Version Readme for Hal 

To view this document optimally, maximize Notepad and turn Word Wrap on.


For information on making optimal use of Hal on the Internet please read the following documents, that are located in the Hal docments sub-folder of the installation folder on your hard disk drive (by default C:\Program Files\Hal95\Docs or C:\Program Files\HalNT\Docs):-

1. Tech89_201.DOC - this document is called the "Guide To Internet Accessibility", it gives information on how to make the best use of Hal on the Internet.

2. WebAccessories.DOC - this document describes what the individual Microsoft Web Accessories are.

3. OutlookExpress5.DOC - this document gives details of how to configure and use Microsoft Outlook Express 5 for sending and receiving emails.


This document provides a list of version differences between this version and previous versions of Hal.

Version 4.50
===========
NEW: Improved compatibility with Far East operating systems, including Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

FIX: Various problems with spreadsheet detection in Windows 2000 and ME.

FIX: Minor graphics card compatibility in Windows 2000.

FIX: Some web pages that didn't previously speak, now do so.

FIX: Windows ME Help and Support system now speaks.

NEW: Navigation mode 'restrict to document window'.



Version 4.04
============

NEW: MSAA switch to get names of unknown bitmaps using Microsoft Active Accessibility.

NEW: Find mode in navigation mode. F3 to find, F4 and F2 to find next and previous.

NEW: Support for Far east versions of Windows 9X.

NEW: Chinese BIG5 Braille translation table

NEW: blank lines checkbox in prompt areas dialog, announces bitmaps with no MSAA name (equiv. to no alt-text in IE)

NEW: dotted box detector works with none-rectangular boxes.

NEW: Additional hot keys to switch application popup window or document window if the application
lacks a keyboard interface.

FIX: Some graphics objects that couldn't be trained consistently now can be.

FIX: Names of default voices are obtained in the correct language.

FIX: Current window detector gets the correct window in a few cases where it didn't used to. The only notable application affected is Microsoft Developer Studio.

FIX: The 'Verbose Line' key now works when in navigation mode.

Version 4.03
============

FIX: Settings for Navigation mode are now application dependent and saved in the atlas file instead 
of the global settings file.

FIX: The occasional crash if you repeatedly switched user interface language is fixed.

FIX: Crash on startup in NT VGA mode is fixed.

FIX: Hal no longer hangs in Delphi 4. Previously you had to turn off the layout grid
to prevent the hang. This may also fix some other 'hanging' applications.

FIX: You can export atlas files to the root directory of a disk.

FIX: Network version now detects SAM correctly (This was actually a fault in SAM).

Version 4.02
============
FIX: In Internet Explorer there are the following fixes
	Radio buttons speak.
	Labels on some controls speak.
	The Read Control key speaks the Web page, unless you are editting text.

This version of Hal NT is now compatible with Windows 2000. 

FIX: Some graphics object refused to be trained

FIX: Network version saves users settings correctly (workaround available for 4.01)

FIX: Some cosmetic mouse pointer problems when magnified have been corrected.


Version 4.01
============

NEW: Completely re-designed Control Panel to simplify the user interface.

Navigation Mode and Keyboard settings are now Application Dependent

The Access system control panel has it's own fixed settings file.

NEW: Braille navigation features:
	Line Wrap.
	Line / Layout mode toggle.
	Logical / Physical mode toggle.
	Additional options for physical compression mode.

NEW: Optional Grade 2 Braille output. 

NEW: Context sensitive On-Line help. Press F1 on a control for a popup help window or press the Help button to take you to the on-line manual.

NEW: Direct Draw in NT is now supported in the display interceptor.

Object management in 95 has been speeded up.

FIX: Some minor problems with Display driver compatibility in 95 have been corrected.

NEW: Command line argument to quit the product.

NEW: Option to tell SAM to close when the product closes.

NEW: Some sample voice text is spoken when you cursor up and down voice lists.

