I'm having trouble with notepad and JAWS.

Category: Geeks r Us

Post 1 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 15:27:56

Hi all. I was wondering if any of you can help me with something. Everytime I have something written in notepad, my JAWS doesn't want to read the whole thing. It just reads the first part of each sentence, then goes on to the next. I've tried maximizing notepad, but that doesn't make a difference. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Post 2 by Harp (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 15:46:54

Hello Gemini,




I suspect that you don't have word wrap enabled and that's what's causing your problems. That's easily solved though, once you've opened Note Pad, do "Alt + O" which will take you into the Format menu, and word wrap will be the very first thing jaws reads to you. Just enter on that and your trouble should be no more.




Hope that helps. Dan.

Post 3 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 15:55:09

Thank you. I'll try it.

Post 4 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 16:07:05

Okay, I checked, and I do have word wrap enabled. It's weird because I just tried to read something in notepad, and it worked just fine. I guess it's only wanting to do this weird thing that it's doing, every once in a while. Anyway, like I said, word wrap is enabled, so... What else can I try?

Post 5 by Harp (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 16:52:16

Hmm, that's strange. the only thing I can suggest is checking that it is still enabled the next time you suffer with the problem. Sorry I can't be of more assistance than that.

Post 6 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Wednesday, 10-May-2006 16:54:02

That's okay. Thanks for trying at least.

Post 7 by Leafs Fan (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 11-May-2006 9:18:38

Hey there. What version of JAWS do you have? I know there are some issues with Notepad in JAWS 7.0. If that's not your version, I don't know what to tell you.

Post 8 by rat (star trek rules!) on Thursday, 11-May-2006 10:23:04

i've never seen a problem with notepad, and i have 7.0 and 7.1 of jaws

Post 9 by Leafs Fan (I'll have the last word, thank you!) on Thursday, 11-May-2006 11:16:59

FS has recognized bugs in JAWS version 7.0, which have been corrected in 7.1. You don't always see them in 7.0 though. I saw them on only one or two occasions overall.

Post 10 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Thursday, 11-May-2006 12:05:50

Right now, I'm still running 6.2. I didnt' put 7.0 on my computer yet, and since 7.1 is available now, I'm just gonna go ahead and put that on here. But, for the time being, I'm running 6.2.

Post 11 by mysticrain (Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.) on Thursday, 11-May-2006 18:13:28

hey. Like others have said, when you have the problem, make sure word wrap is enabled. Also, I don't know why this makes a difference, but it did for me, when you have that problem, along with checking your word wrap, make sure the window is maximized by pressing alt space and the pressing enter on maximize. Hope these suggestions help.

Post 12 by sparkie (the hilljack) on Friday, 12-May-2006 20:47:44

I have also found that if you play with the cursor blink rate under control pannel and accessibility options this can also cause jaws reading weird.
Troy

Post 13 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Sunday, 21-May-2006 1:51:26

I'm having the same problem, and it came on suddenly like a nasty outbreak of hurpies. I tried maximizing the window with no success, and window eyes behaves the same way. This is really strange. I'm beginnning to wonder if it has something to do with windows update?

Post 14 by blbobby (Ooo you're gona like this!) on Sunday, 21-May-2006 2:53:48

My computer is up-to-date according to microsoft, and, though I don't use notepad much, I was in it today without problems.

I was wondering if either Gemini or Kc8pnl are running any screen enlargement programs? This can sometimes cause screen-reading problems.

I notice that one of you uses JAWS and the other uses WINDOW-EYES, so that kind of rules the screen-readers out as the evil-doers.

Bob

Post 15 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Sunday, 21-May-2006 16:53:10

Nope, I don't have a screen enlargement program. I'm not using anything on my computer, other than JAWS.

Post 16 by blbobby (Ooo you're gona like this!) on Sunday, 21-May-2006 20:08:36

hmmmm, and you have word wrap turned on?

Could you type the alphabet three times on one line and see where it stops reading?

What about if you tried reading the line with the jaws cursor, does it work better, worse or the same.

Frankly, I'm kind of baffled.

