When you try to write anything into a write-protect ed file, the Braille 'n Speak issues a similar message, "File is write-protected". By the way, the "macros.sys" file is always protected. You couldn't write in it even if you wanted to do so. To be able to write a macro again, you can unprotect them with an n-chord u-chord. The Braille 'n Speak will simply say, "Unpro tected" and you'll be able to write macros once again. Clearly, macros are extremely helpful for adding even more flexibility to the Braille 'n Speak. Our final topics in this chapter deal with a couple of special modes in which you can use the Braille 'n Speak. 3.6 THE ONE-HANDED BRAILLE 'N SPEAK3.6 THE ONE-HANDED BRAILLE 'N SPEAK Some people need to use the Braille 'n Speak with one hand, rather than two. For those special cases, the Braille 'n Speak can be turned into a "one-handed" device. To turn the Braille 'n Speak into a device that accepts key strokes for one-handed use only, simply press a dot 6 as you turn on the unit. The Braille 'n Speak says, "One-hand mode on, Braille 'n Speak ready, (filename) now open". From this point on, the Braille 'n Speak accepts keystrokes as follows: The spacebar is your focal point. To write a character that involves only dots to either side of the spacebar, simply write the character, for example an l (dots 1-2-3) followed by the spacebar. The l is now entered into your file. If you need to write a character that involves dots on both sides of the space bar, say a g, then write the left half first (dots 1-2) and then the right half (dots 4-5) followed by a spacebar to enter the character into your file. You could have written the right half first, then the left half, or you could have pressed each key individually. The important thing to remember is that the character is entered only after you press the spacebar. To enter chords is a little more complicated. You enter a chord in one-handed mode by starting with a space. Then you press the appropriate dots on either side of the spacebar and end with another space. For example, to get to the end of the file, normally a dots 4-5-6-chord) you press the spacebar, then write dots 4-5-6, then press the spacebar again. The Braille 'n Speak will then say, "End of file." We suggest that you only use this mode if you truly require it. For most users, one-hand mode is unnecessary and potentially confusing if you accidentally get into it. To return the Braille 'n Speak to two-handed mode, simply press a dot 3 when next turning on the unit. 3.7 REVIEW ONLY MODE If you want to review the contents of a file but don't want to bother having to repeatedly use chords to read paragraph after paragraph, you can place yourself temporarily in Review mode by choosing it from the Options menu. Press an o-chord and at the "Option" prompt, write an r. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Review on, okay." Until you issue another chord command, any chord will do, you can write characters that you'd normally have to press the spacebar with to execute chord commands. For example, dot 4 reads you the next line. Dots 1-4 or the letter c, reads you the current line, and so on. Exit Review mode by simply pressing any chord. The Braille 'n Speak will say, "Off". Or, turn the unit off alto gether to return it to normal use. 3.8 SUMMARY This chapter has covered a staggering array of utilities and tools available to you in the Braille 'n Speak. We suggest that you review those parts of the chapter that are especially crucial to your daily interactions with the Braille 'n Speak before moving on to our next challenge, telecommunications. It can scare some. Don't worry. We'll keep it as simple as possible. As with the contents of the present chapter, you'll find that hooking up the Braille 'n Speak to other devices can only enhance your productivity. Take a deep breath. And let's move on. Chapter 4 - Communicating with Other Devices Chapter 4 - Communicating with Other Devices Up to now, we've looked at the Braille 'n Speak as a "stand- alone" device. In computerese, such a device can perform tasks on its own, without being hooked up to any other devices. And we've seen how powerful the Braille 'n Speak is all by itself. We now start examining how the Braille 'n Speak can give you even more flexibility in your everyday life, by hooking it up to other devices: printers, computers, disk drives, modems. No doubt, you've heard that things get real technical when words like "cable", "serial versus parallel", and even that big word, "telecommunications", come on the scene. Consequently, many shy away from exploring what telecommunications can mean to them. It is indeed very easy to slide into jargon when discussing the sub ject. The good news is, you don't have to be a techie-whizz in order to hook up your Braille 'n Speak to another device. As with previous sections of this manual, we assume that you may not be familiar with the subject of telecommunications and that an introduction will help to demistify it for you. If you're already acquainted with the jargon, we suggest that you skim over the first section of this chapter anyway because we discuss how you can customize telecommunications settings. You might then just skip to those sections that interest you. For example, you may not want to hook up the Braille 'n Speak to a disk drive. You may only want to know about how to hook it up to a PC or printer or modem. Therefore, each section is self- contained. 4.1 INTRODUCING TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND SETTINGS What do you do when using your telephone or watching your televi sion? Why, you are sending and receiving, of course: voice through the phone and pictures through the TV. Telecommunications is simply the ability to send and receive information to and from one place to another, from one device to another. It is accomplished through cables linking the devices and by matching up various settings on the devices being linked. 4.1.1 Cables The Braille 'n Speak comes with a cable that you can connect to many printers, computers, even modems. At times you can make the connection without additional adapters or connectors - most printers, for example. But more often, devices require that cable adapters or additional cables be connected between the Braille 'n Speak cable and the other device. Let's clear up some of the mystery around cables right off. It's not important that you understand the technical details surround ing cabling issues, just that you be aware of what kind of connectors you may need. There are four things to consider when linking the Braille 'n Speak to another device: serial versus parallel, gender, number of pins, null modem cable requirements. Don't be scared off by these terms. We promise not to get techie. 4.1.1.1 Serial versus Parallel The Braille 'n Speak is a serial device. What's important here is that you determine that the device to which you wish to link the Braille 'n Speak is also serial. (The manual that came with the device should tell you and the dealer can give you this information even before you purchase the device.) If it is not, you'll need to get a serial-to-parallel converter cable before you can do anything else. Since the Braille 'n Speak is a serial device and most other devices today are too, you usually don't have a problem with this issue. So we'll assume that you're linking the Braille 'n Speak to another serial device. 4.1.1.2 Gender4.1.1.2 Gender Another thing to determine about cables is the sex of the connec tor and the sex of the port to which you're linking it. Examine each end of the Braille 'n Speak cable. You have a connector that is small and square at one end and a connector that is larger and flatter on the other end. Notice that the small, square connector, which is the one that plugs into the Braille 'n Speak, has a single dot at the top and two dots on the bottom. This is to guide you as to how to plug the cable into the Braille 'n Speak. Also, notice the tiny holes in the connec tor. This is a female connector. Examine the port for this cable. It is on the left side of the Braille 'n Speak as it faces you, furthest away from you and toward the back. The tiny pins sticking out inside the port indicate that this is a male port. In fact, both the ports on the Braille 'n Speak are male ports. You can plug in the Braille 'n Speak connector into this port easily since it is female and the port is male. Now check out the other end of the cable that came with your Braille 'n Speak. It may be male or female. Depending on its gender and that of the port to which you're connecting it, you may have to get a gender changer. You plug the opposite sex end of the gender changer to the Braille 'n Speak cable, then plug the other end of the gender changer into the port on the device. Usually, you can obtain serial gender changers from your local computer store. Just be certain what kind of gender changer you need before you buy one. Be specific about the sex of your connector and the port so that your salesperson knows exactly what to sell to you. 4.1.1.3 Number of Pins Another issue is the number of pin locations on the connector and the number that the port can accept. This number must match exactly or, once again, you'll need an adapter. The Braille 'n Speak connector for other devices is a 25-pin connector and many ports today are also 25-pin ports. So you may not have a prob lem. But if the port is serial and even the right gender, and you have only a 9-pin cable, you'll need an adapter. Here again, it's not crucial that you understand the technical details. But you do need to know what kind of connector you have and what kind of port you're trying to link with so that your salesperson can sell you the right adapter. 4.1.1.4 Null Modem Cable Requirements To connect the Braille 'n Speak to a modem, to another Braille 'n Speak, and to some computers, you need a special cable called a "null modem" cable or adapter. Some Apple computers, for exam ple, require one, although an IBM PC compatible does not. The important pieces of information to note here are the genders and the number of pins each connector and port needs in order to match up precisely. When you purchase a 640, an interface kit containing gender changers, a null modem adapter, and even a minitester to help with technical problems, comes with the unit. You can purchase this kit from Blazie if you have a Classic, or you can acquire the pieces you need from your local computer store. Now that we've established the cable requirements, let's look at what you need to do to prepare the Braille 'n Speak for stepping out into the world of other devices. 4.1.2 Telecommunications Settings Assuming that you've cabled everything correctly, you still need to make sure that your Braille 'n Speak telecommunications settings match those on the other device. Often times, trouble arises from simply having mismatched speeds or duplex settings or whatever. In this section, we look at how to determine the status of these settings and how to change them. Both devices you are linking together must be "talking in the same language" and be polite enough to be "listening" to each other without interrupting as they communicate. It's also crucial that they communicate at the same rate of speed so that one isn't overwhelmed by the dizzying rate or turned off by the sedate pace of the other. Before you start hooking things up, check the manual of the other device for the status of telecommunications settings preset from the factory on that device (referred to as the "default" set tings.) Chances are that if you need to change any, it will be easier to do it from the Braille 'n Speak's side of the link than from the other side. To see the status of telecommunications settings in the Braille 'n Speak, you look them up in the Status menu. From there, you can change them, or simply exit the Status menu with either a z- chord or e-chord. On the other hand, if you just want to change a setting but don't need to see its present status, you can change the setting from the Parameters menu. We'll show you both as we go through the telecommunications settings one at a time. 4.1.2.1 Baud Rate The speed at which characters is transmitted to and from a device is called the Baud rate. It is preset to 9600 Baud, or 960 characters per second in the Braille 'n Speak. To see the present value of this setting, get into the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4) and enter a b. The Braille 'n Speak tells you the current setting, in this case, "9600 Baud". You can write one or two digits of the setting you wish instead (using dropped numbers, as always). The possible settings are: 75 (only for the Classic), 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, and 38400 (this last setting only in the 640). Where the first digit is not specific enough to identify the desired rate, you may need to write the second digit as well. For example, if you need to set the Braille 'n Speak to 150 Baud, you must write 15 since 19200 is another possible Baud rate and the Braille 'n Speak can't guess which of the two you want. However, if you need to set the Braille 'n Speak to 2400 Baud, you can simply write a 2 and the Braille 'n Speak understands. Remember to exit the Status menu with an e- chord to return to your previous work area. It will say, "Exit". If you just want to change the Baud rate, get to the Parameters menu by pressing a p-chord from wherever you're working. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". Write a b and at the "Enter Baud rate" prompt, simply write the first or first and second digits of your choice. The Braille 'n Speak doesn't repeat the Baud rate you've entered. It just says, "Okay." However, if you write an invalid setting, it says, "Invalid input" and leaves you back where you were last working. You'll need to start all over again with a p-chord b to issue a valid setting. 4.1.2.2 Parity Parity works to keep your transmission error-free. All you need to know is that it can be set to Even, Odd or None. The default is None. Get into the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a p. The Braille 'n Speak says, "No parity". To change it, write an e for Even or an o for Odd. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord. To change parity from the Parameters menu, press a p-chord. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write a p. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parity, None, Even, Odd". When you write the first letter of a choice, the Braille 'n Speak simply confirms, "Okay" and leaves you back in your previous work area. 4.1.2.3 Duplex This setting deserves special notice because it affects what you hear during a transmission as well as what exactly is being transmitted. There are three possible choices: Half duplex, Full duplex and None. In the following discussion, we assume that your Braille 'n Speak is set to transmit data. In other words, its serial port is "active", ready to send and receive data. When you set duplex to half, the default value, everything you write - your responses to prompts, for example - is stored in your currently open file as well as sent out the serial port to another device. If you accidentally fail to press the spacebar when pressing a chord, a character (the non-chorded keys) is appended to the end of the text in your currently open file. When you set duplex to full, everything you write is sent out the port and nothing is stored in your currently open file. There fore, full duplex is generally more desirable. If you have your Braille 'n Speak connected to a computer, you'll usually want to set the Braille 'n Speak to full duplex mode. When you set duplex to none, what you write is stored in your currently open file but it is not transmitted to the other device. This is most useful when transmitting a file from the Braille 'n Speak directly to a printer. Otherwise, each time you send a carriage return or whenever the printer receives all it can handle, it might print before you are ready. Enter the Status menu and write a d to hear the current setting of duplex. Change it by writing an f or an n. Then exit The Status menu with the usual e-chord. Alternatively, enter the Parameters menu and write a d. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter duplex: half, full or none". Enter a choice by writing its first letter and the Braille 'n Speak responds, "Okay", leaving you back in your currently open file. 4.1.2.4 Data Bits The next setting to consider is the data length, or "data bits" setting. The possible options are 7 and 8, with 8 being the most commonly used setting. To see the present status of data bits, enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a dots 4-5-6 character. The Braille 'n Speak should say, "8 data bits". You can change it, if necessary, by writing a dropped 7. That is your only other option in this case. The only time you need to worry about this setting at all is when the device at the other end requires a setting of 7 instead of 8 data bits. Remember to exit the Status menu with an e-chord. To change the data bits setting from the Parameters menu, press a p-chord and at the "Enter parameter" prompt, write a dots 4-5-6 character. