This chapter focuses on the common-sense ways teachers can use MegaDots to be more effective in the classroom. It also explains how to set up the preferences for a sighted braille transcriber, and to point out the significant features in MegaDots designed for the braille transcriber.
Here is a checklist of useful skills:
An Optical Character Recognition system is the hardware and software that scans printed pages, interprets them as inkprint text, and saves it in a word processing file. While no OCR system is perfect, you can save enormous amounts of time that would otherwise be spent keyboarding in text to be made into braille.
Many users are confused about how to integrate their OCR systems with MegaDots. Remember that OCR systems create files containing the words found on your inkprint pages being scanned. These files are in a format that is defined within the OCR system.
MegaDots is designed to import or read a variety of
files containing text. Often the sticking point is just knowing in which
directory the OCR system is saving the material. For example, in the
Arkenstone Open book system, files are stored in the \EXPORT
directory.
If you do not know where files are being created,
create a file in your OCR system with an unusual name, such as PINK83.
When you are finished, go to the DOS prompt and type WHERE PINK83*.*
<Enter>. The WHERE program will tell you the name of the
directory where this file is on your hard drive.
When you use MegaDots, just press F3 and then
\(directory)\PINK83*.* <Enter> to import this file.
From the Editor, Type F10 P E to get into the Editor Preferences. To learn more about the editor options, press F1 for help. To list the available choices for a particular option, press F2. Here are the most important options for transcribers in this form.
Press F10 to leave this form. Now press A to select Advanced features. Of the choices on this form, set Transcriber View to "yes". Transcriber View shows braille-like format in terms of indent, runover, and skipped lines when you look at inkprint. It also switches automatically to show braille files with WYSIWYG and to show inkprint files with show markup.
You may also want to use the Auto Save feature to protect your work. In addition, Auto Backup always keeps the last version of your file, in case you accidentally save unwanted data over useful data. Press F10 to save these choices. Now press S <Enter> to save your preferences. Press Control-E to get back into the Editor.
No computer translator is perfect. In certain situations, you will need to specify whether or not MegaDots should use a letter sign, a dot-6 capitalization sign, a contraction, or a special symbol. Use Control-R (require) when you want to force the use of one of these items. Use Control-S (suppress) when you want to avoid using one of these items.
Six key braillists may want to use the translator for a small portion of text within a braille document. While editing a document, press Control-F5, enter the inkprint text, and press return. If you are currently in braille, MegaDots turns the text into braille before inserting it. The inserted text is "still warm" -- it is highlighted in your document which allows you to easily proofread it as well as delete it, copy it into the clipboard or anything else. If you choose to keep the inserted braille, just press Control-X to turn blocking off. This is a fine way of inserting braille without have to subject your document to a round trip of translation. After you press Control-F5 you can use F2 to pull up a list of past insertions. Properly used, this feature offers a dozen tiny clipboards.
MegaDots can be frustrating to a transcriber since so much happens automatically. If you are faced with an unusual situation in which none of the translation modes or the formatting options apply, fear not. MegaDots has some fine loopholes to help you through these situations.
One of the most useful features is the Translate exact style. The Translate exact style allows you to put some braille directly in the text without concern about how it is changed by the braille translator, using any indent and runover that is needed. Type Alt-U T <Enter> to set a paragraph to Translate exact.
It is easy to control the indent, runover, and the use of blank lines. Put the cursor on the first character of the paragraph. Press space to increase the indent by one or Backspace to decrease the indent by one. Press Alt-Right or Alt-Left arrow to increase or decrease the runover by one. Press Alt-<Enter> to put a blank line before the paragraph. To delete these blank lines, press Alt-E for Cursor Go Everywhere mode, put your cursor on the blank line and press the Delete key. You can create any combination of indent, runover and blank lines you want. MegaDots shows the exact way the braille is formatted even when in print. Also, because it uses exact translation, the braille keyboard mode is automatically turned on if Perkins entry is set to Braille in the Editor preferences.
The Spacing Same style is similar to Translate Exact. You can control indent, runover, and blank lines. However, material in the Spacing same style uses the translator. Type Alt-U S <Enter> to set a paragraph to Spacing same.
The best way to learn about these two styles is to use them. See how you can control the format. See what happens when you translate these paragraphs.
There is another way to create your own format. Sometimes you have a format that you use over and over again. You may want to create your own style, or change an existing one. Read Supplement 4 to learn about using the Style Sheet Editor.