FIX: The Spin controls now all spin in the correct direction. Cursor up increments and Cursor Down Decrements the values.


Version 3.03
============

Corrected a detection problem with Office 95 and 97 which would cause
it to read the menu bar and tool bars when switching to the application
window. 

Corrected problem with checkboxes and radio buttons. On some machines 
these would occasionally stop talking.

Corrected problems with reading some menu bars in Windows 98. Notably the
first menu item in Notepad and WordPad would not speak.

Corrected the use of cursor keys in the control panel. Some control 
groups allowed you to cursor out of the group.

Version 3.02
============

Sometimes settings would not be saved if you made changes and exited
Windows without using or exiting the product control panel first. This 
is now fixed. Only settings which have not been 'applied' are not saved
if you exit windows with the product control panel open.

Fixed crash which could occur in Windows 95 if you close down Windows
or logged on as another user when the product control panel was open.

Fixed problems with detection of some windows in Microsoft Access.

Fixed a small memory leak in process detection.

Version 3.01
============

Various problems with graphics cards have been fixed. All PCI and AGP graphics cards tested now work properly with Hal.

FIX: After using overview mode the hotkeys which return from navigation mode did not work.

FIX: When in Navigation mode - SPACEBAR does not click on correct character in a line of text.

NEW: creen refresh key

FIX: Changed cursor position routine so that MS Sans Serif font on desktop works, but now developer studio doesn't. Dev Studio does not put the cursor in the correct place. 

FIX: Fixed bug which caused title bars of windows to change color for no apparent reason! Problem only occurred in NT and was caused by some uninitialized data.

NEW: Added 'Move mouse pointer' option to navigation mode . This can turn off the mouse pointer tracking to prevent applications from doing things in navigation mode. Speech and Braille is unaffected.

FIX: Pasting of Selected formula cells in Excel now does not mess up.

FIX: Accented characters were not always treated as letters.

FIX: Added detection to locate dashed boxes (cut/copy box in Excel). This fixes the stuttering problem in Excel when you copy a selection.

NEW: Voice and Braille settings are now saved in a file instead of the registry.

NEW: Changed how it remembers which synth was in use. It will now remember if 'no synth' is implicitly selected by the user.

FIX: Implemented a maximum limit to the size of the OSM message buffer. Previously if Hal crashed or hung, the system could crash because it would eventually use up all of kernel mode memory.

FIX: Some text was being lost due to a 8K limit on the size of a string. Removed the limit on length of text string, it now accepts up to 64K per string.

FIX: fixed several color problems - colors were being incorrectly reported as palette indexes instead of logical colors. Some objects which were previous of unknown color now are described correctly.

FIX: found some missing text from the off screen model. problem occurred when you had complex clipping regions.

FIX: Fixed crash in NT with latest S3 graphics card drivers.

FIX: Underlined text is now detected properly. Also underlined shortcuts are detected even if they are an incidental label.
	
NEW: The prompt file now loads up to 40x faster. This reduces the loading time by 10 seconds on a typical machine.

NEW: Speed adjustment hot keys.

NEW: Hotkeys now saved in files instead of in the registry.

NEW: Braille physical layout mode.

NEW: Changed hot keys to include numeric keypad, function and Jaws keys as built in defaults. 

NEW: Added Application dependent Settings files.
- New Control panel layout
- New directory file structure
- New application detection

NEW: Added ability to cope with an underline cursor.  Not yet in control panel but will be used automatically when in a "Console" window in NT.

NEW: Prompt file has been split into speech and Braille so you can have different prompts for the two systems.

NEW: The Braille in the "focus type" status cell now contains more info, for control status.

NEW: Braille layout mode.

FIX: Fixed NT compatibility with VGA mode. Now works in VGA 640x480x16 and 800x600x16 in NT4. (Including tracking of menus)

FIX: Lack of support for Right Control + Cursor keys.

FIX: Various memory leaks in the Braille system.