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter data bits". It assumes that you know your choices. If you write an invalid entry, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Invalid input" and kicks you back into the file you were working. To set a valid data bits setting, you must start the process over again. 4.1.2.5 Stop Bits This telecommunications setting has only two choices: 1 and 2. Generally, devices require only 1 stop bit. To see which way the stop bits parameter is presently set, enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write an s. The Braille 'n Speak says, "1 stop bit." Change it to 2 if necessary by writing a dropped 2. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord to return to the file in which you were working. Or, if you just want to change stop bits, press a p-chord to enter the Parameters menu. At the prompt, write an s and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter stop bits". As always, an invalid entry kicks you back into your currently open file. To restart the process, you need to re-enter the Parameters menu. 4.1.2.6 Handshaking Handshaking refers to a kind of traffic manager, telling one device to stop sending while the other deals with information it has received. For example, if the Braille 'n Speak keeps sending to a printer which is not able to process the information coming into it, you could lose text. So, handshaking keeps the flow of information on track. The three possible choices are None, Software handshaking and Hardware handshaking. What's important here is to find out how the device you're communicating with wants to be set for this parameter and then to set the Braille 'n Speak to match it. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write an h. The Braille 'n Speak may say any one of the three choices, something like, "Software handshake". To change it to one of the other two, simply write the first letter of a choice, for example, an n for None or an h for Hardware handshake. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord. You may also set handshaking from the Parameters menu. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write an h. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter Hardware, Software or None". Write the first letter of an option and the Braille 'n Speak responds, "Okay", leaving you back in your currently open file. When transmitting from a PC to the Braille 'n Speak, we recommend that you do not use the "None" handshake setting. You will lose data if you do. Next, we'll look at a few parameters that affect how your data appears when transmitted and how your Braille 'n Speak is affect ed by transmission of data. While you don't have to match these parameters both on the Braille 'n Speak end and the external device's end of the link, you should understand what these settings can do for you and how they can create potential snags if they're set incorrectly. 4.1.2.7 The Interactive Mode Recall from Chapter 2 that, in order to have the Braille 'n Speak echo what you write, the Interactive mode must be "on". The easiest way to enable or disable it is with a g-chord. When you enable it, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Interactive, okay" and when you disable it, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Off, okay." To see the current status of Interactive mode, enter the Status menu and write a g. The Braille 'n Speak tells you its status. Change it with a y (for on) and an n for off) and exit the Status menu with an e-chord. What does all this have to do with communications, you may be asking? When interactive mode is "on", text entering the Braille 'n Speak through its serial port (as well as its keyboard) is spoken. This can be especially vital when connected to a modem and a bulletin board, for example. If you want to listen to everything as it is coming in, you can. However, this slows down the whole transmission process. Even with speech set to maximum speed, the Braille 'n Speak's voice lags behind the transmission. On the other hand, having Interactive mode on means that you'll know when transmission has stopped or when you are being prompted by the other device. 4.1.2.8 Rejecting Ornamentation This is the parameter that controls what kinds of characters are accepted as part of a transmission. Computer networks can generate cute graphic characters (like smiley faces and Greek symbols, and even characters that draw boxes around text). You can lock out such characters from ever intruding into your file. Most likely, all you want is the content in your Braille 'n Speak, not the fancy squiggles sighted readers find so aestheti cally pleasing. When you set the Reject Ornamentation parameter "on", the Braille 'n Speak effectively screens out strings of three or more spaces, stars, or any other characters that produce ornamentation in the text or affect the layout of the text in some way. To check the status of the Ornamentation parameter, enter the Status menu and write an o. You change the setting on and off with a y or n. Most of the time, you'll want to keep it "off" unless you're hooked up to a device that is constantly sending you extra stars and the like. You can also change this setting by pressing a p-chord to enter the Parameters menu. Write an o and the Braille 'n Speak prompts, "Reject ornamentation characters; enter y or n." Respond according to your need at the time and you hear, "Okay", finding yourself back in your currently open file. Now that you have an elementary understanding of telecommunica tions settings and how to match them to the device you're linking with your Braille 'n Speak, you are ready to skip to the sections of this chapter that particularly interest you. 4.2 THE PORTABLE DISK DRIVE Note: We spend no time here explaining standard computer terms - formatting a disk, operating system, textfile, etc. We assume that you are familiar with these basic computer terms or have access to training on them. Remember, our focus is on the Braille 'n Speak's interaction with other devices. Turn to the appropriate manuals for detailed explanations of terms that apply specifically to those devices. The portable disk drive is the Braille 'n Speak's passport to the world of computers. It lets you interact with standard 3-1/2 inch disks formatted for an MS DOS (IBM PC compatible) computer. You can load text documents (ASCII textfiles) into the Braille 'n Speak, read them, edit them, even transfer them back onto disks. You can load programs specially written for the Braille 'n Speak - such as the scientific calculator and spellchecker - adding even more power to your unit. You can ask for the listing of the contents of a disk (a directory), format a disk (prepare it to receive information), delete files on the disk, create new ones, etc. 4.2.1 The Physical Design of the Disk Drive The disk drive can read and format either 720K or 1.44MB disks. When you command the drive to format a disk, it determines whether the disk is high or low density and formats accordingly. The disk drive connects to the Braille 'n Speak's second port, the one closest to you on the left side of the unit. A cable comes with the drive when you purchase it. Position the drive with the slot where the disk goes facing toward you. Rest the unit on a flat, stable surface like a desk. Now look at the back of the device. Starting from the left, the first thing you find is a rocker switch which powers the disk drive. It comes in the "Off" position from the factory, rocked to the right. To turn on the disk drive, you rock it to the left. But you can't do that yet. To the right of the power switch is the jack for your AC adapter that also comes with the disk drive at the time of purchase. The drive can be operated from its internal batery, much like the Braille 'n Speak, and it should be fully charged when you pur chase it. Nevertheless, you might want to plug your AC adapter into the unit the first time you run the drive. The battery in the disk drive is identical to the battery in the Braille 'n Speak. In fact, the two battery chargers are interchangeable. The disk drive needs only eight hours to attain a full recharge. Furthest to the right along the back of the disk drive is the female serial port that connects the disk drive to the Braille 'n Speak. The cable must be connected to this port in order for the disk drive to power up. If you try to turn on the unit without first inserting the cable into this port, nothing will happen and you may think that you have a defective device on your hands. To plug the cable into the disk drive, align the end of the cable that has the screws on either side to the port and press until you feel the cable mate with the port. You may have to turn the cable 180 degrees around before the cable and the port merge. Do not force the cable. When it is properly aligned, it will fit snugly. Turn the screws clockwise to secure the connection. Now connect the small end of the cable to the port closest to you on the left side of the Braille 'n Speak as you hold it facing toward you. On this end of the cable notice that the little square connector has a single dot on one side and two on the other. Hold the connector with the single dot pointing up as you insert it into the port on the Braille 'n Speak and you'll find that when you gently press, the connector mates easily with the port. Next, let's turn on the disk drive. You will hear three distinct tones from the unit to indicate that it is active. Insert the disk that came with the disk drive into the slot in the front of the machine with the braille side up and the braille characters facing away from you. The disk should click into place and a small, square button to the right of the slot should pop out toward you. When you're ready to extract this disk from the drive, simply push that button in and the disk will pop out. Mostly, you will be storing files from the Braille 'n Speak onto disk and retrieving files from disk onto the Braille 'n Speak. We'll go through examplse of each type of transmission. 4.2.2 Retrieving a File from Disk The first thing you need to do is to create a space in the Braille 'n Speak to receive the incoming file. But how do you know what size to make it and what if you make it too small? Won't you lose some of the text in the file or couldn't you end up with a huge, empty space wasted in your Braille 'n Speak? If you know the size of a file in bytes (and remember that a Braille 'n Speak "page" holds up to 4,096 characters), you can then "guestimate" how many Braille 'n Speak "pages" are required for a file. But if you guess wrong, you're still okay, as you'll see. Let's go through a simple, concrete example of retrieving an existing file from the disk that came with the drive. Create a file called "disk" six Braille 'n Speak pages long with braille translation turned off. Once in this file, press an s- chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Storage". Now write an l and at the prompt "Load, enter filename", write the word "disk". Press an e-chord to start the transmission. You'll hear some clicks from the disk drive and some hissing noises from the Braille 'n Speak. Within a very short time, the Braille 'n Speak will say, "File is full" and, if Interactive mode is on, it will start speaking the text of the file. Shut up the Braille 'n Speak by writing a dots 4-5-6-chord to go to the end of the file. Check how much room you have left with an r-chord. You should hear something like, "Room left is 11." You can read this file in the usual way. Go ahead and do that now, moving to the top of the file and either listening to the complete text or skipping around in the file. Do you have the complete file saved on the Braille 'n Speak? Well, one way to find out is to read the current line at the end of the file with a c-chord. In the current example, you'll hear something like, "by R". Doesn't sound like the end of a docu ment, does it. Actually, the disk drive emits a single tone when it completes sending a file to the Braille 'n Speak and the Braille 'n Speak itself says, "Okay". Since this did not happen, we can assume that there is more text in the file that has not yet been trans mitted since the Braille 'n Speak ran out of room. The disk drive is smart enough to know when the Braille 'n Speak can't take any more data and stops sending text. Let's see how to continue getting more of the file from the disk drive. The first thing to do is to make this file bigger, say by 1 Braille 'n Speak page. When your file is larger by a full Braille 'n Speak page, go to its end and press an s-chord. At the "Storage" prompt from the Braille 'n Speak, write an r (for resume). This time, the disk drive should emit a single tone indicating that it has completed sending this file and the Braille 'n Speak should say, "Okay" to acknowledge that it has received a complete file. Proceed as before, reading this file in the usual way. Incidentally, you've probably noticed a couple of tones from the disk drive every few minutes. Don't worry; it's the drive's way of reminding you that it is still turned on, just as the Braille 'n Speak has a Power Reminder feature that says "Hello" when you have left it inactive for a few minutes. Now, how about if we want to save a file onto disk from the Braille 'n Speak. 4.2.3 Storing a File from the Braille 'n Speak to the Disk Drive There are several ways to save a file from the Braille 'n Speak to a disk. Three common methods include: saving a file merely for backup purposes; saving a file as a "print" file ready for a printer or word processor to handle; saving a file as a "braille" file ready to send to a braille embosser. The simplest way to save a file from the Braille 'n Speak to a disk - mostly used for backup purposes - is to press an s-chord from within the file and at the "Storage" prompt, write an s (for save). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Save; enter filename". Name the file using MS DOS file naming conventions and press an e- chord. The disk drive spins and the Braille 'n Speak hisses and clicks. Shortly, a single tone from the disk drive followed by an "Okay" from the Braille 'n Speak tell you that your transfer was successful. You can check whether braille translation is turned on or off by checking its status in the Status menu, but the "Storage" utility we've just discussed facilitates how you store a file. You don't have to think about which way your braille translator is current ly set. From within the file you want to save, press an s-chord. At the "Storage" prompt, write a t to save the file translated from Grade 2 braille into normal, English text (a textfile), or a b to save the file as a Grade 2 braille file to be printed on a braille embosser or sent out to a braille display device. For clarity, you might answer the "Enter filename" prompt with "filename.txt" for "print" files and with "filename.brl" for "braille" files. The Braille 'n Speak goes through its usual clicks and hisses and the disk drive spins. Your transfer is complete when you hear, "Okay" from the Braille 'n Speak and a single tone from the drive. A note of caution: We have not talked about the issue of physical format of the page. This refers to the page length, line width, margins, etc. Before you save a textfile as a "print" or "braille" file which you intend to send to a printer or braille embosser, you must set up the appropriate page format for the file. Otherwise, your file is translated into print or Grade 2 braille but its page format may be a mess. Turn to Section 4.3.3 to read about format parameters in detail. If you go through our example, you'll see a step-by-step explanation. Whether you're transmitting an application or a textfile to or from the disk drive, or perhaps a group of files, here's another transmission method that is more sophisticated than the s-chord command. ** 4.2.4 Transmitting Textfiles or Applications Note: This feature is unique to the 640 and your disk drive may require updating to be able to perform the type of transmission described below. Contact Blazie Engineering for more details.) First, let's take a look at how this optional transmission process works, regardless of the type of file being transferred. In the next section, we'll deal specifically with transferring "programs" or "applications" to the Braille 'n Speak. Enter the Files menu and press a t-chord (for transfer a file). The Braille 'n Speak sees that the disk drive is connected and prompts you with, "Disk drive, enter s to send or r to receive." If you press an s-chord or an r-chord, you will hear the names of the files as they are being transmitted. If you simply write an s or an r, you do not hear their names as they are being trans mitted. ** 4.2.4.1 Sending Files to the Disk Drive Note: This feature is unique to the 640. When you write an s to send files to the drive, the Braille 'n Speak prompts you with the name of the file to which you're cur rently pointing in your file list and tells you whether that file is "marked". Marking the Braille 'n Speak files you want to send prepares them for transmission. You can navigate through your file list to hear whether each file is marked or unmarked. If you don't want the file you're point ing to sent to the disk drive, you can unmark it with an n. Then you