An Introduction to Version 11
Version 11 of Kurzweil 1000 will be announced tomorrow. It should be available towards the end of November. Although I fully expect to be answering many questions at the Kurzweil 1000 listserve (see http://www.kurzweiledu.com/support_listserv.aspx to sign up), I thought a blog might be an interesting way to provide the same information in a format that allows for a little more structure.
For now, I'll use the blog to announce the changes in this version of Kurzweil 1000, and to discuss those changes. Later, I'd be happy to entertain possibilities for future versions as well.
So, what's new in Version 11?
I'm going to provide a long list of new features now, with very little text about each one. It will be about as interesting as a shopping list. On subsequent posts, I'll go into each one in more detail.
Here goes...
Form Recognition. For the first time (I think), a Blind user has a shot at being able to take a paper form, convert it into something electronic, fill it out, and print the filled out version, all without assistance. The software will automatically identify various types of fields in a form, including check boxes, text boxes, and character boxes, give you a couple of different mechanisms to explore and fill out the form, let you insert a signature into a field if you wish, and let you print a filled out copy of the original.
Scanner Buttons. Finally, you can set up the buttons on a scanner to do useful things in Kurzweil 1000. One might bring up the product if its not already up and scan a page, another might bring up the Fax Application, a third might bring up the Photocopy application.
Updated OCR Engines. Major new upgrades of Abbyy FineReader (now at version 8), and Nuance's ScanSoft OCR (now at version 15) are included in this version.
An Appointment Calendar. We've written a new talking application - an appointment calendar. You can invoke it from Kurzweil 1000, or run it separately with a hot key. Its relatively simple, but does, I hope, much of what one would want from this soft of application.
Scan and Recognize from within Microsoft Word. We've been asked about this for several years, so we thought we'd finally get around to it. You can select from a variety of K1000 options within Microsoft Word, scan pages, and have recognized text flow into your current Word document.
Bookmarks and Notes in All Document Types. One of the most popular features of Kurzweil 1000 has been our ability to create notes, multi-level bookmarks, and, of course, keep track of where you stopped reading. This has only been available, however, when you read documents in our native format - KES, or in DAISY 3 format. Now, if we can open the file, we can also maintain this sort of information for the file, regardless of its format.
Play Audio Files. Speaking of opening files, Kurzweil 1000 can now open and play DAISY 2 Audio files, WAV files, MP3 files, and WMA files. Given the previous item, you can also make notes at various spots in those files, and create bookmarks for them.
Link Documents and Settings. You've been scanning a document, but you are interrupted. You come back to it later, but realize you've forgotten what the scanning and recognition settings were. Not a problem with version 11. If you'd like, you can have the K1000 automatically create and load settings files that are associated with a document. In one flavor of this new setting you can have it keep track of just scanning and recognition settings. In another flavor, you can have it keep track of just about everything.
Writing Files onto a CD. You've been able to create audio DAISY documents for a few releases now, but had to use other software to actually write those documents to a CD for use in a portable player. Now you can write them directly to your CD from within the product.
Bilingual Dictionaries. Kurzweil 1000 comes with the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition. You can also get the concise Oxford Dictionary for it, if you'd like. With this version, we include 12 pairs of bilingual dictionaries - useful if you want to get a short definition in English for a Spanish document, for example, or the French word for an English one.
Insert Signatures into Documents. I mentioned signatures with the forms recognition feature. You can scan signatures into the system, save any number of them, and insert them into any open document.
Conversion Settings. For people who want to influence some of the nitty-gritty details of opening and saving documents in formats other than KES, this settings dialog will be the place to go.
An altered TTS Engine. We've shipped IBM TTS for a number of years. With this release, we are switching to ETI Eloquence.
OK, that is 15 of the new features. I have 22 others on my list, but they get increasingly esoteric. I think this will be enough to with which to start.
For now, I'll use the blog to announce the changes in this version of Kurzweil 1000, and to discuss those changes. Later, I'd be happy to entertain possibilities for future versions as well.
So, what's new in Version 11?
I'm going to provide a long list of new features now, with very little text about each one. It will be about as interesting as a shopping list. On subsequent posts, I'll go into each one in more detail.
Here goes...
Form Recognition. For the first time (I think), a Blind user has a shot at being able to take a paper form, convert it into something electronic, fill it out, and print the filled out version, all without assistance. The software will automatically identify various types of fields in a form, including check boxes, text boxes, and character boxes, give you a couple of different mechanisms to explore and fill out the form, let you insert a signature into a field if you wish, and let you print a filled out copy of the original.
Scanner Buttons. Finally, you can set up the buttons on a scanner to do useful things in Kurzweil 1000. One might bring up the product if its not already up and scan a page, another might bring up the Fax Application, a third might bring up the Photocopy application.
Updated OCR Engines. Major new upgrades of Abbyy FineReader (now at version 8), and Nuance's ScanSoft OCR (now at version 15) are included in this version.
An Appointment Calendar. We've written a new talking application - an appointment calendar. You can invoke it from Kurzweil 1000, or run it separately with a hot key. Its relatively simple, but does, I hope, much of what one would want from this soft of application.
Scan and Recognize from within Microsoft Word. We've been asked about this for several years, so we thought we'd finally get around to it. You can select from a variety of K1000 options within Microsoft Word, scan pages, and have recognized text flow into your current Word document.
Bookmarks and Notes in All Document Types. One of the most popular features of Kurzweil 1000 has been our ability to create notes, multi-level bookmarks, and, of course, keep track of where you stopped reading. This has only been available, however, when you read documents in our native format - KES, or in DAISY 3 format. Now, if we can open the file, we can also maintain this sort of information for the file, regardless of its format.
Play Audio Files. Speaking of opening files, Kurzweil 1000 can now open and play DAISY 2 Audio files, WAV files, MP3 files, and WMA files. Given the previous item, you can also make notes at various spots in those files, and create bookmarks for them.
Link Documents and Settings. You've been scanning a document, but you are interrupted. You come back to it later, but realize you've forgotten what the scanning and recognition settings were. Not a problem with version 11. If you'd like, you can have the K1000 automatically create and load settings files that are associated with a document. In one flavor of this new setting you can have it keep track of just scanning and recognition settings. In another flavor, you can have it keep track of just about everything.
Writing Files onto a CD. You've been able to create audio DAISY documents for a few releases now, but had to use other software to actually write those documents to a CD for use in a portable player. Now you can write them directly to your CD from within the product.
Bilingual Dictionaries. Kurzweil 1000 comes with the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition. You can also get the concise Oxford Dictionary for it, if you'd like. With this version, we include 12 pairs of bilingual dictionaries - useful if you want to get a short definition in English for a Spanish document, for example, or the French word for an English one.
Insert Signatures into Documents. I mentioned signatures with the forms recognition feature. You can scan signatures into the system, save any number of them, and insert them into any open document.
Conversion Settings. For people who want to influence some of the nitty-gritty details of opening and saving documents in formats other than KES, this settings dialog will be the place to go.
An altered TTS Engine. We've shipped IBM TTS for a number of years. With this release, we are switching to ETI Eloquence.
OK, that is 15 of the new features. I have 22 others on my list, but they get increasingly esoteric. I think this will be enough to with which to start.
posted by K1000Engineer at 5:26 PM
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