Using Wizards from the Edit Menu

The NimPro Wizards are designed to perform large scale, repetitive operations across a user selected section of text.

One of the main reasons NimPro provides wizards is that many layouts that require specific treatment in braille are all identified by the same list style in NIMAS files, which can be confusing and potentially frustrating.

Duxbury Systems has identified the following structures in textbooks that are all labeled as "lists" in NIMAS files:

Tables of Contents
Exercises
Glossaries
Indexes
General Lists in the document

Editing these list types individually in numerous files can be very time consuming. NimPro provides a solution. With the NimPro Table of Contents Wizard, for example, you can create a proper braille table of contents rapidly. Simply select the pages that contain the table of contents, and then run the Table of Contents Wizard to change the plain List styles on those pages into table of contents entries.

Auto-numbering is a feature that often appears in NIMAS files but one that is frequently mishandled. Any list tag with the "ol" attribute indicates the list is automatically numbered. Yet many lists with the "ol" attribute already have their items numbered in plain text. The NimPro solution is twofold. (1) The wizards lets you remove duplicate auto-numbering, and (2) files exported from NimPro convert auto-numbering into plain text. The bottom line is that if you see duplicate numbering in a list in NimPro, you can use a wizard to get rid of it.

NIMAS documents often employ emphasis (italics or bold text) in places where it would be inappropriate in braille. For example, if all the headings in a table of contents use the same emphasis in inkprint, in braille that emphasis is considered unnecessary and removed. As a general rule, if a structure is uniformly emphasized in inkprint, and that structure is already identified by the page formatting in braille, then using emphasis for that structure is redundant. Further details, of course, must come from experts in braille transcription.

Here is a list of the wizards available in NimPro.

Table of Contents Wizard

The Table of Contents Wizard changes generic List styles into Table of Content (TOC) styles. Its main functions, as individually selected by the user, are

to change a left justified heading to a centered heading,
to identify the list items as TOC entries, which allows DBT to automatically generate guide dots for them, and
to add an identifying attribute to the table of contents heading so that hints for better braille output can be inserted into files exported to DBT or MegaDots.

In the most common case, the user would do all three of these functions.

Here are the steps:

Set your document to View by Page.
Examine your book and find the contiguous pages that comprise the table of contents
Click on the first page number in the left page number column. Hold down the shift key, and click on the last page number to highlight the entire range of pages.
Alternatively, set your document to View by Section, and select just the section that contains your table of contents.
From the Edit Menu, select Table of Contents Wizard, choose your desired options, and click OK.

Along with its main functions, the Table of Contents Wizard provides options to deal automatically with auto-numbering problems and inappropriate emphasis. This wizard may also be applied on Tables of Figures, etc. as well.

Exercise Wizard

The Exercise Wizard changes generic List styles into Exercise styles, and it offers the standard options to deal with auto-numbering issues and inappropriate emphasis.

When using this wizard, select your text area carefully. Before you use the Wizard, you need to identify which pages of your document are exercises. Highlight those pages (or document sub-section) on NimPro's left column, then start the Exercise Wizard. If there are exercises at the end of each chapter of the document, then you need to use the Exercise Wizard once per chapter.

Index Wizard

The Index Wizard changes List styles into Index styles. It offers the standard options to deal with auto-numbering problems and inappropriate emphasis.

Before you use the Index Wizard, you need to identify which sub-section or pages of your document hold the index. Highlight that section or those pages on NimPro's left column, then start the Index Wizard.

Glossary Wizard

The Glossary Wizard changes other heading styles into Glossary headings, and it offers options to correct inappropriate uses of emphasis.

Before you use the Glossary Wizard, you need to identify which section or pages of your document contain the glossary. Highlight just that section or those pages on NimPro's left column, then start the Glossary Wizard.

List Wizard

The List Wizard does not change styles. Its main purpose is to deal with auto-numbering and inappropriate emphasis in List styles that you want to keep as Lists.

Before you use the List Wizard, you need to identify which section or pages of your document you want to affect. Highlight that section or those pages on NimPro's left column, then start the List Wizard.

Heading Wizard

Braille typically uses fewer levels of headings than inkprint. The Heading Wizard lets you change the level of headings in a systematic way. When opened, it displays the number of headings at each level in the document section (or pages) that you currently have selected. To get your intended effect it is necessary to plan out your changes before executing them, and this can be easier to predict by doing a section of the document at a time.

Picture Wizard

The Picture Wizard lets you change how images are handled in a systematic way. You can hide images, or change how captions and transcriber notes are handled.