can move through your file list unmarking files with an n: forward with a dot 4-chord or backward with a dot 1-chord, to the beginning and end of the file list with an l-chord and dots 4-5- 6-chord as usual. When you find a file you do want to send, write a y to "mark" it for sending. Likewise, if you had marked a file previously that you don't want to send at this time you can unmark it with an n. A quicker way to mark and unmark files as you move through your file list is this: When you find a file you want to mark, press a y-chord to mark the file. This automatially moves you to the next file in your file list. Finally, if you want to send all the files in your Braille 'n Speak file list, write an m to mark them all at once. You can write a u to "unmark" your entire file list all at once and select individual files to send. Another way to use the marking feature is with "wildcard" charac ters. (See Appendix A.) Press an m-chord or u-chord to mark or unmark a specific group of files that have similar names. For example, say that you have several files with names like, "names.brl" and "books.brl". Press an m-chord followed by the characters "*.brl" (that's an asterisk, a period, then the letters brl). All files with names that end in ".brl" are marked for sending to the drive. Similarly, a u-chord followed by "*.brl" unmarks that group of files so that they are not sent. By the way, pressing the spacebar toggles between marking and unmarking the file to which you are currently pointing also. When you've marked all the files you want to send to the drive, press an e-chord to let the Braille 'n Speak start sending files. You hear the drive spin and nothing much from your Braille 'n Speak until it finishes sending. Then it prompts you with "Okay, enter file command." Remember, you started this process from within your Files menu; the Braille 'n Speak knows that. So it leaves you there when it completes the transmission. ** 4.2.4.2 Receiving Files from the Disk Drive Note: This feature is unique to the 640. When you write an r to receive files from the drive, the Braille 'n Speak prompts, "Enter filename" and waits for you to write the name of a known file on the disk in the drive or a group of similarly named files. Press an e-chord to let the Braille 'n Speak start receiving. You may use wildcard characters for similarly named groups of files, as illustrated above. A note of caution: If you have a file in the Braille 'n Speak with the same name as the one you are receiving from your drive, the Braille 'n Speak asks you whether you want to delete the one in the Braille 'n Speak. If you answer, "Yes", it will be deleted and replaced by the incoming file. If you answer, "No", the transfer is aborted altogether. After you press the e-chord to signal the Braille 'n Speak to begin receiving files from the drive, you should hear the drive spin and eventually the Braille 'n Speak say, "Okay". Files from the drive are appended to the end of your previous Braille 'n Speak file list. Next, let's see how to receive a file that is a program or appli cation, not a textfile. 4.2.4.3 Adding an Application to the Braille 'n Speak Up to now, we've been talking exclusively about sending and receiving textfiles - that is, files with text you can read in them. As you may know, the other type of file a computer uses is a "program", a file that instructs the computer on how to do something, like run a word processor or a spreadsheet applica tion. For the most part, you can't run applications in the Braille 'n Speak other than those we've discussed: the calcula tor, the calendar, and so on. But there are a few exceptions as we'll see - for example, the spellchecker. You can send to the Braille 'n Speak an application - or binary file - using the Transfer command just described. We'll use the scientific calculator as our example. Assuming that you have the disk that came with your drive still in the drive, from the Files menu, press a t-chord as before. This time, answer with an r. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter filename." Respond, "calc.bns". The Braille 'n Speak recogniz es files with ".bns" extensions as programs. Press an e-chord. The disk drive spins and eventually the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". Obviously, if the file is not on the disk, you hear an error mes sage. As you'll see in a minute, you can check what files are on a disk. For now, we'll assume that things worked fine and you have the file in your Braille 'n Speak. Go to the end of your files list to see the name of the last file. You should hear, "File number x, calc.bns, external program" (where x is the number of the file in your file list). The Braille 'n Speak knows that this file is not a textfile. Open the file but when you try to read its contents, you'll hear gibberish. That's because this file is intended to be "run" like you run your calendar, and not "read" like you read your address file. To run this special calculator program, you'll need to read the documen tation about it that is also on the disk that came with your drive. You might want to transfer that file, a textfile called "calc.doc", into your Braille 'n Speak so that you have instruc tions on how to run this scientific calculator program. When you're ready to run the program, simply press an o-chord to get into the Options menu, then write an x. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter program to execute". When you write "calc", fol lowed by an e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak loads the program and is ready for you to work within it. The Braille 'n Speak recognizes files with the ".bns" extension as external programs and automatically write-protects them. Files with extensions .bin, .bns, .com, .dic, .exe, and .sys, are also write-protected, automatically. You can delete such files, but you cannot write in them. If you're not ready to explore the scientific calculator, delete it at this time, or save it for when you're more comfortable with your unit's overall features. 4.2.5 Reading the Directory from a Disk We will go over the directory command since you must know what's on a disk to use it effectively. But we will not spend time describing all of the commands that you can use with the disk drive - such as Format a disk, or Kill a file on disk. These commands assume an understanding of MS DOS. They all begin with the s-chord and are followed by the first letter of the command. For example, s-chord followed by k is the command for "killing" a file on disk. A list of disk drive functions is in the Braille 'n Speak Help file and in Appendix B. From anywhere within a file on the Braille 'n Speak you can issue the command for reading a disk directory. Press an s-chord fol lowed by a d. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Directory; enter file name". If you're looking for a specific file on the disk whose name you know, or a specific group of files whose names all end with, say, "bns", you may write that filename (or a filename with wildcard characters) at this prompt. Then press an e-chord. However, if you just want a full list of files on this disk, press an e-chord at the prompt without specifying a filename. Momentarily, the Braille 'n Speak will have received the direc tory, and if Interactive mode is on, it will start saying, "Volume label is ..." and begin listing files. Is this list being transmitted into your currently open file? No. Luckily, the Clipboard - that scratchpad area that holds things for you in the Braille 'n Speak - is receiving the directory list. You can read through it from the Clipboard file as you read any other text. As you read the directory of the disk that came with your drive, notice a special file, the spellchecker. If you decide to load it into your Braille 'n Speak, you'll have much more power than ever before. We look at the spellchecker in detail next. ** 4.2.6 The Spellchecker The spellchecker application provided on the disk that came with your drive, called "spell.dic", takes up 86 Braille 'n Speak pages. Therefore, this section is for 640 users who can afford that much space as a "dictionary". On the other hand, think of the advantage of having a dictionary always at your fingertips. The spellchecker is not a true dictionary as you might think. Rather, it is a program that checks your files for spelling errors and provides you with a thesaurus of sorts - a set of optional words for the misspelled words it finds. It also allows you to create a secondary, personal "dictionary" with words that are spelled correctly but are not included in the spellchecker. Let's step through the process of loading the Spellchecker into the Braille 'n Speak. First, check that you have enough room in your Braille 'n Speak. From the Files menu, write an f (for Free space). If you hear that you have more than 86 Braille 'n Speak pages free, you can load the spellchecker. Now press a t-chord from within the Files menu. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Disk drive; enter s to send or r to receive." We're receiving a file into the Braille 'n Speak, so write an r. The prompt is, "Enter filename." Write "spell.dic" and press an e- chord. Now just sit back and wait. You'll hear the disk drive spin, the Braille 'n Speak click and hiss, and after a few minutes, a single tone from the disk drive and an "Okay" prompt from the Braille 'n Speak. Should you hear anything else, like, "Storage device missing", check your connections and make sure that the drive is turned on and has sufficient charge to be active. You won't be able to read the "spell.dic" file like a textfile. It's written in machine code, remember, because it is a program. Let's see how to run it. To enter the Spellcheck menu, from within your currently open file, press an o-chord to get into the Options menu. Now write a ch-sign (dots 1-6). The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "Spellcheck what?" You have choices about what you want to look up. Write a w for the current word where your cursor is resting or a z for your entire document starting from your current cursor location. If you want to spellcheck the entire document, make sure your cursor is at the top of the file. If you decide to discontinue spell checking the document, you can abort the process with the usual z-chord. The document will be spellchecked to the point where you aborted the process. When a word is not found, you've either spelled it incorrectly - it doesn't match a word in the spellchecker - or it may not be a word found in a standard dictionary, like a proper name. In such a case, the spellchecker has options for you. If the Braille 'n Speak says, "Not found" and spells out the word in question, it then presents you with a set of options. 4.2.6.1 Adding a Word Choose Option a for adding a word to a "custom" dictionary. (By the way, your custom dictionary is placed in a separate file called "personal.dic".) The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay" and keeps searching the file for other misspellings. 4.2.6.2 Bypassing the Word for the Rest of the Document Suppose you have "XYZ" in a file. This is the way you want to spell this "word". You don't want to add it to a personalized dictionary and you don't want to have the spellchecker continue to warn you every time it finds it. Choose Option b from the spellchecker menu and the word is bypassed for the remainder of the spellcheck process. 4.2.6.3 Reading a Word in Context What if you're not sure whether a word is correct but you would be if you could hear surrounding text. This might be true of an abbreviation or acronym. Choose Option c to hear the word spoken as part of the current line of text in your file. 4.2.6.4 Correcting a Word If you realize that the word is spelled wrong, choose Option e. The Braille 'n Speak prompts you to, "Enter correct word." When you've written it, press an e-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay", confirming that it has replaced the word for you in the file. Then it continues to spellcheck the document. 4.2.6.5 Repeat a Word Let's say that you're not sure what spelling the Braille 'n Speak gave you for the word in question. Choose Option r to have the word spoken and spelled again. Press dots 3-6-chord to have the word spelled out phonetically. 4.2.6.6 Getting Help If you get stuck and can't recall the options available to you in the spellchecker, choose Option h to hear the options spoken again. 4.2.6.7 Overlooking a Word If you decide that the word that the spellchecker thinks is wrong is really okay, but you do want this word checked throughout the rest of the document, choose Option o. 4.2.6.8 Suggested Replacement Words If you think you might have chosen a better word or you want to hear possible spellings for the word, the spellchecker provides you with its best guesses of what it thinks you meant to spell. Choose Option s. The spellchecker lists several possibilities: Move back a choice with dot 1-chord and forward a choice with dot 4-chord. to the top of the suggestion list with l-chord and to the end of it with a dots 4-5-6-chord. Writing a c reads you the current choice. E-chord replaces the incorrect word with the current choice. To leave this submenu without choosing a re placement word, simply abort it with a z-chord. A note of caution: While the spellchecker can check through a Grade 2 braille file, when it replaces a word in such a file, it does so in computer braille. In other words, if the replacement word is, say, "word", you will find that it is spelled out, not contracted, in your braille file. While this does not affect the reading of the text, it may affect your ability to search for that word later. You could look for the contracted version of the word for a long time and never find it. The spellchecker does take up a considerable amount of Braille 'n Speak space, but if you write a great deal with the Braille 'n Speak or have no other word processor at your disposal, it can be a lifesaver to be able to produce perfectly spelled documents. And speaking of printers and other computers, we turn to them next. 4.3 PRINTERS, MODEMS, AND COMPUTERS Let's remind you at this time that when you get your Braille 'n Speak from the factory, it is preset for 9600 Baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, half duplex and software handshaking. If you're unfamiliar with these terms and don't know what your other device wants to see for these settings, we strongly recommend that you stop here and review Section 4.1.2 before continuing. It might save you countless hours the first time you try to hook up the Braille 'n Speak to another device. And while we're about it, if you have not looked at the section on cables (Section 4.1.1), we suggest that you take a minute to skim over that section as well. Wrong cables account for a considerable amount of technical support questions and unneces sary frustration. Now let's talk about a couple of settings on the Braille 'n Speak that we deliberately left out of Section 4.1.2. 4.3.1 Serial Port Active To conserve power, the serial port on the Braille 'n Speak is normally turned off. Before you can communicate with any exter nal device through this port, you must activate it. Note that the longer the serial port is active, the greater the drain on the Braille 'n Speak's battery. Don't think anything is wrong with the battery if only after seven hours of use you start getting "Battery low" warning messages. If you've made heavy use of the port, the battery drains quickly. There is no warning to you as you're writing in a file, say, whether the serial port is active. Your only warning is that when you first turn on the Braille 'n Speak, if the serial port is active, the start-up message says, "Serial port active, Braille 'n Speak ready ..." So it's important to turn off the serial port immediately upon completing communications with another device to save battery power. Of course, there is a way to check whether the port is active. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write an f. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Serial port active, off." To turn it on, write a y. To turn it off later, write an n. Another way to change the status of the serial port is through the Parameters menu. Press a p-chord. At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write a dots 2-6-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Serial port active, enter y or n". Whatever your choice, the Braille 'n Speak may only squeak in response, although most of the time, you'll hear the confirming prompt, "Okay{". This setting is hard to change on purpose to avoid accidental activation of the serial port. 4.3.2 Appending Linefeeds Back in Chapter 2 we explained the difference between a carriage return and a linefeed and why it is that you don't really need to have linefeeds present in your files on the Braille 'n Speak. Let's revisit this briefly to see how it applies to our present discussion on transmitting text. A carriage return in effect moves the cursor to the left margin of a line. In the Braille 'n Speak, it doesn't affect your reading because you are not physically moving up and down a piece of paper to read. So the carriage return serves as a marker more than anything else. A linefeed, on the other hand, moves the cursor to the next line on the page. Once again, in a Braille 'n Speak file, having linefeeds is meaningless because you're not physically moving vertically along a piece of paper. However, clearly, this changes when you print the contents of a Braille 'n Speak file. Now you need to have both carriage returns and linefeeds present in the file. Otherwise, a printer will simply print the first line of text, then return the carriage to the left margin and print the next line, and the next and the next, without ever moving down the page. And you can guess what a mess you'll have - a jumble of letters all on the same line. (Actually, some printers refuse to cooperate if they don't see pairs of carriage returns and linefeeds and don't print at all.) Luckily, there's a provision built into the Braille 'n Speak to deal with this. Enter the Status menu with the st-sign-chord. Write an a. The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Append linefeed when transmitting, off". Turn this parameter "on" with a y and "off" with an n. Unless you're transmitting, you'll want it off. Next, let's see how to set up page format parameters so that your printouts will look just right. 4.3.3 Physical Page Format Considerations When sending text directly to a printer, braille embosser, or to a computer, you want your text to look right in that environment. In other words, if the text is going to a printer, you probably want the page length to be 66 lines and the margins to be 5 spaces from the left and right edges of the paper, etc. If the text is going to a braille embosser, on the other hand, no doubt you'll want something like a page length of 25 lines and a line width of 40 characters and Grade 2 braille. These format issues can be controlled from your Braille 'n Speak simply by setting certain parameters. You don't have to do anything fancy as you're writing your file. Let's take these formatting parameters one at a time. 4.3.3.1 Double-Spacing If you want to print a double spaced document, press an st-sign-chord to enter the Status menu. Write an ar-sign (dots 3-4-5) to get to the Double space status, usually turned off. Turn it on by writing a y and off when you're through transmitting the file by writing an n. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord. 4.3.3.2 Page Length, Line Width, and Margins You must set the margins, the width of your lines, and the page length for each file you want to transmit. Consider whether you're sending the text to a printer or to a braille embosser. Let's look at each of these settings separately. Each is set from the Status menu. You can cycle through the settings by pressing dot 1-chords and dot 4-chords to move forward and backward through them. The default parameters are all set to 0. Get into the Status menu and write an l (for line length). The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Line length 0". We'll assume that the current file is going to be printed, rather than brailled. So let's change the line length to 65, a commonly used print line width. Write 65 (using dropped numbers as always) and press an e-chord to enter your change. You should now hear, "Line length 65". Press a dot 4-chord to look at the next setting, the left margin. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Left margin 0". Let's change that to 5 and then press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Left margin 5." Press another dot 4-chord and you'll hear, "Page length 0." We define page length to be the number of lines that can physically fit on the paper, not the number of lines you want printed on each piece of paper. Therefore, in most cases, we suggest a page length of 66 lines. Go ahead and enter a 66 and press an e- chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Page length 66". Press another dot 4-chord. You hear "Top margin 0". Most of the time you'll want a margin of 5 at the top and bottom of your page. So let's change this to 5 and press an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top margin 5". Press another dot 4-chord. Now you hear something about "window length". You need not concern yourself with this parameter. We're done. If you want to review the settings you've changed, simply cycle back through them with dot 1-chords. Exit the Status menu with an e-chord. You're almost ready to transmit your file as a "print" file but there is one more thing to consider. 4.3.3.3 Numbering Pages The Braille 'n Speak can number your pages. You can have your pages numbered in a print format for "print" files or a braille format for "braille" files. As long as your page format parame ters are set properly for print or braille page dimensions, page numbering will work right when you transmit text. You need to turn page-numbering on, though, if you want it to be in effect. Get into the Status menu and write a number-sign (dots 3-4-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "number pages, off". Turn this setting "on" with a y or "off" with an n. An added bonus of having the page-numbering parameter on is that you can check how long your file is going to be before you actually print or braille it on physical paper. Again, it's essential to set up your page format parameters before using the following command to check how many pages you have in your file. If you have not done so, issuing the command results in a mes sage, "No page format set". Note: When you set page parameters in the Classic, the settings are true for "every" file in your Braille 'n Speak. This may result in incorrect page dimensions for files requiring a differ ent format. You must always check page format parameters in your currently open file before you transmit it to a printer or braille embosser to ensure that settings match your expectations. Let's look at an example. Suppose you have a file that has 500 characters of text in it and it's all in Grade 2 braille. We can't be exactly sure how many print or braille pages that file turns into without knowing how many blank lines you have and how many carriage returns you physically put into the file. But even beyond that, if you set your page format parameters for "print" with say, 66 lines per page and 65 characters per line, when the Braille 'n Speak counts the number of pages it will determine a very different number than if you had set your page format parameters to a page length of 25 and a line length of 40, as for a braille file. The whole business can be confusing but a way to stay on top of it is to be clear as to whether the file is a "braille" or "print" file and to check your page format parameters before checking how many physical pages will be printed or brailled and certainly before transmitting the file itself. Once you've determined that your page format parameters are set properly, you can exit the Status menu with the usual e-chord. Now you're back in your file. From anywhere in your file you can see where you would physically be on the actual piece of paper if you were reading the text from it instead of from your Braille 'n Speak. Let's assume that your file has 500 characters in it. You could go to the end of the file with a dot 4-5-6-chord and then press wh-sign-chord to see where the cursor is. Then press an sh-sign-chord (dots 1-4-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Please wait" and hisses for a couple of seconds. Eventually, it says something like, "Page 2, line 17". So now you know that when you actually print out this file, it will contain two pages and the second of the two will be only about a third of the way full of text. We suggest that you try a few test runs setting up page format parameters and using the page-numbering setting as trials before you actually trust that things will be transmitted as you expect. All printers and braille embossers, especially printers, have quirks that may require different values than we recommend for the settings. Nevertheless, once you get these page format issues under control, you'll be transmitting near-perfectly formatted documents all the time. It's a matter of practice. Now we'll turn to the business of how to actually transmit blocks of text from the Braille 'n Speak to another device. 4.3.4 Sending Blocks of Text to Another Device In this section, we deal specifically with sending blocks of text from the Braille 'n Speak to another device, such as a printer. You can, of course, use the commands discussed here to transmit blocks of text to other devices as well. But look at Section 4.3.6 for more sophisticated ways to transmit files to and from computers. Naturally, a block of text can be a whole file. But it can just as easily be less than that. When you're sending blocks of text directly from the Braille 'n Speak to a printer, you must choose the format (braille or print), things like page length, line width and page numbering. Formatting the text from the Braille 'n Speak is less important if you intend to edit the text with a word processor after you've sent that text to a computer. But certainly with direct output to a printer, you want your format to be just right. If you're sending text directly to a computer, it is best to utilize a telecommunications program on the computer to facili tate adjusting telecommunications settings to match those on the Braille 'n Speak and to perform error-checking during the trans mission. We won't recommend a specific telecommunications package, but you'll find several shareware versions that work well with speech synthesizers and screen access programs. For our discussion, we'll assume that you have such a program and are familiar with its use. Remember to address those essential, physical page format parameter considerations before you send text to a printer or you may find the resulting printout very strange indeed. Now, let's go through the mechanics of the process of sending blocks of text from the Braille 'n Speak to another device. You can send text from the Braille 'n Speak to another device in the following ways: the entire file, a single line, paragraph or a block of text. Each of these options starts with a t-chord. Writing a certain letter after the "Enter transmit parameter" prompt sends the desired amount of text to the other device. Sending the entire file, a line, or paragraph is straightforward. When you're ready to send text from your currently open file, place your cursor where you want the transmission to begin, then press a t-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter transmit parameter". Write an l, p, or z to indicate whether you are sending from the current cursor position to the end of the current line (l), paragraph (p), or entire text (z). To send a block of text, that does not extend to the end of the file, you need to define the block. Before issuing the t-chord, you must "mark" the block to be transmitted. Find the final character you want to include in your transmission. Move beyond it one character with a dot 6-chord. Enter an m-chord. Then move to your starting point, the first character you want to include in your transmission. Now that you have defined the block to transmit, press a t-chord. At the "Enter transmit parameter" prompt, write an m. All the text from your current cursor location to the mark which you just set is transmitted. The commands t-chord a, t-chord b, and t-chord s reduce the number of steps you need to perform in order to transmit text. t-chord a automatically moves the cursor to the beginning of your file and transmits everything within that file. Any format conditions you have in effect are honored: margins, line and page length, etc. t-chord b sends text from the beginning to the end of the file but it turns off the braille translator. It is the command of choice to transmit text directly to a braille embosser. Any format values you may have set are in effect. If page numbering is on, braille pages are included in the printout in literary braille notation. t-chord s performs steps which are essential if you want to send "clean" text to a device for backup purposes only. (It does not work with the disk drive, however.) If you want no format considerations, no braille translation, and all of your text sent, then use t-chord s. It sends your cursor to the beginning of the file, turns off the braille translator if it is on, and sets all format parameters to 0 before transmitting the entire file. Those are the different ways to send blocks of text from the Braille 'n Speak to another device. In Section 4.3.6 we'll examine a more sophisticated set of commands to transmit files. 4.3.5 Modems and Other Computers Modems are special devices that link two computers together through the telephone line. You hook up a computer to your phone line by connecting the computer first to the modem and then the modem to the phone jack (or to the phone itself). The computer you're calling is similarly linked to a phone line through a modem. We won't spend time on how modems work. These devices, too, have manuals which describe their setup and detail the commands to which they respond. For example, you can tell a modem to dial a phone either by tones or by dial pulses, to dial 9 first, wait for a specified period before dialing the rest of the remote phone number, to answer the telephone when it rings and on which ring to answer, etc. The computer on your end of such a connection could easily be your Braille 'n Speak. If you have a computer and want to transmit data between it and your Braille 'n Speak, you need to run a telecommunications program in that computer. This program sets up the computer to receive information from an outside source, in this case your Braille 'n Speak. As with printers, having the correct cable goes a long way toward making things easy. (Blazie Engineering has telecommunications programs for the IBM PC and simple file capture programs for both the IBM PC compati ble and the Apple families of computers. Also, there are several shareware products that work well with screen access programs.) In addition, Blazie has programs that normally come with our external disk drive - such as the spellchecker and the scientific calculator. Since these programs come on an MS DOS compatible 3- 1/2 inch floppy disk, those of you not having a disk drive can still take advantage of these programs by loading them into your Braille 'n Speak from a PC. Check with Blazie for information on how to obtain any of these programs.) Now let's see how to connect the Braille 'n Speak to other devices. To link your Braille 'n Speak to a modem, to another Braille 'n Speak, and to some computers (like some Apple models), you need a "null modem" cable or adapter. As we mentioned in Section 4.1.1, matching up the right cables really smoothes your connectivity challenges. Make sure you get a null modem cable with the right attributes to match your Braille 'n Speak cable and the serial port on your modem or computer. (The manual that comes with your computer should indicate whether you need one and certainly the dealer that sold it to you should be able to provide this information.) We'll focus on the IBM PC compatible since it is the computer of choice for most visually-impaired users and it does not require a null modem cable. Assuming that you have connected the cables properly and that you have a telecommunications program running in your PC, you should be all set to transmit data. One last thing: before you start attempting to transmit data, remember to make sure that your telecommunications settings match (Baud rate, parity, data bits, stop bits, duplex and handshak ing). In Section 4.1.2 we detailed all of these for you and explained how to change them if necessary on your Braille 'n Speak. Naturally, we can't explain to you how your particular telecommunications program allows you to change such settings. We suggest that you go through the manual that came with your telecommunications program to verify what the default telecommu nications settings are and that you check out how to change them in your telecommunications program if the need arises. We emphasize once again, transmitting data can be a breeze but only if all the settings match on both your Braille 'n Speak and the other device and if your cables are the proper cables. Overlooking any one of these issues can cause you needless frustration and confusion. Setting it up right the first time will save you many headaches later. Next, we move on to the specifics of transmitting data between your Braille 'n Speak and a computer, using modem protocols. ** 4.3.6 Using Sophisticated Modem Protocols in Transmission Note: This feature is unique to the 640. So far in our discussion of transmitting data from your Braille 'n Speak to a computer, we've talked exclusively about using the t-chord command. There is a better way to transmit data when you're dealing with whole files. A telecommunications program not only helps you to match telecom munications settings in the PC with those in your Braille 'n Speak, but it also handles the way in which your file is trans mitted for maximum efficiency in the most error-free manner possible. Telecommunications programs range in their level of sophistica tion on this point. But even the simplest ones ask you whether the file you're transmitting