A Miscellany of other New Features in Version 11
In previous posts, I've gone into a fair amount of detail about new features, with one feature listed per post. Here, I'll list the remaining features - they are pretty modest, but one or another may appeal to you.
An altered TTS Engine.
We've shipped IBM TTS for a number of years. With this release, we are switching to ETI Eloquence. IBM TTS has suffered from a lack of support for the last few years - we expect better of ETI Eloquence - in fact, a number of fixes were made at our request before we would accept the engine.
Recognition Optimization.
This new option works somewhat like scanning optimization, except that it uses the image associated with the current page, and runs it through several different recognition settings.
Table Output in HTML and DAISY.
Previous releases did not support table formatting when you saved documents as HTML or as DAISY. Version 11 supports this.
Read Newly Recognized Pages Setting.
If you are reading your mail, you might like to have reading begin at the top of whatever page you have just scanned. There is a setting that allows you to do that if you wish. You'll find it in the General Settings Dialog.
Searching for Blank Pages. In the Find dialog, you can now search for blank pages. A blank page is one that contains no text, or only spaces, new lines, and tabs.
Enhanced Explore layout.
Explore layout now distinguishes between headers, footers, captions, tables, titles, and normal text blocks. Further, you can choose to save a picture region as a TIFF file. To do so, select the picture in the grid control, then tab to the Extract button and press enter.
A Bigger Recently Opened Files List.
The number of items in this list has been expanded from 5 to 10.
Continuous Reading in ListViews and TreeViews.
Within any dialog that contains ListView or TreeView controls, you can read the contents of those controls by pressing F5. You can stop at any item by pressing F5 again.
Expanded use of Batch Scanning Prefix.
In previous releases, you could use this setting to begin each TIFF file name with a unique prefix when you were scanning images. This was handy mainly because you could differentiate between one set of images and another. You can still do that, but you can also specify a folder name in the prefix, directing image files to a particular location, and (later), processing images from that location when you choose to recognize image files.
Extract All Images.
This is a new option in the File Utilities menu, allowing you to extract the images from all of the pages in a document.
New Features Guides.
At conferences I frequently have someone come up to me who is using, say, version 7 of Kurzweil 1000. He or She will, quite naturally, ask me what is new. To help me answer that question, the Help menu now contains a submenu labeled "New Features". Within that, you will be able to open any of the New Features guides for any of the versions of Kurzweil 1000 that were on your computer.
Suggested Dictionary Lookup.
If you misspell a word when you attempt to look it up in the dictionary, Kurzweil 1000 may suggest possible corrections that are available in the dictionary.
Copy the Entire Definition.
Once you have looked up a word, use Control+W to copy the entire definition to the clipboard.
A Few More Verbosity Settings.
You can now be notified, if you wish, when recognition of a multi-page file is complete, or when creation of audio files are complete. You can also create a chime to be played when continuous reading passes an end of paragraph, and/or a blank line.
Read All Punctuation.
A few dialogs have been changed to always read with all punctuation audible. This is handy, for example, in the edit corrections and edit pronunciations dialogs.
Switch Currently Active Document.
We have added a new item to the reading keypad. Shift+Up Arrow will move you from one document to the next, presuming you have more than one document open.
Stealing Focus after Scanning.
TWAIN Interfaces have a nasty habit of changing the keyboard focus when a scan begins. Kurzweil 1000 tries to compensate for this by saving the keyboard focus when a scan begins, and refocusing the keyboard once the scan ends. This causes trouble if you are using the Scanner Hot Key sequence in another application, and manually change the keyboard focus while a scan is in progress. You can now disable this behavior in the ScanConf diagnostic by changing the value of the setting labeled "Keep Kurzweil in Foreground".
Changed Behavior for Control+T.
Using Control+T, or the "Tools->What Time is It?" menu item, always gave you the time and the date. Now it will do one or the other. Press it once, and you will get the time. Press it again within 10 seconds, and you'll get the date. This is a handier approach, especially when used in conjunction with Control+C and Control+V, which will copy and paste the date or time into your document.
