                    SECTION II: WORKING WITH YOUR FILES

                               INTRODUCTION

Before we can begin reading or writing anything in a file on the Braille 'n
Speak, we need to talk about braille translation and ASCII.

The Braille 'n Speak has a built-in braille translator for Grade 2 and Grade 1
braille.  You may have heard the term "ASCII" (pronounced askee) from computer
users.  ASCII - American Standard Code for Information Interchange - is a code
used by most computers today that are accessible to blind users.  You need to
become familiar with some of this code in order to respond to prompts in the
Braille 'n Speak.

But wait! Don't panic.  Basically, the ASCII character set consists largely of
all the letters, numbers, and punctuation marks you already know.  You'll
probably not need to learn the rest of the ASCII character set, unless you're
into writing Greek letters and other unusual symbols.

The braille equivalent of ASCII (known as computer braille code) consists of
the braille alphabet you already know plus some twists for punctuation and
numbers.  It's important that you be able to write punctuation marks in
computer braille because they differ from those you know in Grade 1 or Grade 2
braille.  In addition, the digits 0 through 9 are written in the four lower
dots of the braille cell.  1 is a "dropped A", 2 a "dropped B", etc.  You
don't need to precede any of these "dropped" numbers by a number sign. 
Punctuation marks differ from those used in literary braille, but they are
easy to learn.  (See Appendix D at the back of this manual for a complete list
of computer braille equivalents to the braille ASCII character set.)

For the most part, you write in Grade 2 braille and the Braille 'n Speak
translates automatically to speak back what you brailled.  However, you must
be in the appropriate braille translation mode for you to hear words spoken
correctly, instead of gibberish.

The Braille 'n Speak comes from the factory with braille translation set to
"off", except for the "calendar.brl" file, where braille translation is set to
"on".  If braille translation is set to "on", the Braille 'n Speak assumes
that the contents of the currently open file is Grade 2 braille and it
translates accordingly.

For now, just remember that the Help file we're using for practice, included
in your Braille 'n Speak from the factory, is a file that has braille
translation set to "off".  After we discuss how to read what's in a file,
we'll come back to this issue of braille translation to show you how to switch
between modes.

Now let's find out how to read what's in your Braille 'n Speak.                       CHAPTER 3: READING YOUR FILES

You have control over how much of the text in a file the Braille 'n Speak
reads to you at any one time.  You can command the Braille 'n Speak to read by
paragraphs, by sentences, line by line, word by word, even character by
character.  Or, if you prefer, you can command it to read the entire contents
of a file without stopping.

The Braille 'n Speak can spell a word for you.  You can specify how much
punctuation you want announced as you read.  It can even read you the
translation of the Grade 2 braille contractions - for example, "in" for the
Grade 2 contraction represented by dots 3-5.

3.1 The Cursor

If you've ever worked with a Perkins brailler or a slate and stylus, you are
familiar with the concept of a cursor, although you may not have ever called
it that.  In computer jargon, the "cursor", used for reading and writing,
refers to the electronic equivalent of your stylus or the brailler's punching
mechanism.  
The cursor is very important because it marks the place where this electronic
"stylus" is resting.  You can't feel it anywhere on the Braille 'n Speak, but
you can move it via commands and you can find out where it is in your file and
even what character is "under" it.

When we talk about moving through a file to read by sentence, paragraph or
whatever, it means that we're moving the cursor to a particular place in that
file and commanding the Braille 'n Speak to read from that location. 
Naturally, you can move the cursor forward and backward through a file.

* 3.2 Navigating through a File

Moving through your files on the Braille 'n Speak is much faster than turning
braille pages.  You can move instantly to the top or bottom (beginning or end)
of your file, search for a particular word or move by a specific number of
lines, characters or words.

When we talk about "moving", we mean just that - moving the cursor from one
location to another.  It's like lifting a pencil off of one place on a piece
of paper and then placing it somewhere else - perhaps on the same page,
perhaps on another.