To scan a document to see if the styles are applied correctly, type Control-J G. This shows the beginning of each paragraph with the style name. Move your cursor up or down the list. You can set the style or hierarchy for each paragraph while in the list. As a shortcut, press Tab to assign the style from the previous paragraph. The style is set, and the cursor moves to the next paragraph in the list. This can really speed up the time it takes to apply styles to an imported document.
The command Control-F7 produces an inkprint display of your document called marked print. It shows the MegaDots formatting commands. You can use this to check the formatting with your inkprint original.
To quickly proofread the braille format, press Control-Z D D to go into Small Dots. This allows you to proofread an entire page of braille at a time. Press Control-PageDown each time you want to proofread another page.
To proofread the actual braille dots, use Big Dots with the Proofreading line on. Press Control-Z P to toggle on the Proofreading line. A green highlight bar makes the current line of braille stand out from the others.
Sometimes transcribers are nervous about the MegaDots braille translator. They are concerned that despite our claims, their text could be damaged by a round trip translation from inkprint into braille and back to inkprint again. If you type Alt-F5 from the MegaDots Editor, the cursor moves to any location where there may be a problem with the MegaDots translator (i.e. any place where a round trip translation would not reconstruct the file).
Please avail yourself of the useful security features
found in the Advanced Features of the Preferences Menu. If you set Auto
save for 10 minutes, then MegaDots creates a save file for you every 10
minutes. These files have a file extension of .SAV. This way
you lose at most ten minutes work in the event of a system failure. The
Auto backup protects you in case you save unwanted data on top of useful
data. These files have a file extension of .BAK.
Over the last few years, there have been a number of
stubborn bugs in MegaDots that we have not been able to eliminate.
However, certain changes to the MegaDots file avoids these pitfalls. We
have supplied a rules file fixit.mdr which deals some with
these issues. Go to the top of your file in inkprint, with the "show
markup" display. Type Alt-F9, and then FIXIT <Enter>. To find out
what FIXIT does, you can load the file into MegaDots to read the internal
documentation.
MegaDots has a training mode to teach transcribers
about braille. In training mode, you are limited to Big dots screen mode
and braille keyboard. You are not allowed to translate your text (you are
allowed to translate a totally empty file). The idea behind training mode
is that some groups want a transcriber to prove they know how to produce
braille manually before they are allowed to use a translator. To switch on
training mode, add the environment variable SCREENPRO to your system. This
might be done by adding the line SET SCREENPRO=1 to a
launching batch file.
MegaDots can directly read a number of special file formats which are used in the blind and transcriber communities. MegaDots directly reads TranscriBEX, BEX, and Hot Dots files as well as braille ready files from PokaDot, Microbraille and other applications.
When MegaDots imports a TranscriBEX or an ICADD file, it does a good job of formatting. This is because MegaDots correctly captures the various formatting commands, and these commands are similar to the MegaDots formatting structure.
When MegaDots imports a BEX or Hot Dots file, it does not do as good a job. This is because their formatting commands do not mesh well with MegaDots formatting. You will probably want to examine the imported file to make sure that the format is correct.
Braille ready files are another special case. These
include files from PokaDot, Microbraille, and similar applications. A
braille ready file is already formatted for one particular carriage width
and form length. In contrast, a MegaDots file can be expressed in a wide
variety
If you want to import a braille ready file with
exactly the same format, by using the -spc -? at the command
line. For file format, choose "Retain blank lines". Also set the style
sheet to NONUMS to surpress page numbering. If you do this, the file can
be brailled, but it cannot be edited without messing up the format. Any
editing throws off all page numbers after that point. MicroBraille files
need to be converted into standard braille ready files before they can be
imported as "Retain blank lines". See microcon in the F12 Reference
Manual.
If you do not use "Retain blank lines", MegaDots needs to decide where the hard returns are, and what style to make each paragraph. It is almost inevitable that there be some errors in importing braille ready files. Check these files carefully.
A braille ready file contains the exact characters,
line for line, which need to be sent to your embosser to make hardcopy
braille. When you send a braille ready file to your embosser with the DOS
copy or print command, you get well-formatted braille. In Duxbury, this is
a .BRF file.
To generate a braille ready file from MegaDots, switch
to braille with F5, if necessary. Now press F7 to Emboss a document,
followed by PageDown to move to the last field, Name of port/file. Just
type in a drive letter followed by a colon. Now press F10 to initiate the
creation of the file. This creates a file of the current name, with a file
extension of .BRF.
To examine braille ready files, use the VIEW program
included with MegaDots. To use this program, type VIEW [filename]
<Enter> from the DOS command line. See Chapter 19 for more
information.
To emboss a braille ready file, use Embossit 2.0, which is included with MegaDots 2.3. This is available from the Duxbury Program group from the Start Menu.