is in ASCII. Recall that the ASCII character set is made up largely of the alphabet, punctuation marks, numbers, and so on. It is possible to send a file from one computer to another which is not comprised of these charac ters and most telecommunications programs have provisions for such files. For the most part, files you transmit from your Braille 'n Speak to a computer are ASCII files, even if they're in Grade 2 braille. When your telecommunications program is ready to receive a file from your Braille 'n Speak and asks you whether you are sending it an ASCII file, you can answer, "yes" and use your t-chord command on the Braille 'n Speak followed by the appropriate letter b - for a braille file, for example. However, many telecommunications packages now have more flexibil ity, and so does your Braille 'n Speak. When it's ready to receive your file from the Braille 'n Speak, it may also ask you whether you want to use a "modem protocol", such as xmodem, ymodem, zmodem, and even kermit. Each of these options may be advantageous to you over ASCII as a transmission option at times. (Note: The Braille 'n Speak does not support zmodem.) Basically, what these options do is to take the transmission in chunks rather than one character at a time and to perform error-checking on each chunk before accepting the next chunk. We realize that this explanation oversimplifies why the various modem protocol options are useful. But at least this gives you a feel for why you might want to use them. Let's go through a couple of examples of what it means to choose these modem protocols when transmitting a file between the Braille 'n Speak and your PC. Here again, we assume that all cables are connected properly, that you have made sure that telecommunications settings such as Baud rate, parity, data bits and stop bits, all match. And we further assume that you are running a telecommunications program in your PC. First, let's look at a transfer going from the PC into your Braille 'n Speak. From the Files menu in the Braille 'n Speak, enter a t-chord (for transfer). The Braille 'n Speak prompts, "Enter s to send or r to receive". If you press an s-chord or an r-chord, you will hear the names of the files as they are being transmitted. If you simply write an s or an r, you do not hear their names as they are being transmitted. For now, let's write an r to receive a file. A note of caution: If you have a file in the Braille 'n Speak with the same name as the one you are receiving from your PC, the Braille 'n Speak asks you whether you want to delete the one in the Braille 'n Speak. If you answer, "Yes", it will be deleted and replaced by the incoming file. If you answer, "No", the transfer is aborted altogether. Now the Braille 'n Speak gives you some options to consider, "Enter x for xmodem, y for ymodem, g for ymodem g or k for kermit." (Note: ymodem g does not work with 38400 Baud for a file longer than one page.) If you write an x (for xmodem), the Braille 'n Speak asks, "Enter filename". Write the filename followed by an e-chord. The Braille 'n Speak confirms your choice with, "Start the transfer." Obviously, on the PC side of things, you must choose x for xmodem as well in order for the transfer to work properly. If you had chosen y (for ymodem), g (for ymodem g), or k (for kermit), the Braille 'n Speak does not prompt you for a filename because it gets that information as part of the transfer automat ically. It creates the filename in your Braille 'n Speak as it receives it from the PC. (Incidentally, remember the s-chord command for the disk drive? You can use the y option with that command as well to transmit files to an attached disk drive.) Now let's make sure you understand how to approach this process from the PC side. From within your telecommunications program, you select the "Upload" option and when asked how you want to send this PC file and are offered the various choices discussed above, you select the one that matches what you have chosen on the Braille 'n Speak. So choose x for xmodem if you selected that on the Braille 'n Speak. The telecommunications program asks you the name of the PC file you want to send and you type that name usually followed by the Enter key on your PC. When the Braille 'n Speak has received the file, it will let you know with an "Okay" prompt, followed by "Enter file command". Why that prompt? Well, remember that you issued the t-chord from the Files menu. You're still there. If you want to see the contents of the file you just received, you simply press a dots 4-5-6-chord to bring you to the last file in your file list and then press an o-chord to open it. Now let's say that something went wrong and the transfer was aborted. In such a case, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Transfer canceled; enter file command." You'll probably see some kind of error message on your PC as well. If you use the x (for xmodem) option for transmitting files, you can only transmit one file at a time. However, with ymodem or kermit, you can receive multiple files with the wildcard charac ters mentioned in Section 4.2.4.1 (see Appendix A for details.) For example, when your telecommunications program asks you for the name of the file you want to send, you could type "*.txt" and all files that have a ."txt" extension in your current PC direc tory are queued up and sent to the Braille 'n Speak, each one getting named separately in your Braille 'n Speak and being added to your file list as it is received. Now let's look at an example where you're sending a file from the Braille 'n Speak to the PC using these modem protocol options we've been discussing. We'll use the file called "practice" that we created in Chapter 2 as our sample file to transmit to the PC. Enter the Files menu and then press a t-chord. This time, respond with an s to the prompt, "Enter s to send or r to receive." Now you are prompted to, "Enter x for xmodem, 1 for xmodem 1K, y for ymodem, or k for kermit." We didn't see the option "1 for xmodem 1K" in the options for receiving files from the PC because the Braille 'n Speak can distinguish whether it is receiving a file with plain xmodem or with xmodem with 1K protocol. Also, notice that you don't see the option "g for ymodem g" here. If you had set your PC to receive the Braille 'n Speak file with ymodem g, simply choose the ymodem option on the Braille 'n Speak side to send the file to the PC. If you choose either the x or 1 options for the two xmodem choices available to you, you can send only one Braille 'n Speak file at a time to your PC. However, if you choose either y (for ymodem) or k (for kermit), you can send a bunch of files from your Braille 'n Speak to the PC. When you choose the y or k options for sending files from the Braille 'n Speak to the PC, the Braille 'n Speak places you in your file list so that you can "mark" the files you want to send. Marking files in your file list prepares them to be sent. We'll see how in a minute. After you're done marking which files you want to send, press an e-chord to tell the Braille 'n Speak to start transmitting. Let's look at marking. There are several ways to do it. To mark files you can move through your file list in the usual way with dot 1-chords to move backward and dot 4-chords to move forward through the list. You can press a c-chord to hear the name of the file you are pointing to spoken again and you can use an l-chord and a dots 4-5-6-chord to move to the top and bottom of your file list respectively, as usual. When you come across a file that you do want to send to the PC, "mark" it by writing a y. In other words, you're saying, "yes, I want to send this file". The Braille 'n Speak responds, "file name is marked". Now you can continue moving through your file list to choose more files to send to the PC. As you move through your file list in this marking process, the Braille 'n Speak tells you whether the file you're pointing to is already marked. If a file was already marked from a previous transmission that you don't want to send at the present time, you can "unmark" it by writing an n. If you want to move a little faster through the process of marking files in your file list, press a y-chord to mark a file and automatically move to the next file in your file list. In addition, if you want to send every file in your list to the PC, say, for backup purposes, simply write an m. This marks all files except Help and Clipboard to be sent. Press a u to unmark all your files at once. Another way to use the marking feature is to press an m-chord or u-chord to mark or unmark a specific group of files that have similar names. For example, let's say that you have several files in your Braille 'n Speak with names like, "address.brl" and "practice.brl". You can press an m-chord followed by the charac ters "*.brl" and all files with names that end in ".brl" are marked for sending to your PC. Similarly, you can press a u- chord followed by "*.brl" to unmark all such files so that they are not sent to your PC. By the way, pressing the spacebar toggles between marking and unmarking the file to which you are currently pointing also. Remember, throughout this whole discussion of marking files, we've been in the middle of the transmission process. In other words, you entered your Files menu, pressed t-chord to transmit and an s for sending files from the Braille 'n Speak to the PC, and further chose either y or k for your modem protocol. And finally, now you have marked the files you want to send. To tell the Braille 'n Speak that you're finished marking, as we said earlier, you press an e-chord. That says, "Okay, I'm done choosing the files I'm going to send, Braille 'n Speak. Now go ahead and send them, please." The Braille 'n Speak says, "Start the transfer." This means that it's ready to send and is waiting for a signal from your PC that says, "Okay, I'm ready to receive." So now, on the PC, select the "Download" option in your telecom munications program. When prompted, choose the same protocol as you chose on your Braille 'n Speak, for example, y (for ymodem). You should hear clicking and hissing from the Braille 'n Speak and your disk drive spinning in your PC as files come into it. In fact, you'll also hear numbers coming across your PC screen. Don't worry, these are error checking signals being emitted and it indicates that all is well. Should things go wrong, the PC and Braille 'n Speak will both issue messages telling you that the transfer has been aborted. In the case of the Braille 'n Speak, you'll find yourself back in the Files menu at the prompt, "Enter file command". You can either try the transfer again or check to see whether all your telecommuncations settings match up, whether there's enough room in your PC to accept files, etc. See Appendix A for more help. 4.4 THE BRAILLE 'N SPEAK AS A SPEECH SYNTHESIZER We've talked about transmitting data between your Braille 'n Speak and other devices. Another way you can use your Braille 'n Speak with other computers is as a speech synthesizer. The Braille 'n Speak has the capability of acting as your portable speech synthesizer in conjunction with a screen access program in your PC. Let's see how this works. First, we assume that you have a screen access program in your PC and that you understand its use. There are numerous such pro grams on the market and Blazie Engineering even has one of its own, called PC Master. We won't get into the mechanics of how your screen access program works here. We'll only explain how to turn the Braille 'n Speak into the speech synthesizer through which you can interact with your screen access program in your PC. To run your Braille 'n Speak as a speech synthesizer, you don't need to run a telecommunications program in your PC. That is specific to transmitting data between your Braille 'n Speak and the PC. What you do need is a screen access program that sup ports the Braille 'n Speak as a speech synthesizer. Check with the vendor of your screen access program to see if that vendor supports the Braille 'n Speak as a synthesizer. You'll need to hook up the Braille 'n Speak to the serial port of your computer, as previously described, and all the telecommuni cations parameters we detailed earlier, Baud rate, handshaking, and so on, must match. (You may need to use a telecommunications program to set those parameters properly on your PC but MS DOS has other ways to do this through its "Mode" command. Check your DOS manual for a detailed explanation.) To use the Braille 'n Speak as a speech synthesizer, get into the Speech Parameters menu with the usual ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5). Write a for-sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6). The Braille 'n Speak says, "Speech box mode on." Enter an e-chord to exit the Speech Parameters menu. You are now in a mode where the Braille 'n Speak cannot accept input from you into a file. You can't check your calendar, perform a calculation, etc. In effect, you've turned the Braille 'n Speak into a "dumb" device that can only accept information from your PC. The only input your Braille 'n Speak accepts from you directly on the Braille 'n Speak keyboard is an ar-sign-chord to re-enter the Speech Parameters menu followed by a for-sign to turn off speech box mode. Let's practice this much. Even if you don't presently have your Braille 'n Speak linked to another device, you can test out this process. Get into the Speech Parameters menu and write a for- sign. You'll hear "Speech box mode on". Exit with an e-chord. Now try to write something, anything, an o-chord or a c-chord. Nothing happens. Your Braille 'n Speak is waiting for something from your PC. Even if it isn't hooked up to one, it thinks it is and patiently waits and waits. Re-enter the Speech Parameters menu. Whew! That does work and you hear the usual prompt, "Enter speech parameters." Now write a for-sign and you hear "Speech box mode off". Exit the Speech Parameters menu with an e-chord. You're back in business. The Braille 'n Speak should now respond normally again. Assuming that you do have your unit hooked up to a PC and are running a screen access program that supports the Braille 'n Speak, and that you've turned the Braille 'n Speak into a speech synthesizer, here's what happens. As we just said, the Braille 'n Speak is now "dumb", patiently waiting for something from the PC. It monitors your interaction with the PC. Every time you type a space, the Braille 'n Speak says the word you just typed. If you issue a command for the screen access program from the PC keyboard - such as "read me the whole screen" - the Braille 'n Speak says the contents of your PC screen to you. A more sophisticated way of using the Braille 'n Speak as a speech synthesizer is to turn speech box mode on with a for-sign- chord instead of a simple for-sign. Remember that chords include the spacebar on the Braille 'n Speak keyboard. If you enter the Speech Parameters menu and press a for- sign- chord, the Braille 'n Speak gives you a choice about how it should read from the PC. Let's try it now. Again, you can test this out without having your Braille 'n Speak actually hooked up to a PC. From the Speech Parameters menu, press a for-sign-chord. The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter l for line or b for block handshak ing." Now don't confuse this prompt with our earlier discussion of handshaking and telecommunications settings. After you write an l or a b in response to the prompt, the Braille 'n Speak says, "speech box mode on". Then you can exit the Speech Parameters menu in the usual way with an e-chord. The choice of Line or Block handshaking is really subjective. Here's what the choice means. If you choose Line handshaking, the Braille 'n Speak will read you text from your PC a line at a time, pausing at each carriage return. In fact, the computer will not send more text until the Braille 'n Speak has read to you the present line of text. In many cases, you'll find it desirable to have the Braille 'n Speak read this way, when you're programming, for example, or reading through a list. Choosing Block handshaking means that the Braille 'n Speak reads you blocks of text, up to 256 characters at a time. It doesn't look for carriage returns as it reads to you. Using this choice creates a smoother, more natural sounding speech from the Braille 'n Speak, with more natural pauses and inflections, rather than pauses controlled by the physical ends of lines on the screen. You'll probably find this a more useful choice for reading through a document where it is not important that you know precisely where one line ends and the next begins. Another interesting feature of speech box mode is "indexing". This capability only works if the screen access program you're using supports indexing. Indexing means that the Braille 'n Speak is so closely linked to the PC cursor as it's reading, that if you issue a "stop reading" command on your PC, the PC cursor and the Braille 'n Speak will both stop at the same place. In other words, the last word uttered by the Braille 'n Speak is the same word as where your PC cursor rests. This can be very handy when you're doing some editing, for example, using a word proces sor in your PC. If your screen access program supports the capability to change speech parameters - rate of speech, volume, and so forth - you can change how the Braille 'n Speak reads to you from your PC keyboard. Here is a brief list of the speech parameters you might be able to control from your PC if your screen access program lets you do it: Volume - Control e x v, where x represents a volume from 01 to 16, 01 being the lowest volume. Pitch - Control e x p, where x represents a pitch from 01 to 63, 01 being the lowest pitch. Speech rate - Control e x e, where x represents a rate from 01 to 16, 01 being the slowest speech rate. Frequency - Control e x t, where x represents a tone from 01 to 25, 01 being the lowest. Punctuation level - Control e followed by a, m, s, or z, where the letters represent All, Most, Some, or No punctuation, respec tively. Index marker - Control f Silence command - Control x The Braille 'n Speak's ability to perform as a portable speech synthesizer can come in handy if you have to interact with many computers or are on the road a lot and can't take extra equipment with you, or you can't take a PC apart to install an internal speech synthesizer. 