Version 2.50
============

NEW: Added code to display beta number from the registry information if we are a beta version.

NEW: Changed splash screen to new corporate style. Also reduced them to 16 colors for speed and simplicity.

FIX: There was a problem with some key releases not speaking properly.

FIX: if you had more that 650+ fonts in Windows 95, lots of things would go wrong. This was caused by a memory heap not being big enough.

FIX: No longer crashes if graphics database is corrupted.

FIX: NT - background text color could be incorrect. It sometimes detected as a color when in fact it was transparent.

NEW: up-down navigation mode from Braille display 

NEW: Added more class names into the detection database to improve compatibility with Windows 98

Version 2.03
============

FIX: In Office 97 Page setup property sheet margins do not speak.

NEW: "Assign Hot Keys" tab in the control panel. Redefinable hot keys

NEW: Braille display support and new Braille property page.

NEW: Redesigned control panel - various controls relocated.

NEW: Single line tab control in control panel to reduce space.

Version 2.02
============

FIX: Adjusted OSM interceptor so that text in IE4 in Windows 98 is now detected correctly. Various memory locations had changed in Windows 98.

NEW: Added more Braille translation tables.

FIX: Hal NT - If closed down then some 16-bit apps could crash.

FIX: Excel 97 spreadsheet foci not detected if cell height > about 25 pixels.

FIX: Read to cursor hot key did not speak caps or some attributes due to error in hotkey definition table.

FIX: In Excel 97 the window+document title is respoken when switching from editing a cell to not editing. 

FIX: In Excel 97 when NOT editing a cell the cell is still seen as an edit area sometimes.

FIX: Shortcut characters are not detected in NT. The underline detector has now been improved.

FIX: Tristate checkboxes. HAL does not detect the third state. The third state now says 'partially selected'. Sometimes the third state means 'disabled' but very rarely and then cannot be tabbed onto anyway.

FIX: In the Graphic Edit dialog box the state list box does not work if the state prompts are not in alphabetical order.

FIX: In Excel repeated speech when editing a cell. This was caused by some incorrect source code which was not picked up as an error by the compiler. The compiler simply skipped the offending code!

FIX: Automatic bitmap labeling will now work in Corel WordPerfect and Quattro-Pro Suite 8.

FIX: Demonstration version goes wrong if time-up occurs during bitmap labeling or navigation mode.

NEW: Created a NT demonstration version.

FIX: The tool tip detector for Automatic Bitmap labeling now does not rely on Class names. It looks for little yellow windows!

FIX: In Windows 95 some graphics in Corel Suite 8 dialog boxes are not recognized.

FIX: Display properties, Settings sheet, Resolution trackbar is not detected.

FIX: Word 6.0 "Save As" dialog, buttons Options... and Network... do not say "button"

FIX: Radio button in a menu does not say selected.

FIX: There is a slim but real possibility that two versions of HAL can be started and run consecutively - which makes the system unusable. There is now a new approved system for making an "already running" test.

FIX: Read Window key speaks more than the window.

FIX: Teach Bitmap keys do not work in Function key mode.

FIX: Hal crashes if a SAM driver does not report that it has a language parameter.

FIX: HalNT - If closed down then restarted then the Hot keys stop working properly.

Version 2.01
============

FIX: In Office97 Word the lines of text in the edit window can overlap by 1 pixel which leads to 2 lines being treated as 1 and (sometimes) in reverse order. The sorting algorithm has been changed to use object rectangles reduced in height by 1 pixel.

FIX: Office97 menus do not speak.

FIX: In Office97 Word dialogs sometimes hot number-pad keys get through to the dialog.

NEW: Shift Numpad - will speak the shortcut character (or "no shortcut")

FIX: With regards to speaking caps and attributes the same keys in Navigation and Live mode do not speak exactly the same.

NEW: Windows NT version

Version 1.04
============

Change information prior to version 1.04 is not available.


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