Let's practice moving around the Help file that is open automatically the
first time you turn on your Braille 'n Speak.  To move to the top or beginning
of the file, press an l-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top of file".  To
move to the bottom or end of the file, press a dots 4-5-6-chord.  The Braille
'n Speak says, "End of file".  Once again, notice that it does not read any
text, simply tells you where your cursor is in the file.  Knowing where your
cursor is in a file becomes crucial, as you'll see, in writing.

The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you left off in each file, even after you
turn it off and turn it on again.  Whenever you reopen a file, your cursor
will be wherever you last used it in that file.

* 3.2.1 Moving by Blocks of Text

Now suppose you know to what particular line, character, word, braille page or
even print page you want to move in your file.  Earlier revisions of the
Braille 'n Speak only let you move a specified number of lines backward or
forward in your document but now there's much more flexibility.

When you press the number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-6-chord), the Braille 'n
Speak says, "Move" and places you in a menu with several options.  Press a c-
chord to hear the first option, "braille page".  Pressing the spacebar takes
you through the rest of the choices: character, line, mark, print page, and
word.  You can jump quickly to a choice simply by writing its first letter -
for instance, w for Word or l for Line.  Then write the number you want, using
dropped numbers as always when responding to a Braille 'n Speak command, and
finally press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Please wait" and moves
you to the place you specified, and reads to the end of that line.

It's important to note that if you ask the Braille 'n Speak to move to, say,
line 5, you'll be on line 5 of your file, not five lines from your starting
point.  Likewise, if you command it to take you to print page 6 with number-
sign-chord, p6, e-chord, the Braille 'n Speak will take you to print page 6 of
your document, not six print pages from your starting point.

* 3.2.2 Moving by Relative Blocks of Text

On the other hand, if you do want to move by a certain amount relative to
where you are, there is a way to do this with the number-sign-chord command as
well.  Press the number-sign-chord (dots 3-4-5-6-chord).  But this time write
l+3 (remembering to use the computer braille dots 3-4-6 for the plus sign and
a dropped number 3).  Then press an e-chord.  Now the Braille 'n Speak will
move you three lines forward from your starting location and speak till the
end of the line.

But remember, if you press number-sign-chord and simply write a number (like
10, for example) without indicating the letter designation of one of the
choices, and without a plus or a minus, the Braille 'n Speak assumes you want
to move by lines and places you on line 10 of your file.

Let's take a couple of examples using the currently open Help file.  Get to
the top of the file with an l-chord so we're all starting from the same place. 
Now let's tell the Braille 'n Speak to move us to the tenth line of this file. 
Press number-sign-chord, l10, e-chord.  You should hear, "Please wait"
followed by a click or two, and then "Carriage return: 4-6-chord, (new line
command".

Now suppose we want to jump directly to print page 3 of this file.  Press
number-sign-chord, p3, e-chord.  You should hear, "Please wait", followed
shortly by, "chord".  It just so happens that the first line of print page 3
only contains the word "chord" and the Braille 'n Speak read you just till the
end of that line.

Well, now that we're on print page 3, we just want to go back about four
lines, say, and so we can press number-sign-chord, l-4, e-chord.  We'll hear,
"Please wait" followed shortly by "Protect all macros: n-chord, p-chord".

Just for clarity, let's take one more example.  Press a number-sign-chord, 3,
e-chord.  This time you'll hear, "Please wait", a click or two, and then,
"Writing Functions".  Why?  Well, remember that when you just respond to the
"Move" command with a number, the Braille 'n Speak takes you to that line
relative to the beginning of the document.  If you want to go back or forward
a number of chunks of text from your starting point, you must include a plus
or a minus after the letter designation, and then the number of chunks you
want to move.

* 3.2.3 The Text Counter

One very handy new feature related to the number-sign-chord command is that it
lets you find out how many characters, lines, and words you have in your file. 
This is great when your professor asked for a term paper of no more than, say,
500 words.

Using our Help file again as an example, press the number-sign-chord and this
time write a w followed by a 0.  The Braille 'n Speak should say something
like, "Please wait" and after a few clicks, "3889".  If this were our school
assignment, we'd have to do some serious editing to get down to that 500-word
limit.  But luckily, this is the Braille 'n Speak's Help file and actually
it's a very useful file to have around, even if it has a lot of words in it.