4.5 SENDING BRAILLE 'N SPEAK OUTPUT TO YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN You can write in your Braille 'n Speak and have the output sent directly to your computer screen. That screen may be your PC screen or it may be a Personal Touch or, with the 640, a Mini Braille. (These are two braille display devices sold by Blazie, Engineering.) To turn your Braille 'n Speak into a remote device, all the usual telecommunications settings previously described must match up and cable requirements must be met. Press a 0-chord (dots 3-5-6) on the Braille 'n Speak. It says, "Remote". Write a b for linking it to the Personal Touch as a braille display. With the 640, you can also write an m for use with the MiniBraille. Write a dot 4 to send output directly to a computer screen. Note: In the 640 writing a dot 4 produces the prompt, "ASCII" while in the Classic it produces the prompt, "Invalid input". But dot 4 does work in both models. Turn the remote mode off by turning off the Braille 'n Speak. 4.6 SUMMARY We have covered a great deal of complicated material in this chapter. We suggest that you review the steps outlined in those sections that meet your needs and not to dwell on those that don't. Telecommunications can be wonderful but the staggering array of possibilities can daunt even the heartiest among us. Take your time learning about telecommunications and use Appendix A, Troubleshooting, to help you when you get confused. Usually, telecommunications challenges arise from simply forgetting a step in the process. Once you've mastered the process though, you'll definitely reap its rewards. Appendix A - Troubleshooting Appendix A - Troubleshooting By now you are no doubt comfortable with the general operations of your Braille 'n Speak. However, what if something goes wrong? So often, manuals tell you how to do things but not how to fix them when something goes wrong. What if you hit the wrong key during a command? What if you issue a command, then need to cancel it before completion? What if, horror of horrors, your file disappears? And finally, what if any of these things happens at three in the morning when you really can't reach for the phone for help? All these "what-if's" are possibilities whenever you have a computer. It's a simple fact of life. For most of us, though, reaching for the phone, even though it may mean a toll-call, is easier and less scary than trying to deal with the problem ourselves. Our purpose in this appendix is to show you that many potentially devastating problems really aren't, that you just might be able to solve them yourself after all, and think how good you'll feel for having done so. We reached into our files for the most commonly asked questions of the technical support staff. We list them here with possible solutions to try before panicking. Of course, we are here if you should really need us. But when you call, already having tried to solve the problem yourself, chances are your phone bill will be smaller because we won't have to walk you through the basics. We are not discouraging you from calling for help and, in fact, we invite your feedback. But we are confident that we can serve you even better if you can first troubleshoot the problem yourself. Incidentally, some solutions suggested below come directly from those of you brave enough to challenge the murky waters of troubleshooting. We commend you for helping all of us. And now, on to the questions: TELECOMMUNICATIONS QUESTIONS 1. How do I connect my Braille 'n Speak to my (brand name) printer, computer, or modem? You must connect the right cables and match telecommuni cations settings between your Braille 'n Speak and the other device. We offer a wide range of cables which connect the Braille 'n Speak to the most commonly used computers, printers, and modems. For example, there are cables for the PC/XT and PC/AT series of IBM as well as cables for the Apple family of computers and printers. In addition, we offer the serial to parallel converter cable for use with parallel printers. Refer to Section 4.1.1 for general information about cables and to Appendix C for technical information about cables. The Braille 'n Speak is preset with the most commonly used telecommunications settings. To see how they are set, check them out from the Status menu. For a full discussion of these settings, see Section 4.1.2. For a listing of the default settings, refer to Appendix B. 2. I connect my cable to my modem. It fits but I cannot commu nicate. The cable may fit, but you need a null modem adapter to talk to the modem. 3. I am connected to my modem with a null modem adapter. When I try to communicate, I hear, "Waiting on serial device". Carrier Detect must be changed. It is low and must be made high. Try "at ampersand c1" from a PC, then "at ampersand w" to save the configuration. 4. My Braille 'n Speak cable fits into my PC's serial port, but it will not communicate. If the cable that comes with your Braille 'n Speak fits into your port with no adapters, then you probably have it in the parallel port. Serial ports are usually male, so you'll need a gender adapter. 5. I hear "File is full" and I'm hooked up to a computer, a bulletin board with my modem, or a printer. If you're in a mode of duplex where material is stored and/or echoed back from the other device, and therefore written to the end of your currently open file, you might run into a "File is full" error message. Check the contents of the file and delete extraneous text if necessary. (Re member to turn the serial port off in order to be able to do this. Also, changing the duplex or Echo feature of the device in question may help. 6. My Braille 'n Speak doesn't speak the last character it receives from the PC or bulletin board that I am connected to with my modem. You need to set the Interactive Timeout parameter, normally set to 0 (or "off). Set this parameter from the Status menu. The Interactive Timeout parameter sets the length of time that the Braille 'n Speak waits before speaking data it has received. Speech devices require specific signals - for example, carriage returns and spaces - in order to speak data they have received from another device. Occasionally, the final signal sent from an external device is not what the Braille 'n Speak needs to see. For these cases, the Braille 'n Speak produces a signal of its own. The interactive timeout parameter sets the amount of time that the Braille 'n Speak waits before generating this signal. Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write an x. You hear something like, "Interactive timeout, 0." This means that the timeout feature is turned off. You can change the length of time the Braille 'n Speak waits before issuing the signal to speak the data it has received from 1 to 255 tenths of a second. So setting it to 10 means that the Braille 'n Speak waits one second before speaking data it has received. 7. When using the Braille 'n Speak as a remote device with the Personal Touch or the MiniBraille, how do I match up the telecommunications settings? Remember that the MiniBraille option is available only for the 640 model. Its default settings are: 9600 Baud, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, software handshaking. For the Personal Touch, the default settings are: 4800 Baud, even parity, 7 data bits, 1 stop bit, software handshaking. Finally, make sure that you've activated the serial port before issuing the 0-chord command to turn the Braille 'n Speak into a remote device. PRINTING QUESTIONS 1. When I try to print, my printer won't move to the next line. Append linefeeds is off. If you turn this setting on, a linefeed character is sent to the printer with every line which is printed. See Section 4.3.3. 2. When I try to print, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Waiting on serial device". The printer is probably off-line. Turn the printer on-line. If this does not work, connect a minitester in between the Braille 'n Speak and the printer. (The minitester comes with Blazie's interface kit. Call for more information.) 3. When I try to print, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay", but nothing happens. First, check whether the telecommunications settings on both devices match. Check Baud rate, parity, data bits, stop bits, and handshaking. Next, try turning on Append Linefeeds. Some printers need a linefeed character with every line or they will not even print. Next, check the pins in the serial ports of both devices to see if they are bent or broken. 4. When I print either to a PC or printer, I get garbage, mainly x's, p's and at signs. Most likely, Baud rates don't match. Check the Baud rate on both devices. 5. When I print, my document is missing characters. This is probably a handshaking problem. The Braille 'n Speak's handshaking may be different from the printer's. 8. I can't send or receive files from my disk drive and I am properly connected to it. If I press a t-chord, I don't hear the "disk drive" message before the prompt, "Enter s to send or r to receive" and if I press an s-chord from within my file, I hear, "Storage device missing". Check that the disk drive is turned on. If turning it on does not solve the problem, then turn the Braille 'n Speak off and on again. CRASH AND RECOVERY QUESTIONS 1. All of my files have become gibberish, and when I go into the Files menu, the titles are incorrect. This rarely happens to our newer revisions, but this sounds like a crash. In other words, there may be something wrong with your unit, but it may be fixable. Try a "warm" reset. If that does not work, you must do a "cold" reset, the i- chord. You do a "warm" reset to return all Braille 'n Speak set tings to their default values (except for the battery timer) without losing data. When you press a for-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6), the Braille 'n Speak says, "Warm reset, please verify". When you press a second for-sign-chord, it says "Okay". CAUTION: Do not use a warm reset within another command or while data are being transmitted. You can also do a warm reset when you turn on the Braille 'n Speak. To issue the command, turn off the Braille 'n Speak. Then hold down all seven Braille 'n Speak keys as you turn on the power. Once power is on, continue to hold down the keys for about a second. Use the "cold" reset procedure only as a last resort. All settings are reset to their defaults and all files you may have created as well as their data might be lost. For about 2 seconds, press an i-chord as you turn on the power to the Braille 'n Speak. You hear, "System initial ized; Braille 'n Speak ready; Help is open; delete all data in file areas, enter y or n?" If you answer, "Yes", it says, "Are you sure?" to really force you to think. If you still answer, "Yes", you hear beeps while the Braille 'n Speak "cleans up" things by putting x's throughout your files. Your data is irrevocably lost. This process insures that no one can recover your personal data - a good idea when exchanging your Braille 'n Speak for an upgrade or a repaired machine. 2. When I turn on my Braille 'n Speak, it gives the correct message, but every time I press a chord or key it either says, "space" or "file is write-protected". You may have write-protected the currently open file and don't remember having done so. Get into the Files menu and press an i-chord to hear the status of the currently open file. If it is write-protected, unprotect it with a u- chord. Or, you may be in One-Handed mode. Hold down dot 3 as you power on. If that still does not fix it, hold down all seven keys at power on to perform a "warm reset". 3. When I hit a chord, the Braille 'n Speak resets, saying, "Braille 'n Speak ready". This rarely happens, but a warm reset usually fixes the problem. 4. My Braille 'n Speak turned on and is dead. A warm reset usually fixes this problem. 5. I have deleted a file (or portion of a file) accidentally; is there any way to get it back? This depends on whether you've done anything since your deletion. If you have not created another file, or per formed another deletion, there is hope. Here are a couple of scenarios: You've deleted text from the current cursor position to the end of the file. Recall that the Clipboard is a "trash can". The text you just deleted is there, or at least the first 4,096 charac ters of it. The rest of the text, if there was more than one Braille 'n Speak "page" worth of text, is in another place in Braille 'n Speak memory. Remember our analogy to the binder. It's as if the Braille 'n Speak put the first page of the text you deleted into the Clipboard and the rest of the pages at the back of the binder. To bring them back where they belong into your currently open file, first press an ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6) c to copy the contents of the Clipboard back into your currently open file, thus recovering the first "page" worth of text. Then from the Files menu, write a for-sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5-- 6). The Braille 'n Speak says, ""Recover file, enter y or n". Entering y should recover the rest of your text into your currently open file. Go to the end of the file and check the location of the cursor as well as how much room there is left. If you see numbers that don't make sense or unwanted text, it probably means that you've recovered extraneous text. Press dot 1- chords and dots 2-3-chords to move backward through the file until you find the text that should have been the end of the file. Delete from that point forward to eliminate this junk from your file. You've just deleted the last file in your file list. You can recover the file from the Files menu using a similar procedure to the one just described. But you now have no file to fill with text. So the first step is to create a file with the appropriate number of pages you threw away. (If you're not sure of this number, then start with a one- page file. You may have to keep making the file bigger a page at a time and then performing the recover operation repeatedly until you have recovered the complete file.) Suppose that you have a two-page file called "junk" that you have just deleted by mistake. When you read your file list from the Files menu with an l-chord, a q-chord, or even a v- chord, it's just not there. To start the recovery process, from the Files menu write a c to create a new file. Name the file anything you want. (The file's name is irrelevant to the Braille 'n Speak. Just naming it the same name as the deleted file won't recover it.) Go ahead and answer the usual prompts for creating a new file. You should now be in an empty, open file. From the Files menu write a for-sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6). At the prompt, write a y. You should recover the file, although you may have extraneous text to delete at its end. These are tricky maneuvers, but they may save important data for you. We suggest that you practice this procedure with a junk file before attempting it with real data. BRAILLE TRANSLATION QUESTIONS 1. I am using the Braille 'n Speak as a speech synthesizer. When I hit a key on my PC, I get the Grade 2 equivalent, like do for d, can for c, etc. Speech box uses the Clipboard as a buffer. Go into the Clipboard and switch off the translator. 2. I am trying to use the 640 calendar alert feature. I pasted the date correctly but I still don't hear the alert when I turn on the unit. If you entered the date in computer braille, the translator in the calendar file must be off. If you pasted the date in Grade 1 braille, the translator must remain on in the calen dar file. See whether the date is written in computer braille or Grade 1 braille, and then make sure the transla tor is set to match. Also, see whether Calendar Check is "on" from the Status menu. MISCELLANEOUS QUESTIONS 1. The o-chord k command gives the wrong answer. The calculation must be on a line by itself, with no other text. You must write it in computer braille - using dropped numbers and correct operator symbols - as though you were in the calculator. The Braille 'n Speak must be in Line Reading mode, not Window or Sentence mode. 2. I've started to issue a command, like Insert text, or Find text, or a macro, but want to cancel the process. Abort with a z-chord. This command aborts almost any proce dure. If, for example, you issue the Insert command and change your mind, a z-chord prevents unintended insertion of text. In addition, a z-chord aborts the transmission of data and releases the handshake line in the event of a "handshake hang-up". If you issue a z-chord from within the Help file, you leave Help and return to the file in which you were last working. 