[Blindtlk] EdSharp 3.1 and FileDir 3.7 released

[Jamal Mazrui]

I am pleased to associate my open source projects with the "Raising the
Floor" initiative, located on the web at
http://RaisingTheFloor.net

This is the broadest community initiative I know on technology access
regardless of disability or economic position.  participation is a way of
enabling human potential at an international level.

The spirit is hopefully expressed in the latest improvements to EdSharp
and FileDir, which make significant improvements in international support,
help options, and 64-bit compatibility, among other areas.

Jamal
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Improvements that apply to both EdSharp and FileDir are described first,
followed by those particular to each application.

Additional help options increase ways of learning these applications
through both study and discovery.  Control+F1 is a new command that
toggles a key describer mode in which pressing a key describes its action.
Switching to another application window also turns off the mode
automatically.

In general, the wording of command names in EdSharp and FileDir has been
made more consistent, thereby aiding memorization.  As before, complete
documentation is available in your default web browser with F1, and a
summary of hot keys is available with Alt+Shift+H.  The Alternate Menu
command, Alt+F10, now shows descriptions of commands as well as their
names and hotkeys.  As before, you can filter what commands are shownin
the listbox, e.g., press Control+F for filter, type the *copy* string, and
press Enter to show only commands related to a copy operation.  Press
Control+Shift+F to clear the filter, showing all commands again.

Recent changes were made for compatibility with 64-bit Windows.  An
exception, however, is that the JAWS scripts to refine speech should be
manually installed on 64-bit Windows at present, rather than by marking
the checkbox at the end of installation.  To do this, choose the Explore
Settings option from the JAWS program group of the Windows Start Menu to
find the user script folder, and then unarchive the file called ed_scr.zip
or dir_scr.zip from the appropriate program folder, e.g.,
C:\Program Files\EdSharp\ed_scr.zip
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EdSharp 3.1
http://EmpowermentZone.com/edsetup.exe

Bugs have been fixed in the following EdSharp commands:  Right Brace
(Control+Shift+]), Next Part (Alt+PageDown), Prior Part (Alt+PageUp), and
Yield Encoding (Alt+Shift+Y).

Press Alt+Shift+F7 for a new EdSharp command that translates all or
selected text from one natural language to another via the Google API.
You pick the source and target languages.  Google limits the text to about
500 characters per translation.

EdSharp can now convert English braille files with .brl or .brf extensions
to plain text, e.g., files from BookShare or NLS.  This is done by calling
the NFBTrans utility in the background, a free braille translator and back
translator published by the National Federation of the Blind and available
on its web site
http://nfb.org

The conversion of compiled HTML format, .chm files, is also significantly
improved by incorporating a new version of the CHM2TXT utility, which is
also available separately at
http://EmpowermentZone.com/chm2txt.zip

CHM format is widely used for software documentation, and may often be
found by exploring the folder and subfolders where an application is
installed, generally
C:\Program Files\ApplicationName

Press Control+Shift+O, specify the path to a .chm file, and obtain a
result in structured text format, placed in a new document window.

Several commands that perform comparisons now can be configured to examine
text items other than lines.  Accordingly, the commands have been renamed
to include the word Items instead of lines:  List Different Items
(Alt+Shift+L), Keep Unique Items (Alt+Shift+K), Order Items (Alt+Shift+O),
Number Items (Alt+Shift+N), Query Common Items (Alt+Shift+Q), and Reverse
Items (Alt+Shift+Z).  The default delimiter between items is the \n
character, indicating a line break (ASCII 10).  This may be changed to any
string.  For example, to compare sections of a structured text file
instead, press Control+Shift+C for Configuration Options, and Alt+S for
the SectionBreak setting.  Since the text is initially selected, press
Control+C to copy it to the clipboard.  Then press Alt+L for LimitItem,
Control+V to paste, and Enter to save settings.  To try the new setting,
choose History of Changes from the Help menu (Shift+F1), which opens a
structured text file describing changes in EdSharp over time.  By default,
the sections are in chronological order, so the most recent changes appear
last.  You can reverse the order by pressing Alt+Shift+Z.

As before, output from the Say Time (Alt+Semicolon) and Insert Time
(Alt+Shift+Semicolon) commands can be adjusted  with the DateFormat and
TimeFormat configuration settings, which follow template conventions of
the .NET Framework.  The value of 0 is now also defined as a way of
telling EdSharp not to use that component in its output.  This lets you
use just the date or time if you want.

As before, the NavigatePart setting is a regular expression for moving
among routines in source code.  It is used by Alt+PageDown and Alt+PageUp
to go to the next or previous function, method, or class definition, based
on the current compiler in use.  A new command, Go to Part (Alt+Shift+G),
presents these locations in a list, giving you an overview of the code
structure and a way to pick a location.
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FileDir 3.7
http://EmpowermentZone.com/dirsetup.exe

As before, when an archive file has focus in FileDir, pressing Enter
presents a view of its items that is similar to a directory view.  You can
now choose to open the archive with another program instead by pressing
Shift+Enter.  This runs the default program associated with the file
extension in the Windows registry, e.g., WinZip or WinRar.

A new command, Alt+Shift+F4, restarts Windows after prompting for
confirmation in a standard message box.

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End of Document