All right, enough with the suspense.  Let's look in detail at how to read
what's in the Help file.

3.3 Reading Blocks of Text

The commands for reading on the Braille 'n Speak are very easy to remember
because they revolve around the position of the spacebar on the physical unit.

To read the line, word or character where your cursor is currently resting,
press a c-chord for current line, press a dots 2-5-chord for current word and
press a dots 3-6-chord for current character.  To move the cursor and read
forward or backward by a line, word or character, press a dot 4-chord for next
line and a dot 1-chord for previous line, press a dot 5-chord for next word
and a dot 2-chord for previous word, and press a dot 6-chord for next
character and a dot 3-chord for previous character.

Notice how moving the cursor forward involves chords with the keys to the
right of the spacebar and moving the cursor backward involves chords with the
keys to the left of the spacebar.  Another way to think of it is to say that
chords involving dots closest to the spacebar are for lines, chords using the
middle dots are for words and chords using the dots furthest from the spacebar
are for single characters.

If you want to move to the next or previous paragraph from where you are in
your file, press a dots 5-6-chord for the next paragraph and a dots 2-3-chord
for the previous one.  The Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to the next or
previous paragraph and reads you the first line of that paragraph.  Again,
notice that forward cursor movement involves a chord to the right of the
spacebar and backward cursor movement involves a chord to the left of the
spacebar.

If you want the Braille 'n Speak to read you the entire contents of a file, or
if you want to read from where you are in the file all the way to the end of
the file, press an er-sign-chord (dots 1-2-4-5-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak
starts reading from your current cursor location, whether at the beginning of
the file or not, and continues nonstop to the end of the file.  Pressing a z-
chord automatically halts the voice.

If you're reading nonstop through a file and decide you want to stop at some
particular point, pressing an e-chord shuts up the voice, and pressing a dots
2-5-chord stops the voice and reads you the word where the cursor is now
resting.  While you can't control the exact word on which the voice stops, you
can control how close it stops to the word where the cursor is resting.  The
Status menu setting, Speak Words in Say-All mode, can make a difference.

If the setting is turned off, speech is fairly smooth.  Pressing an e-chord to
halt speech places you at the beginning of a line of text, not necessarily
anywhere near the last word you heard.  If the setting is turned on, speech is
somewhat choppy, but pressing an e-chord to halt speech places you pretty
close to the last word you heard (if not right on it), depending on how fast a
speech rate you have set.  The faster your speech rate is set, the harder it
is to halt it just exactly where you want.  But you can get quite close.

Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord).  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Status menu" followed by the setting you last selected.  Jump to
the Speak Words in Say-All Mode setting by writing a right parenthesis (dots
2-3-4-5-6) in computer braille code.  From the factory, this parameter is set
to "off".  Write a letter y to turn it on and exit the Status menu with an e-
chord.  Then go ahead and read from wherever you are in the currently open
file with an er-sign-chord.  Notice that the speech is somewhat jerky as you
listen.  Now press a dots 2-5-chord to stop the voice and check where it
stopped.  It should be either right on or very close to the last word you
heard.  You can turn the feature  off again to regain a smoother speech
quality by re-entering the Status menu and writing a letter n in response to
the prompt for Speak Words in Say-All mode.  Then exit with an e-chord.

3.3.1 Defining Blocks of Text

This is a good a time as any to talk about the Braille 'n Speak's definition
of "line" and "sentence".

The Braille 'n Speak defines a "line" and "paragraph" based on the location of
carriage returns or carriage return/linefeed pairs.  (On a physical piece of
paper, a carriage return moves you to the beginning of a line and a linefeed
moves you down a line.  You don't need linefeeds in a Braille 'n Speak
document.  You'll see why later.)

The Braille 'n Speak sees all text between one carriage return and the next as
a single "line" of text.  It defines a "paragraph" to be all text between a
set of two or more carriage returns and the next.  It considers a "sentence"
to be all text between one period, question mark, or exclamation point and the
next instance of one of these punctuation marks.