Changed Defaults.
Scanner Threshold now defaults to Dynamic rather than to Static. Language Identification now defaults to Disabled rather than Once per Page. The default Reading and Message Voice volumes are now 80 (some voices exhibit bad behavior when driven at their maximum volume.)
Changes to the Font Properties Dialog.
In previous releases, we combined the bold and italic attributes for a font into one setting called a font style. That's unusual, and it turns out there is a good reason why it isn't done that way. It becomes difficult to, for example, remove the bold attribute of a block of selected text without affecting the italic attribute in the same block. So, we've separated it out into a Bold setting and an Italic setting. Each has two possible values usually: Enabled or Disabled. For the Font Format dialog, though, if you select text that has both states of those attributes, you can end up with a third possibility: Mixed. For consistency, the print properties dialog was changed in a similar manner - its font style setting is replaced with two settings, bold and italic.
Scanning Time Property.
You'll find a new item in the Recognition Properties dialog. It is the first control, and, like everything else there, its a read only text box. It is labeled "Scan Time", and its mnemonic is ALT+N. It contains the time, in seconds, that elapsed between the press of the scan button and the indication to K1000 that the scan was complete. Depending on the scanner, this may or may not include the time it took for the scan bar to return to its home position.
Creating a List of Misspelled Words.
If you are scanning something that contains a large number of unusual words, they are likely to show up in the ranked spelling dialog as misspellings. If you have access to an expert in the subject of the document, that person might be able to help you determine which words are misspellings, and which ones aren't. You can now use Control+C in the misspellings list to copy the list to the clipboard. After that, you'll be able to copy it to a new document that can be sent to the obliging expert.Read Number Setting effects the Message Voice. The Read Number setting, which lets you choose between whole numbers and digits, now effects the message voice as well as the reading voice.
Select Audio Device.
We have had a number of examples where people have lost the ability to use SAPI 4 voices within Kurzweil 1000, because the Audio Device ID has been changed for the speech engine. You can now use the SapiReg diagnostic to correct that problem.
An altered TTS Engine.
We've shipped IBM TTS for a number of years. With this release, we are switching to ETI Eloquence. IBM TTS has suffered from a lack of support for the last few years - we expect better of ETI Eloquence - in fact, a number of fixes were made at our request before we would accept the engine.
Recognition Optimization.
This new option works somewhat like scanning optimization, except that it uses the image associated with the current page, and runs it through several different recognition settings.
Table Output in HTML and DAISY.
Previous releases did not support table formatting when you saved documents as HTML or as DAISY. Version 11 supports this.
Read Newly Recognized Pages Setting.
If you are reading your mail, you might like to have reading begin at the top of whatever page you have just scanned. There is a setting that allows you to do that if you wish. You'll find it in the General Settings Dialog.
Searching for Blank Pages. In the Find dialog, you can now search for blank pages. A blank page is one that contains no text, or only spaces, new lines, and tabs.
Enhanced Explore layout.
Explore layout now distinguishes between headers, footers, captions, tables, titles, and normal text blocks. Further, you can choose to save a picture region as a TIFF file. To do so, select the picture in the grid control, then tab to the Extract button and press enter.
A Bigger Recently Opened Files List.
The number of items in this list has been expanded from 5 to 10.
Continuous Reading in ListViews and TreeViews.
Within any dialog that contains ListView or TreeView controls, you can read the contents of those controls by pressing F5. You can stop at any item by pressing F5 again.
Expanded use of Batch Scanning Prefix.
In previous releases, you could use this setting to begin each TIFF file name with a unique prefix when you were scanning images. This was handy mainly because you could differentiate between one set of images and another. You can still do that, but you can also specify a folder name in the prefix, directing image files to a particular location, and (later), processing images from that location when you choose to recognize image files.
Extract All Images.
This is a new option in the File Utilities menu, allowing you to extract the images from all of the pages in a document.
New Features Guides.