3. I don't hear anything when I press a backspace (b- chord). You might have duplex set to full or none. Go into the Status menu or the Parameters menu and change it to half. 4. The filenames on the disk in my PC or my disk drive are not the same as the names of the files that I transmitted from my Braille 'n Speak. You must use MS DOS file naming conventions when naming Braille 'n Speak files that you plan to send to a PC or to the external disk drive. Briefly, the name of a file con sists of a "filename" and "extension" separated by a period. The "filename" portion may contain up to eight characters, and the extension up to three characters. You may not use spaces or wildcard characters (the asterisk and question mark) in a filename. You do not have to use extensions but most MS DOS files have them, especially program files. Suppose that you have a file in your Braille 'n Speak called "phone book". When you send it to the PC, it truncates to "phoneboo" because DOS sees only the first eight characters and eliminates the space character. So, when you look for the file on the PC written as your Braille 'n Speak knows it, you won't find it. It is there, but it's called "phone boo", not "phone book". 5. How and when can I use "wildcard" characters in filenames? You can use "wildcard" characters (the asterisk and the question mark) as part of filenames and their extensions from the Files menu during most commands that prompt you to "Enter filename" - deleting files, marking or unmarking files, getting file information, for example. (The marking and unmarking process is available only in transmission of files with the ymodem or kermit modem protocols. These transmission options are available for the disk drive as well as for the serial port with the t-chord command from the Files menu. See Sections 4.2.4 and 4.3.6.) The asterisk and question mark must be entered in computer braille notation: dots 1-6 for the asterisk, dots 1-4-5-6 for the question mark. The asterisk replaces either the filename or the extension portion of the name of a file; the question mark replaces individual characters in either the filename or extension portion of the name of a file. Also, remember that the period must also be in computer braille (dots 4-6). See Appendix D for a complete listing of com puter braille equivalents to the ASCII character set. Here are two examples: Suppose that you have five files in your Braille 'n Speak named "notes1", "notes2", etc. and you want to work with them as a group. At the "Enter filename" prompt, you may write "notes" followed by a question mark followed by an e- chord. All files that start with the letters "notes" are affected. Now suppose that you have several files that all have the extension ".brl". At the "Enter filename" prompt, you may write "*.brl" and an e-chord. All files having the ".brl" extension are affected. Of course, you may use the question mark more than once to affect groups of files where only some of the characters are the same and still use the asterisk for the filename or extension portion. For example, say that you have a bunch of files where the filename portions are all different but whose extensions all start with a b and have different ending characters. Let's say that the extensions of these files represent braille files for different states and you're using the two-letter abbreviation for the states. Your files have names like, "customer.bme", "vendor.bny", "dealers.bfl". You can use the wildcard name "*.b??" to refer to this group of files. Appendix B - Quick ReferenceAppendix B - Quick Reference INTRODUCTION The Braille 'n Speak Classic and Braille 'n Speak 640 are prod ucts of Blazie Engineering, 105 E. Jarretsville Rd., Forest Hill, Maryland 21050; (410) 893-9333. This quick reference guide is designed for both models with special features of the 640 highlighted by an asterisk (*). There is a limit of 41 files for the Classic and 77 files for the 640. For both models, a Braille 'n Speak page is 4,096 charac ters. There are 45 free pages in the Classic and over 150 free pages in the 640. A single file may contain as many pages as desired as long as that number does not exceed the 45-page limit for the Classic or the 150-page limit for the 640. A line is defined as a block of text ending with a carriage return. A paragraph is defined as a block of text ending with two or more carriage returns or two or more carriage return/line feed pairs. Page format commands allow you to specify physical line length and page length when ready to transmit text to a printer or braille embosser. In this reference guide, a "chord" refers to pressing down the spacebar simultaneously with a braille character. For example, an e-chord means to press down the spacebar simultaneously with dots 1 and 5. The phrase "(y,n)" means that you should choose y for Yes or n for No. Unless otherwise specified, a braille number sign (dots 3-4-5-6) is used only for clarity and the number indicated should be written in "dropped" or lowercase notation. For example, if you see a number sign followed by the letter a, which normally means the number one, you should write a dropped number one (dot 2). You may ignore spaces in command sequences; they are used only for readability. SPEECH PARAMETERS MENU Enter Speech Parameters menu - ar-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5) Exit Speech Parameters menu saving current settings - e-chord or z-chord Softer volume - dot 1 Louder volume - dot 4 Slower speed - dot 2 Faster speed - dot 5 Lower pitch - dot 3 Higher pitch - dot 6 Lower frequency - dots 2-3 Higher frequency - dots 5-6 Cycle among keyboard modes (key echo, key click, silent keys) - spacebar Toggle between speaking numbers as digits and speaking numbers as words - n Do not announce any punctuation - z Announce some punctuation - s Announce most punctuation - m Announce total punctuation (including spaces and control charac ters) - t Toggle speech box mode on/off - for-sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6) Note: All serial input is spoken but not stored in the unit. Press any key from the Braille 'n Speak keyboard or press Ctrl-X from the computer keyboard to silence the voice. Toggle enhanced speech box mode on/off - for-sign-chord (dots 1- 2-3-4-5-6) block handshaking - b line handshaking - l Note: The following commands assume that speech box mode is on. They are used by a screen access program to alter the voice in the Braille 'n Speak when it is acting as a speech synthesizer. Volume - Control e x v, where x represents a volume from 01 to 16, 01 being the lowest volume. Pitch - Control e x p, where x represents a pitch from 01 to 63, 01 being the lowest pitch. Speech rate - Control e x e, where x represents a rate from 01 to 16, 01 being the slowest speech rate. Frequency - Control e x t, where x represents a tone from 01 to 25, 01 being the lowest. Punctuation level - Control e followed by a, m, s, or z, where the letters represent All, Most, Some, or No punctuation, respec tively. Index marker - Control f Silence command - Control x FILE COMMANDS Enter Help file from any other file - th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5- 6) (ressing a z-chord returns you to your previously open file.) Open a file whose number is known - o-chord ## (## is a 2-digit number between 00-41 for the Classic and 00-77 for the 640.) Enter Files menu - o-chord f Exit Files menu - e-chord Note: The following commands all begin with o-chord f. If wildcard characters are permitted, a (w) appears after the command: Exit Files menu - e or e-chord Open an existing file - o (filename) e-chord Delete a file - d (filename) e-chord (w) List all files, and number of free pages at end of list - l Quick list of files - q Verbose list of files - v Tell name of currently open file - t ** Tell complete information about currently open file - i-chord (includes filename, braille translator status, number of pages, date and time when first created, number of bytes in file, write-protect status) ** Tell creation date and time of currently open file - m-chord ** Tell byte count of currently open file - wh-sign-chord (dots 1-5-6) Write-protect currently open file - p Unprotect currently open file - u Make currently open file bigger - b Make currently open file smaller - s Rename currently open file - r ** Tell complete file information for specified file - i (file name) e-chord (w) (includes filename, braille translator status, number of pages, date and time when first created, number of bytes in file, write-protect status) ** Tell creation date and time of specified file - m (filename) e-chord (w) ** Tell byte count of specified file - wh-sign (filename) e-chord (dots 1-5-6) (w) Tell number of free pages remaining in Braille 'n Speak - f Recover currently open file - for-sign (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6) Speak name and 2-digit number of currently pointed to file - c- chord Spell name of currently pointed to file - dots 2-5-chord Speak name of previous file in file list - dot 1-chord Speak name of next file in file list - dot 4-chord Move to top of file list - l-chord Move to end of file list - Dots 4-5-6-chord Open currently pointed to file - o-chord Delete currently pointed to file - d-chord Make currently pointed to file bigger - b-chord Make currently pointed to file smaller - s-chord Rename currently pointed to file - r-chord ** Tell complete file information of currently pointed to file - i-chord (includes filename, braille translator status, number of pages, date and time when first created, number of bytes in file, write-protect status) ** Tell creation date and time of currently pointed to file - m- chord ** Tell byte count of currently pointed to file - wh-sign- chord (dots 1-5-6) ENTERING TEXT Note: Any characters you write are appended to the end of the file unless you are in Insert mode. Backspace - b-chord (places the cursor on the character without erasing it) Speak current cursor position within the file - wh-sign- chord (dots 1-5-6) (announces column position from the last carriage return and number of characters from the beginning of the file) Speak current cursor position within physical print or braille page and line number - sh-sign-chord (dots 1-4-6) Speak room left in current file - r-chord Uppercase only next character to be written - u-chord (Use dot 6 instead when braille translation is on.) Uppercase lock - u-chord, u-chord (Do not use with braille translation turned on.) Uppercase unlock - q-chord Overwrite current character - ow-sign-chord (dots 2-4-6) Mark beginning of block of text at current cursor position - m- chord Write a control character - x-chord followed by character Write an "escape" control character - x-chord followed by ow-sign (dots 2-4-6) (a left brace in computer braille) Write a carriage return in control character form - x-chord m Write a linefeed - x-chord j Write a formfeed control character - x-chord l Tab a specified number of columns relative to the last carriage return - dots 4-5-chord followed by dropped number (number refers to number of spaces to be counted from last carriage return) CURSOR MOVEMENT AND SPEAKING OF TEXT Note: When a single character is spoken, its pitch is higher than normal if the character is in uppercase. Speak current character - dots 3-6-chord Speak current character phonetically - dots 3-6-chord twice (e.g. a alpha, b bravo) Move to and speak previous character - dot 3-chord Move to and speak next character - dot 6-chord Speak current word - dots 2-5-chord Spell current word - dots 2-5-chord twice Move to and speak previous word - dot 2-chord Move to and speak next word - dot 5-chord Speak current line - c-chord Move back and speak previous line - dot 1-chord Move forward and speak next line - dot 4-chord Move back to previous paragraph - dots 2-3-chord Move forward to next paragraph - dots 5-6-chord Move to top of file - l-chord Move to end of file - dots 4-5-6-chord Speak all text from current cursor position to end of file - er- sign-chord (dots 1-2-4-5-6) Move a specified number of lines - number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5- 6) followed by a dropped number (moving forward) or followed by a minus sign (dots 3-6) and a dropped number (moving backward) Skip blank lines when moving cursor - and-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3- 4-6) (y, n) Speak windows, lines or sentences - w-chord w (windows), l (lines), or s (sentences) Move to beginning of marked block of text - number-sign- chord (dots 3-4-5-6) m Switch into review mode - o-chord r (Used strictly for reading through file without chording; for example, dot 1 reads the previous line, dot 4 the next line, dots 1-4 the current line. Pressing any chord returns the Braille 'n Speak to normal operation.) FINDING, DELETING AND INSERTING TEXT Note: The following commands all end with an e-chord but can be aborted by a z-chord from anywhere within the process before the e-chord is pressed (and for the Find command, even after the e- chord is pressed). Notes about Find mode: You can search for a block of text up to 63 characters in length. You can use backspace (b-chord) to make corrections in the character string as you write it. You can read the character string you have written so far by pressing a c-chord. Distinguish case sensitivity of text during a search - the- sign-chord (dots 2-3-4-6) (y, n) (Case sensitivity is normally off.) Find text forward from current cursor position - f-chord followed by text to find e-chord Find text backward from current cursor position - f-chord fol lowed by text to find th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6) Notes about deleting text: Place cursor at beginning of block of text to delete. All delete commands begin with a d-chord. The letter following the d-chord indicates the block of text you want to delete. To delete multiple blocks of text, follow the appropriate letter with a dropped number. Complete all delete commands with an e-chord. Delete current character(s) - d-chord c e-chord Delete current word(s) - d-chord w e-chord Delete current line(s) - d-chord l e-chord (must have Windows set to Lines) Delete current sentence(s) - d-chord s e-chord (must have Windows set to Sentences) Delete current paragraph(s) - d-chord p e-chord Delete from current cursor position to end of file - d-chord z e-chord Delete from beginning of marked block of text to current cursor position - d-chord m e-chord Special Note: Mark beginning of block to be deleted by placing cursor over first character in block and pressing an m-chord. Then place cursor one character beyond block of text to be deleted before executing this command. Notes about Insert mode: You can insert a block of text up to 255 characters in length. You can use backspace (b-chord) to make corrections in character string as you write it. You can read the character string you have written so far by pressing a c-chord. Insert text at current cursor position - i-chord followed by text an e-chord THE CLIPBOARD When a block of text is deleted (up to 4,095 characters in length) it is placed into the clipboard. The contents of the clipboard is cleared when Speech box mode or certain disk drive commands are activated. At such times, the contents of the clipboard is determined by those activities. The clipboard may be expanded as any other file through the Files menu with a b or b-chord to the extent of free space in the Braille 'n Speak. Insert the contents of the clipboard into the currently open file at the current cursor position - ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6). In the 640 only, write a c to copy the contents of the Clipboard. (No e-chord is necessary.) Copy text beginning with marked position to current cursor posi tion - gh-sign-chord (dots 1-2-6) (block of text is copied into clipboard but not deleted from file.) CLOCK AND CALENDAR Speak current time - o-chord t Set time - o-chord s t Set announcement of time to American time - o-chord s a (12-hour with a.m. and p.m.) Set announcement of time to European time - o-chord s e (24-hour) Speak today's date - o-chord d Set date - o-chord s d (month, day, year) Note: The following command is unique to the Classic. Set day of week - o-chord s w followed by a number from 1 to 7 (1 being Sunday) ** Copy current date into currently open file at current cursor position - ing-sign (dots 3-4-6) d ** Copy current time into currently open file at current cursor position - ing-sign (dots 3-4-6) t CALCULATOR Enter calculator mode - o-chord c Exit calculator mode - z-chord Speak current line - c-chord Execute calculation or speak current result - e-chord Set level of precision of computations to specified decimal place - p-chord (up to 12 decimal