By the way, the Braille 'n Speak may issue a "plink" sound when you run across
a set of two or more carriage returns.  If you don't want to hear this, from
anywhere in your currently open file, press an and-sign-chord (dots 1-2-3-4-6-
chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Skip blank lines, enter y or n".  Write a
letter y.  From now on, you won't hear any distinguishing sound to tell you
that you've passed over extra carriage returns.  (You can also change this
setting from within the Status menu with the same and-sign command.  See
Appendix B.)

In addition to reading by lines or sentences, you can read by blocks of text
from 20 to 80 characters in length, referred to as "windows".  (This is most
useful when interacting with a computer or modem.  See Chapter 15.)

You can choose among these three reading modes: windows, lines, or sentences. 
To switch among modes, press a w-chord from anywhere in your currently open
file.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Speak windows, lines, or sentences". 
Whichever option you choose, a w, l or s, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay". 
From then on, it will read you text in the mode you selected.

Notice that you don't have to enter an e-chord to execute the command to
switch among reading modes.  This is one case where you don't need it.  The
Braille 'n Speak simply places you in your selected mode when you respond to
the prompt.

You can cycle among the three modes in a flash as you read.  And the Braille
'n Speak even remembers the mode you selected last the next time you turn it
on.

As with reading lines, you move forward or backward a window or sentence at a
time by pressing a dot 4-chord to move forward and a dot 1-chord to move
backward.  And of course, to read the current window or sentence, simply press
a c-chord.

Note: If you select the window option, you must also select the length of the
window, preset to 80 from the factory.  You can see its current setting by
entering the Status menu with an st-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Status menu" and something like, "Interactive on".  (Don't worry about that
prompt right now.  Just remember that whenever you enter the Status menu,
besides the prompt confirming that you've entered it, you hear a prompt for
the status of whatever setting you last checked.) For now just write a w to
hear "window length 80".  You may change the setting at this time to any
number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak confirms
your change by repeating it to you.  Press another e-chord to exit the Status
menu.

Or, you can simply change the window length parameter from the Parameters menu
by pressing a p-chord.  At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write a w to hear
"window length 80".  The number depends on how the parameter was set last. 
Change it to a number between 20 and 80 and press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Okay" to confirm.

Now let's turn to another reading capability of the Braille 'n Speak.

* 3.3.2 Having the Voice Spell Out Words

What if you need a word spelled?  Move your cursor to the word by pressing dot
2-chords (to go backward) or dot 5-chords (to go forward) until the cursor is
resting on the word you want spelled.  Press the chord for current word (dots
2-5-chord) twice to have the word spelled.  In fact, you can continue having
every word spelled as you move back and forth with dot 2-chords and dot
5-chords.  Exit this "spelling" mode with any other chord.

What if you need to identify a letter or braille character that is unclear? 
Letters like B, D, G, P, T, V and Z may sound alike when pronounced by a
speech synthesizer.  Press a dots 3-6-chord, the command to read the current
character, twice to hear a clarification of the letter.  The Braille 'n Speak
first pronounces the letter and then gives you a word that starts with that
letter for clarity.

* So, for example, say you're on the letter c.  Press dots 3-6-chord twice. 
The first time you hear, "c".  The second time you hear, "Charlie".  Pressing
dot 3- or dot 6-chords now speaks each letter as a clarifying word, like
"bravo" for b or "delta" for d.  Exit this mode with any chord other than
another dots 3-6-chord.

* 3.3.3 What's the ASCII Value of the Character Under the Cursor

In earlier versions of the Braille 'n Speak, three presses of dots 3-6-chord
announced the ASCII value of the character under the cursor.  But if you're
not a techie, this can be confusing.  So now the announcement of ASCII values
is optional.  The default value of this setting is "off" since most people
couldn't care less that the capital A under the cursor is ASCII value 65 or
whatever.

For those of you who do care about such things, we have a setting you can turn
on from the Status menu.  Here's how it works.