At conferences I frequently have someone come up to me who is using, say, version 7 of Kurzweil 1000. He or She will, quite naturally, ask me what is new. To help me answer that question, the Help menu now contains a submenu labeled "New Features". Within that, you will be able to open any of the New Features guides for any of the versions of Kurzweil 1000 that were on your computer.
Suggested Dictionary Lookup.
If you misspell a word when you attempt to look it up in the dictionary, Kurzweil 1000 may suggest possible corrections that are available in the dictionary.
Copy the Entire Definition.
Once you have looked up a word, use Control+W to copy the entire definition to the clipboard.
A Few More Verbosity Settings.
You can now be notified, if you wish, when recognition of a multi-page file is complete, or when creation of audio files are complete. You can also create a chime to be played when continuous reading passes an end of paragraph, and/or a blank line.
Read All Punctuation.
A few dialogs have been changed to always read with all punctuation audible. This is handy, for example, in the edit corrections and edit pronunciations dialogs.
Switch Currently Active Document.
We have added a new item to the reading keypad. Shift+Up Arrow will move you from one document to the next, presuming you have more than one document open.
Stealing Focus after Scanning.
TWAIN Interfaces have a nasty habit of changing the keyboard focus when a scan begins. Kurzweil 1000 tries to compensate for this by saving the keyboard focus when a scan begins, and refocusing the keyboard once the scan ends. This causes trouble if you are using the Scanner Hot Key sequence in another application, and manually change the keyboard focus while a scan is in progress. You can now disable this behavior in the ScanConf diagnostic by changing the value of the setting labeled "Keep Kurzweil in Foreground".
Changed Behavior for Control+T.
Using Control+T, or the "Tools->What Time is It?" menu item, always gave you the time and the date. Now it will do one or the other. Press it once, and you will get the time. Press it again within 10 seconds, and you'll get the date. This is a handier approach, especially when used in conjunction with Control+C and Control+V, which will copy and paste the date or time into your document.
Changed Defaults.
Scanner Threshold now defaults to Dynamic rather than to Static. Language Identification now defaults to Disabled rather than Once per Page. The default Reading and Message Voice volumes are now 80 (some voices exhibit bad behavior when driven at their maximum volume.)
Changes to the Font Properties Dialog.
In previous releases, we combined the bold and italic attributes for a font into one setting called a font style. That's unusual, and it turns out there is a good reason why it isn't done that way. It becomes difficult to, for example, remove the bold attribute of a block of selected text without affecting the italic attribute in the same block. So, we've separated it out into a Bold setting and an Italic setting. Each has two possible values usually: Enabled or Disabled. For the Font Format dialog, though, if you select text that has both states of those attributes, you can end up with a third possibility: Mixed. For consistency, the print properties dialog was changed in a similar manner - its font style setting is replaced with two settings, bold and italic.
Scanning Time Property.
You'll find a new item in the Recognition Properties dialog. It is the first control, and, like everything else there, its a read only text box. It is labeled "Scan Time", and its mnemonic is ALT+N. It contains the time, in seconds, that elapsed between the press of the scan button and the indication to K1000 that the scan was complete. Depending on the scanner, this may or may not include the time it took for the scan bar to return to its home position.
Creating a List of Misspelled Words.
If you are scanning something that contains a large number of unusual words, they are likely to show up in the ranked spelling dialog as misspellings. If you have access to an expert in the subject of the document, that person might be able to help you determine which words are misspellings, and which ones aren't. You can now use Control+C in the misspellings list to copy the list to the clipboard. After that, you'll be able to copy it to a new document that can be sent to the obliging expert.Read Number Setting effects the Message Voice. The Read Number setting, which lets you choose between whole numbers and digits, now effects the message voice as well as the reading voice.
Select Audio Device.
We have had a number of examples where people have lost the ability to use SAPI 4 voices within Kurzweil 1000, because the Audio Device ID has been changed for the speech engine. You can now use the SapiReg diagnostic to correct that problem.
posted by K1000Engineer at 12:26 PM
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