places) Clear calculator to 0 - dots 3-5-6-chord Toggle between speaking numbers as digits or as words - f-chord Operators accepted by the calculator: plus - dots 3-4-6 minus - dots 3-6 times - dots 1-6 divided by - dots 3-4 percent - dots 1-4-6 square root - dots 3-4-5-chord Store current result in memory locations - s-chord followed by a letter from a through f Recall contents of a memory location - the letters a through f May be used as part of a calculation) Store result of calculation - r (may be used in further calculations) STOPWATCH/COUNT-DOWN TIMER Enter stopwatch or timer mode - o-chord w Exit stopwatch or timer mode - z-chord Exit timer mode with timer still running - e-chord Start or stop stopwatch or timer - dot 6 Reset timer - dot 3 Read time on timer - spacebar Speak last time read - c Start count-down timer - number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-6) fol lowed by dropped numbers for hours, minutes, and seconds, e-chord * SMART CALENDAR FUNCTIONS * Unique to the 640 Get a date from the calendar - o-chord g followed by date (month, day, year), e-chord (e.g., o-chord g 04151993 e-chord yields Thursday April 15, 1993.) Get date a specified number of days from today - o-chord g fol lowed by number, e-chord (A number by itself is counted forward from today and a number preceded by a minus (dots 3-6) counts backward from today; e.g., o-chord g 90 e-chord counts 90 days forward from today whereas o-chord g -90 e-chord counts 90 days backward from today) Get count of days from beginning of current year to today - o- chord g 0 e-chord (e.g., Assuming today is April 15, 1993, o-chord g 0 e-chord yields day number 105.) Insert date just spoken by smart calendar into currently open file - i-chord e-chord MACROS Note: A macro may be up to 63 characters in length. Its name may be any braille symbol: the entire alphabet plus any Grade 2 braille symbol. Start recording a macro - n-chord End or stop recording a macro - n-chord Execute a macro - j-chord followed by specified braille symbol of pre-recorded macro (e.g., j-chord followed by a letter s executes a macro you had previously recorded under the name s.) Kill speech during execution of a macro - k-chord Voice speech during execution of a macro - v-chord Pause for user entry during a macro - dots 1-6-chord (for single character user entry) or dots 1-6-chord twice (for full line of user entry) (e.G., n-chord, s, f-chord, dots 1-6-chord, dots 1-6-chord, e-chord, e-chord, n-chord defines a macro which when execut ed with j-chord s prompts you to, "Enter text to find" and pauses for your input; after you press e-chord, it searches for the text you requested it to find.) Write-protect all macros - n-chord p-chord Unprotect all macros - n-chord u-chord DISK DRIVE FUNCTIONS Note:; MS DOS file naming conventions hold for this section; that is, a filename may contain up to eight characters and an exten sion up to three characters. See your DOS user's manual for details. Load a file from the disk drive - s-chord l Save a file to the disk drive - s-chord s (regardless of page format of file) Transmit file with page formatting to disk drive - s-chord t (filename) e-chord Kill (delete) file on disk in drive - s-chord k (filename) e- chord Format disk in drive - s-chord f (y, n) Speak directory of files in drive - s-chord d Add volume label to disk in drive - s-chord v followed by label name e-chord Make a subdirectory on disk in drive - s-chord m followed by subdirectory name e-chord Delete a subdirectory from disk in drive - s-chord x followed by subdirectory name e-chord TRANSMITTING DATA Enter Transmit Parameters menu - t-chord Abort transmission - z-chord Transmit all text in currently open file - t-chord a (without braille translation or page format considerations) Transmit all text in currently open file with braille translation off - t-chord b Transmit line (block of text from current cursor position to next carriage return) - t-chord l Transmit block of text from current cursor position to mark - t- chord m Transmit paragraph (block of text from current cursor position to next pair of carriage returns or next pair of carriage return /linefeeds) - t-chord p Transmit entire currently open file without braille translation or page format parameters - t-chord s (used mostly for backup purposes) Transmit block of text from current cursor position to end of currently open file - t-chord z Notes on Modem Protocols: The following commands are issued from the Files menu. Press o-chord f to enter it. If a disk drive is attached to the disk drive port, the following commands automatically assume that you want to transmit files to the disk drive; otherwise, the following commands assume that you want to transmit files via the serial port. If you do want to transmit files via the serial port, it must be active (see commands for Parameters Menu or Status Menu). For files to be sent using the ymodem protocol, mark files with a y or y-chord, unmark with an n or n-chord as you cycle through file list. Transmit files using modem protocols - t-chord s (send) or r (receive) xmodem - x (filename) e-chord ymodem or ymodem g - y (filename) e-chord (Special note: Wildcard characters are allowed for sending or receiving multiple files of similar names using MS DOS wildcard character conventions; e.g., "*.txt" sends all files with ".txt" extension.) kermit - k (filename) e-chord ** SPELLCHECK FUNCTIONS To use the spellchecker, load the file "spell.dic" into 640 from the external disk drive or from a PC. Enter spellcheck mode - o-chord ch-sign (dots 1-6) Exit spellcheck mode - z-chord Note: The following commands are performed within spellcheck mode. Spellcheck current word - w Spellcheck from current cursor position to end of file - z If a word is not found, use the following commands: Add word to personal dictionary - a Bypass word for rest of file - b Read word in context - c Enter correct word - e Help - h Skip word - o Repeat incorrect word - r Spell incorrect word phonetically - dots 3-6-chord Give suggested replacement words - s (Use dot 1-chord, and dot 4-chord to move through suggestion list. Replace incorrect word with suggested choice by pressing e-chord. Exit suggestion list without choosing a replacement word by pressing z-chord.) PARAMETERS MENU Note: The following commands all begin with a p-chord. An e- chord is not required to complete them (with the exception of the "Window length" parameter). Append linefeeds during transmission of data - a (y, n) Set Baud rate - b Track cursor in currently open file - c (y, n) Set duplex - d (h,f, or n) Set handshaking - h (s, h, or n) Reject ornamentation characters - o (y, n) Set parity - p (n, e, or o) Speak software revision date - r Set stop bits - s (1 or 2) Set braille translator on/off - t (y, n) Speak windows, lines or sentences - w (w, l, or s) Activate serial port - dots 2-6 (y, n) Set data bits - dots 4-5-6 (7 or 8) STATUS MENU DEFAULT SETTINGS Notes: The following parameters are reset every time you perform a warm, cold or hard reset. Settings appear in the same order in which they appear in the menu as you cycle through it. Cycle forward through the menu with dot 4-chords, backward with dot 1-chords. Jump to the top of the menu with an l-chord, to the end of the menu with a dots 4-5-6-chord. To jump directly to a setting, see the listing in brackets immediately following the listing of each default setting. For most settings, change status on/off with Y or N. For those settings requiring another response, write your choice and press an e-chord to save that choice. Enter Status menu - st-sign-chord (dots 3-4) Exit Status menu - e-chord Interactive mode - off [g] Serial port active - off [f] (must be "on" to receive data) Baud rate - 9600 [b] (Use first or first two digits of Baud rate to change set ting.) Parity - none [p] (e for even, o for odd, n for none) Duplex - half [d] (f for full, h for half, n for none) Data bits - 8 [dots 4-5-6] (7 or 8) Stop bits - 1 [s] (1 or 2) Handshake - software [h] (s for software, h for hardware, or n for no handshaking) Append linefeeds when transmitting - off [a] Braille translator - off [t] Cursor tracking - on [c] Recognize escape sequences - off [{] (brace) Revision date - current revision date of Braille 'n Speak [r] Speak windows, lines or sentences - lines [v] (w for windows, l for lines, s for sentences) Reject ornamentation characters - off [o] (limits repetitive punctuation to two occurrences; rejects decorative control characters) Skip blank lines - on [&] (and-sign, dots 1-2-3-4-6) Distinguish case during find - off [the-sign] (dots 2-3-4-6) Battery use - number of hours, minutes since battery was last reset [th-sign] (dots 1-4-5-6) (Reset timer with dropped 0 (dots 3-5-6).) Beep at column - 0 [q] Line length - 0 [l] Left margin - 0 Page length - 0 Top margin - 0 Window length -80 [w] (Voice window from 20 to 80 characters in length, no effect on formatting or printing of text) Interactive timeout - 0 [x] Double-space - off [ar-sign] (dots 3-4-5) Voice inflection - on [i] Number pages - off [#] (number-sign, dots 3-4-5-6) Power reminder - on [z] Ham calls - off [m] * Calendar check - on [j] * Word exceptions check - on [e] * Progress clicks - on [dots 4-5-6] MISCELLANEOUS COMMANDS Power up Braille 'n Speak silently - Hold down spacebar as you turn unit on. Enable one-handed mode - Hold down dot 6 as you turn unit on. Disable one-handed mode and return to normal use - Hold down dot 3 as you turn unit on. Warm reset - (with unit turned on) for-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4- 5-6) twice (Resets most parameters to default settings without loss of current data in files; press the second for-sign-chord to confirm.) Warm reset to attempt file recovery - (as you turn on unit) for- sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4-5-6) (CAUTION: Use as last-resort option to attempt file recov ery. Files must be recovered using the process described in Appendix A.) Cold reset - (as you turn on unit) i-chord (Caution: Use as last resort for a crash recovery or when returning unit for exchange unit; wipes out all data (see Appendix A.) Enter an "Alt" key from the Braille 'n Speak into a PC - dots 3- 5-chord followed by dropped number from 0 to 255, e-chord Calculate expression on current line - o-chord k Turn interactive mode on/off - g-chord Do not translate text in between the following two symbols - dot 4 followed by dash followed by block of text not to be translated followed by dot 4 l (e.G., dot 4 dash Do not translate this sentence. dot 4 l) Appendix C - Technical Information about Serial Ports Appendix C - Technical Information about Serial Ports The following technical information provides special cabling arrangements for use between the Braille 'n Speak and devices for which we do not offer specific cables. The Braille 'n Speak is a DCE device. You'll need a null modem cable to interface the Braille 'n Speak with other DCE devices. The unit has two male interface ports. The one closer to you when the Braille 'n Speak is in the normal operating position is for the disk drive (Section 4.2), and is intended specifically for use with that device. The one closer to the AC adapter jack is an RS-232 serial port (Section 4.3). Below, we list its active pin assignments for your convenience. (Note that the cable we provide for use with this port has 9 pin locations on the end which connects to the port and 25 pin locations at the end that connects to an external device.) Pin 2 - Data Receive (DR) Data transmitted to the Braille 'n Speak Pin 3 - Data Send (DS) Data transmitted from the Braille 'n Speak Pin 5 - Clear To Send (CTS) Note: The Braille 'n Speak sets this line high when it is able to accept data, indicating to the DTE that it is clear to send to the Braille 'n Speak. If the Braille 'n Speak cannot accept data (e.g., a full file), it lowers this line, signalling the DTE to stop sending. Pin 6 - Data Set Ready (DSR) Note: The Braille 'n Speak outputs this line high whenever its power is on (even if the serial port power is not on as with Serial Port Inactive). Pin 8 - tied to pin 6 Note: Has no function of its own. Pin 20 - Data Terminal Ready (DTR) Note: This line is an input to the Braille 'n Speak signal ling the unit that it can transmit to the external device. If no device is connected, this line is pulled high. Appendix D - ASCII Braille SymbolsAppendix D - ASCII Braille Symbols Note: This is the list of computer braille equivalents for the ASCII character set, including punctuation, numbers, etc. The extended ASCII character set - Greek letters and the like - is omitted. In this listing, information is presented in this order: First, character name; the names of numerals and punctuations are spelled out and presented in regular alphabetic sequence. Next comes the decimal numeric order of the character in the ASCII table. The word "dots" is followed by the Braille dot numbers used to produce the braille equivalent of the character. In the case of control (CTRL) characters, dot patterns are omitted. Items are separated by semicolons. A, Uppercase; 65; dot 1. a, lowercase; 97; dot 1. Accent; 96; dot 4 (lowercase). Acknowledge; 6; CTRL-F. Ampersand; 38; dots 1-2-3-4-6. Apostrophe; 39; dot 3. Asterisk; 42; dots 1-6. At Sign; 64; dot 4 (uppercase). B, uppercase; 66; dots 1-2. b, lowercase; 98; dots 1-2. Backspace; 8; CTRL-H. Backslash, (Reverse Slant); 92; dots 1-2-5-6 (uppercase). Bell; 7; CTRL-G. C, uppercase; 67; dots 1-4. c, lowercase; 99; dots 1-4. Cancel; 24; CTRL-X. Caret, (Exponentiation); 94; dots 4-5 (uppercase). Carriage Return; 13; CTRL-M. Close Brace; 125; dots 1-2-4-5-6 (lowercase). Close Bracket; 93; dots 1-2-4-5-6 (uppercase). Close Parenthesis; 41; dots 2-3-4-5-6. Colon; 58; dots 1-5-6. Comma; 44; dot 6. D, uppercase; 68; dots 1-4-5. d, lowercase; 100; dots 1-4-5. Data Line Escape; 16; CTRL-P. Decimal point (period); 46; dots 4-6. Delete; 127; dots 4-5-6 (lowercase). Device Control 1; 17; CTRL-Q. Device Control 2; 18; CTRL-R. Device Control 3; 19; CTRL-S. Device Control 4; 20; CtrlT. Divided by, (Slash); 47; dots 3-4. Dollar Sign; 36; dots 1-2-4-6. E, Uppercase; 69; dots 1-5. e, lowercase; 101; dots 1-5. eight; 56; dots 2-3-6. End of Medium; 25; CTRL-Y. End of Transmission; 4; CTRL-D. End of Text; 3; CTRL-C. Enquire; 5; CTRL-E. Equals; 61; dots 1-2-3-4-5-6. Escape; 27; CTRL-Open Bracket. Exclamation point; 33; dots 2-3-46. Exponentiation, (Caret); 94; dots 4-5 (uppercase. F, Uppercase; 70; dots 1-2-4. f, lowercase; 102; dots 1-2-4. File Separator; 28; CTRL-Reverse Slant. five; 53; dots 2-6. Form Feed; 12; CTRL-L. four; 52; dots 2-5-6. G, Uppercase; 71; dots 1-2-4-5-. g, lowercase; 103; dots 1-2-4-5. Grave Accent, (Accent); 96; dot 4 (lowercase). Greater Than, (Right Angle Bracket); 62; dots 3-4-5. Group Separator; 29; CTRL-Close Bracket. H, Uppercase; 72; dots 1-2-5. h, lowercase; 104; dots 1-2-5. Horizontal Tabulation; 9; CTRL-I. Hyphen, (minus); 45; dots 3-6. I, Uppercase; 73; dots 2-4. i, lowercase; 105; dots 2-4. J, Uppercase; 74; dots 2-4-5. j, lowercase; 106; dots 2-4-5. K, Uppercase; 75; dots 1-3. k, lowercase; 107; dots 1-3. L, Uppercase; 76; dots 1-2-3. l, lowercase; 108; dots 1-2-3. Left Angle Bracket, (Less Than); 60; dots 1-2-6. Less Than,(Left Angle Bracket); 60; dots 1-2-6. Line Feed; 10; CTRL-J. M, Uppercase; 77; dots 1-3-4. m, lowercase; 109; dots 1-3-4. Minus, (hyphen); 45; dots 3-6. N, Uppercase; 78; dots 1-3-4-5. n, lowercase; 110; dots 1-3-4-5. Negative Acknowledgement; 21; CTRL-U. nine; 57; dots 3-5. Null; 0; CTRL-At Sign. Number Sign; 35; dots 3-4-5-6. O, Uppercase; 79; dots 1-3-5. o, lowercase; 111; dots 1-3-5. one 49; dot 2. Open Brace; 123; dots 2-4-6 (lowercase). Open Bracket; 91; dots 2-4-6 (uppercase). Open Parenthesis; 40; dots 1-2-3-5-6. P, Uppercase; 80; dots 1-2-3-4. p, lowercase; 112; dots 1-2-3-4. Percent Sign; 37; dots 1-4-6. Period, (Decimal); 46; dots 4-6. Plus; 43; dots 3-4-6. Q, Uppercase; 81; dots 1-2-3-4-5. q, lowercase; 113; dots 1-2-3-4-5. Question Mark; 63; dots 1-4-5-6. Quotation Mark, (Double Quote); 34; dot 5. R, Uppercase; 82; dots 1-2-3-5. r, lowercase; 114; dots 1-2-3-5. Record Separator; 30; CTRL-Caret. Reverse Slant, (backslash); 92; dots 1-2-5-6 (uppercase). Right Angle Bracket, (Greater Than); 62; dots 3-4-5. S, Uppercase; 83; dots 2-3-4. s, lowercase; 115; dots 2-3-4. Semicolon; 59; dots 5-6. seven; 55; dots 2-3-5-6. Shift In; 15; CTRL-O. Shift Out; 14; CTRL-N. six; 54; dots 2-3-5. Space; 32; No dots. Start of Heading; 1; CTRL-A. Start of Text; 2; CTRL-B. Substitute; 26; CTRL-Z. Synchronous Idle; 22; CTRL-V. T, Uppercase; 84; dots 2-3-4-5. t, lowercase; 116; dots 2-3-4-5. three; 51; dots 2-5. Tilde; 126; dots 4-5 (lowercase). two; 50; dots 2-3. U, Uppercase; 85; dots 1-3-6. u, lowercase; 117; dots 1-3-6. Underline; 95; dots 4-5-6(uppercase). Unit Separator; 31; CTRL-Underline. V, Uppercase; 86; Dots 1-2-3-6. v, lowercase; 118; dots 1-2-3-6. Vertical Line; 124; dots 1-2-5-6 (lowercase). Vertical Tabulation; 11; CTRL-K. W, Uppercase; 87; dots 2-4-5-6. w, lowercase; 119; dots 2-4-5-6. X, Uppercase; 88; dots 1-3-4-6. x, lowercase; 120; dots 1-3-4-6. Y, Uppercase; 89; dots 1-3-4-5-6. y, lowercase; 121; dots 1-3-4-5-6. Z, Uppercase; 90; dots 1-3-5-6. z, lowercase; 122; dots 1-3-5-6. zero; 48; dots 3-5-6.