To check the current status of the "Say ASCII values" setting, enter the
Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord) and jump directly to the
setting by pressing a dots 3-6-chord.  You should hear, "Say ASCII values,
off".  Turn the setting on by writing a y and exit the Status menu with an e-
chord.  From now on, when you press dots 3-6-chord three times in a row, the
Braille 'n Speak says the ASCII value of the character under the cursor - for
example, 65 for the uppercase letter A or 97 for the lowercase letter a.

Again, ASCII values are most meaningful to programmers, so don't worry if you
don't understand the term or the two examples we provide.  If you're
interested though, a complete listing of ASCII values is in Appendix D, along
with the computer braille code.

Once you've turned "Say ASCII values" mode on from the Status menu, press dots
3-6-chord three times to enter ASCII values mode and go along pressing dot 3-
and dot 6-chords to continue to hear each character's ASCII value.  Exit the
mode by pressing some other chord.

When you no longer desire to have it active, turn off the "Say ASCII values"
setting in the Status menu and return to friendlier-sounding, regular letters,
punctuation, and such.  In other words, when "Say ASCII values" is turned off,
pressing dots 3-6-chord twice reads you each letter phonetically but a third
press of dots 3-6-chord simply returns you to hearing letters and characters
again and not their ASCII values.

Are you confused yet?  Hope not.


Let's move on now to playing around with the reading commands we've explored
thus far.  Take a few moments to try out reading, using the currently open
Help file.

3.4 Some Tips on Reading

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you read your files.  Depending on
certain settings, your reading can be a breeze or a challenge.  So read on. 

3.4.1 The Automatic Braille Translator 

Remember that we said we'd come back to the issue of braille translation? 
Let's see what happens if braille translation is set incorrectly in a file.

Get to the top of the Help file with an l-chord.  Now press a c-chord to read
the current line.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille 'n Speak 2000 Help
File".  Now let's play a trick on the Braille 'n Speak.  Enter the Parameters
menu by pressing a p-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". 
Write the letter t (for translation).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille
translator; enter y or n?"  Write a y to turn on braille translation.

The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you were in your file and returns you
there after you're finished with a menu.  So let's see what happens when we
try to read the current line.  Press a c-chord.  You should hear something
like, "Braille not Speak 2000 Help file".  What happened?  Well, the braille
translator sees the "'n" and translates it into the word "not" - that's what.

So the point is that if you ever get into a file that sounds like gibberish,
chances are, you have braille translation turned to the mode opposite what it
should be for that file.
?  Let's see what happens if braille translation is set incorrectly in a file.

Get to the top of the Help file with an l-chord.  Now press a c-chord to read
the current line.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille 'n Speak 2000 Help
File".  Now let's play a trick on the Braille 'n Speak.  Enter the Parameters
menu by pressing a p-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter parameter". 
Write the letter t (for translation).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Braille
translator; enter y or n?"  Write a y to turn on braille translation.

The Braille 'n Speak remembers where you were in your file and returns you
there after you're finished with a menu.  So let's see what happens when we
try to read the current line.  Press a c-chord.  You should hear something
like, "Braille not Speak 2000 Help file".  What happened?  Well, the braille
translator sees the "'n" and translates it into the word "not" - that's what.

So the point is that if you ever get into a file that sounds like gibberish,
chances are, you have braille translation turned to the mode opposite what it
should be for that file.

Let's get out of this, quick.  Press a p-chord again to get back into the
Parameters menu.  At the "Enter parameter" prompt, write the letter t.  At the
"Braille translator; enter y or n?" prompt, write an n.  Now press a c-chord
again.  The Braille 'n Speak should read accurately again, with braille
translation "off".

The Braille 'n Speak remembers whether you want braille translation "on" or
"off" for each of your files.  When you go through your list of existing
files, if braille translation is "on" for a file, the Braille 'n Speak reminds
you by saying, "Braille file" after telling you its name.

This issue of braille translation will come up again when we look at
transmitting files from the Braille 'n Speak to a computer or vice versa, and
it is a definite consideration when sending a Braille 'n Speak file directly
to a printer.  So it's worth taking a minute to practice moving back and forth
between braille translation modes here in the Help file.  It's safe.  You
can't damage this file even if you try to write in it.  It is protected from
overanxious beginners.  When we get into writing, you'll see how you can
protect files yourself.

