My appologies for the formatting, I’m struggling with this editor to make a bulleted list without it continuing to advance the indentation level. Each time I press enter it indents instead of just adding a bullet. Weird!
In Microsoft Word, one can turn on paragraph marks so it’s clear where new paragraphs begin.
When pressing Enter in KeyWord, a new paragraph begins but it’s not indented in Braille, so it’s unclear where a new paragraph starts.
It can be difficult to locate the cursor in KeyWord or KeyBrf. Due to having ten lines, they all must be explored to locate it if one has lost their place, say while reviewing the document.
This could be made much easier if two possibilities were implemented.
First, being able to toggle on a blinking cursor would help. The other Humanware Braille devices have this under Settings but I could not find it.
Or what I’d like is more scrolling commands. The Enter with F scrolls lists and it also can put the focused line at the top of the display but only sometimes. But what we need is a command to leave the cursor or focus in place and move the display so the currently focused place starts at the top, middle or bottom line of the Braille display.
Keyword has file functions, editing functions and formatting functions. It should also have navigation functions on the menu. Nobody should have to remember any command at all–everything should be on a menu. And this way more commands could be added. For example
- Move cursor to beginning of document
- Move Braille display to top of document (leave cursorwhere it is)
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- Move cursor to bottom of document.
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- Move Braille display to bottom of document (leave cursor where it is)
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- Move cursor to next/previous paragraph.
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- Scroll Braille with focused line at top of display.
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- Scroll braille with focused line at bottom of the display.
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- Hide all columns in a table except the focused column.
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In KeyWord and KeyBrf, some commands are on the H-chord and some on the M-Chord. Why not put them all on one menu and keep it simple?
Keyword can emboss, but it cannot save the result to a BRF, should someone want to emboss it on a device that’s not connected to the local network.
KeyBrf has only find, no find and replace. It seems like a replace would be useful for personal notes, Braille music or if working with multiple languages in the same document. For example someone taking notes might write an abreviation like mac for macroeconomics and mic for microeconomics and need to return to make replacements so it makes more sense.
KeyBrf also needs more delete commands such as a delete line and a forward, delete the currently focused character delete.
KeyBrf needs a way to output a BRF with a varying line length, so a 32-character line could emboss on a 40-character embosser, or index cards could be easily created and edited on the Monarch, then later embossed.
There’s no way to enter a page break in KeyBrf.
As I extensively try to use both applications I am running across the above limitations.
In particular, I think being to scroll the display without moving the focus will give another dimension to multi-line Braille. This is similar to the linking and unlinking of Braille that one sees using a screen reader.