Bob

Post 17 by rat (star trek rules!) on Sunday, 21-May-2006 20:10:58

there might be something running in the background like a virus scanner or something similar that could cause these problems. have you checked out what programs are running in the background?

Post 18 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Monday, 22-May-2006 14:05:12

Hmmmm, well, I'll try the alphabet test. It's weird because it'll only do this every once in a while. It's not everytime I go to read something. And, as far as checking for programs running in the background, I guess I've never really done that. I mean, when I try to read something, I usually close all other windows, so that notepad is the only one open.

Post 19 by blbobby (Ooo you're gona like this!) on Monday, 22-May-2006 18:47:19

What version of jaws and windows are you running, Gemini?

If you are running windows/xp you can press alt+ctrl+delete to see what all is running on your computer. Press alt+f4 to quit.

Any other operating system, don't do this because jaws won't read the dialog.

Post 20 by Musical Ambition (I've got the gold prolific poster award, now is there a gold cup for me?) on Tuesday, 23-May-2006 12:18:51

I have Windows XP, and currently, I'm running JAWS 6.2. I have 7, but I haven't put it on the computer yet. I'll probably just go ahead and skip over 7 and just download the 7.1, or whatever it is they have now.

Post 21 by blbobby (Ooo you're gona like this!) on Tuesday, 23-May-2006 19:41:08

Yeah, I've heard that they had some problems with 7.0.

Post 22 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 24-May-2006 2:34:29

I have the problem with both jaws and window eyes. I'll have to try with version 6.2, but 7.0 of jaws and 5.5 of window eyes both behave this way. The jaws cursor reads the text the same way, so I really don't know either. I tried doing this with only jaws or window eyes and notepad, so it's nothing running in the background. MS word is starting to look nicer for reading files now. U know that times are sad when that's the case.

Post 23 by season (the invisible soul) on Wednesday, 24-May-2006 6:27:08

i don't have problem with notepack though but however, i do have the similar problem with ms word and jaws 7. just like what its happen, always just reading the first half of the sentence or part of the document. and it got stuck on it. i try to select all and its fine but i can't read the whole document. anyone know how to solve that? thanks

Post 24 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 24-May-2006 10:56:54

There are 2 things you can do to fix the problem in ms word. First, press alt v to bring up the biew menu, amd make sure normal is checked. Typically, the print view is checked, so you will have to change this often. Also, continuing in the view tab, arrow down to zoom. Press enter and arrow down until it is set to 75%, then press enter. If your version of ms word has an edit spin box instead of the different choices, just type 75 in to that box. I hope this helps.

Post 25 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 24-May-2006 18:08:55

Also, I tried the alphabet thing, and it cuts of zw and x on the 4th complete write of the alphabet with a space between each letter. I don't know how that helps, but there ya go.

Post 26 by mysticrain (Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.) on Saturday, 27-May-2006 23:37:28

also, if you have a program like... oh hell, I can't think of the name, spyware or whatever, that'll pop up a small window in the lower right hand side of the screen, and jaws doesn't tell you, but it won't read all the way across because of that small window.

Post 27 by blbobby (Ooo you're gona like this!) on Sunday, 28-May-2006 0:59:50

On the alphabet thing, if I understand you right kc8pnl it started misbehaving at about the 104th character. So it went a lot further than I thought it would.

mysticrain, you're right, a balloon, or some other unknown window could cause this problem, and there's no way that I know of to get jaws or window-eyes to read these damned things.

However, the problem could also be caused by a strange font or strange colors for the background.

So many possibilities, and so few answers.

Perhaps it's time to call freedom or gwmicro and see what they have to say. I did a search in the jaws support page and came up virtually empty.

Thanks,
Bob

Post 28 by mysticrain (Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature.) on Sunday, 28-May-2006 3:47:49

Well, I have a little vision, enough to see that the window popped up. So then I just routed jaws cursor to pc cursor, and the read all the way down and over to the right. If you fiddle with it for a few minutes, you can get it read. And then you just left mouse click on the correct option given, and the window will go away.