3.4.2 Special Types of Characters 

The Braille 'n Speak can identify uppercase characters and control characters
to you as you read through your file.  Control characters are used largely for
formatting purposes to instruct a printer where to place your text.  Common
examples include carriage returns, linefeeds, formfeeds and tabs.  We'll show
you how to write them later.

As you're reading along in the Help file, practicing moving from line to line,
paragraph to paragraph, and so on, notice that the Braille 'n Speak uses the
normal inflections of speech - pausing at commas, periods and question marks. 
If you move your cursor forward or backward a character at a time though, the
Braille 'n Speak reads an uppercase character in a significantly
higher-than-normal pitch.  If it sees a control character, it reads it to you
as well.

Now, take a few minutes to practice reading before you move on to learning
about how to find text in your files.

3.5 Searching for Text in a File

The Braille 'n Speak can look for a word faster than you could if you had a
printout of the file.

Since you can look for text going forward or backward in your file, it's
probably a good idea to know where your cursor is located when you're starting
your search.


3.5.1 The Location of the Cursor

To find out where the cursor is currently resting, press a wh-sign-chord (dots
1-5-6-chord) from anywhere within your file.  The Braille 'n Speak says
something like, "Column 5, cursor at 119".  This means that the cursor is
resting on the fifth place on a line and that you are one hundred and nineteen
characters into the file.  If the cursor happens to be resting on a carriage
return, you'll hear "Column 0" instead of any other number.  Now let's search
for text.

3.5.2 Finding Text

You can search for text forward or backward through your currently open file. 
When you issue the Find command, you enter a "search buffer" - a scratchpad of
sorts - until you press an e-chord.  If you change your mind and decide not to
search for this particular text after all, you can cancel the search with a
z-chord.

While in the scratchpad, you can write text (also referred to as a search
string) of up to 63 characters in length.  You can use the backspace (b-chord)
to erase a character, just as you can when you're writing.  And you can press
a c-chord to see what you've written so far.  Let's see how it works.  Press
an f-chord from anywhere within your file.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter
text to find".  Write a search string, the word "speech", for example,
followed by an e-chord to execute the command.

If the text is in your file, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor to its
beginning and reads forward to the next carriage return.  If it does not find
the text, you hear, "not found" and the cursor remains in the place where you
started your search.

If you want to reverse the search, start with an f-chord.  But when you hear,
"Enter text to find", write the text, followed by a th-sign-chord (dots
1-4-5-6-chord).  If the text is found, the Braille 'n Speak moves the cursor
to its beginning and reads forward to the next carriage return.  If it does
not find it, you hear, "not found".

The Braille 'n Speak remembers the text you last asked it to find, even from
file to file.  This can be a handy feature when you're looking for the same
text in a number of different files.  Of course, turning off the Braille 'n
Speak makes it forget the last text you asked it to find.  

Let's practice, using the Braille 'n Speak Help file as an example.  Press an
l-chord to move to the top of the Help file.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Top
of file".  Press a wh-sign-chord to see where we are in the file, just to make
sure that we are where we think we are.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 0,
cursor at 1".  Good.  That means that we are indeed at the very first
character location in the file.

Now, let's look for a word.  Press an f-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Enter text to find".  Let's look for the word "read".  Write the word "read",
making sure to spell out each braille letter.  Do not use Grade 2 braille. 
Remember?  The Help file is not a "braille" file.  It comes from the factory
written as a print file in uncontracted braille.  Now press an e-chord to
execute the Find command.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Reading Functions".


Notice that it found a variation of the word we were looking for, "reading". 
The Braille 'n Speak looks for the combination of characters we requested but
it finds the first text it encounters that may include the combination of
characters we asked it to find.  If you had really wanted to find "read" and
only that specific word, you should have searched for the string "space read
space".

For now, let's just use this example to find out whether there are more
instances of the word "read" in this Help file.  Press an f-chord again.  Even
though the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter text to find" again, it still
remembers that we last looked for the word "read".  So let's just press an
e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Read current line, c-chord".

We could go along in this fashion, finding every occurrence of the word "read"
or any variation of that word in the file, all without ever rewriting the word
"read" at the prompt.  In fact, even if we switched files, we could still look
for the same word.

Where are we in the file at this point?  Assuming we stopped searching for
"read" when the Braille 'n Speak found "read current line, c-chord", press a
wh-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says something like, "Column 1, cursor at
1316, indicating that the cursor is at the first place on a line and that we
are over one thousand characters into the Help file.

Now let's press an f-chord.  At the prompt, press a th-sign-chord (dots
1-4-5-6-chord).  You should be back at "Reading Functions".  Press f-chord,
th-sign-chord once more and you should hear the Braille 'n Speak say, "not
found".  All this means is that it did not find any instance of the word
"read", searching backward through the file.  That's fine.  We knew that it
wouldn't find one.  But see how important it can be to know where the cursor
is?

Try finding a word or phrase on your own.  Move to different places in the
Help file as you search.  Once comfortable with the process, you'll find that
you can flip through a file and find a phone number faster than you can thumb
through a rollodex.


3.5.3 Case-Sensitive Searches for Text

The Braille 'n Speak disregards case when searching for text, unless you
select it to be case-sensitive.

To select case sensitivity in searching for text, before you issue the Find
command, press a the-sign-chord (dots 2-3-4-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak
prompts you with, "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?"  Write a
letter y if you do want searches to be case-sensitive.  Write a letter n if
you don't.  Most of the time, you won't want case sensitivity turned on for a
search.  Either way, the Braille 'n Speak responds, "Okay".  From that point
on until you change it, the Braille 'n Speak performs searches according to
your selection.

Here's an example, using our old friend, the Help file.  Go to the top of the
file with an l-chord.  Now press a the-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Distinguish case during find; enter y or n?"  Write a letter y and the
Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay".  Now press an f-chord and, at the prompt,
"Enter text to find", write "blazie" followed by an e-chord.  The Braille 'n
Speak responds, "not found".

Either the word is not in the file or "blazie" is not in lowercase.  Maybe
it's in capital letters.

To make the Braille 'n Speak let you write uppercase letters, press a u-chord. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase".  Press another u-chord to "lock" the
Braille 'n Speak into uppercase mode.  The Braille 'n Speak now says,
"Uppercase locked".  This is like the shift lock on a typewriter or the caps
lock on a Computer.  Every letter you write on the Braille 'n Speak is now
interpreted as an uppercase character.

Press an f-chord.  Now answer the prompt, "Enter text to find" by writing
"BLAZIE" again, remembering that every character you're writing is in
uppercase.  The Braille 'n Speak comes back with, "not found".  What's wrong
now?  It looks like "BLAZIE" is not in the file either.  It must be that the
word is spelled with only the first letter in uppercase.  Let's unlock our
uppercase and try again.

To unlock uppercase, press a q-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Uppercase
unlocked, okay".  Now press an f-chord and at the "Enter text to find" prompt,
press a u-chord, then write "Blazie".  Remember, since you only pressed the
u-chord once, only the first letter you wrote (the "B") is in uppercase.  The
"lazie" is in lowercase.  Now press an e-chord to see if this time the Braille
'n Speak can find this elusive word.

Yes.  The Braille 'n Speak now says, "Blazie Engineering".  Well, that took
some effort, didn't it?  See why it's probably better to have case sensitivity
"off"?  Let's turn it off right now, shall we?  Press a the-sign-chord.  At
the "Distinguish case during find; enter y or n" prompt, write an emphatic
letter n.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay".  From now on, it should be easy
again to find text without worrying about its case.

The Click tip: When you have large files, you'll probably hear a ticking sound
as the Braille 'n Speak is searching for text.  The larger the file, the
greater the distance the Braille 'n Speak may have to travel looking for your
text, and the greater the number of clicks you will hear.  But not to worry. 
Just be patient and it will find your text - if it is there to be found.  

Cancelling a Search: Even after you've pressed the e-chord that starts a
search, you can cancel it with a z-chord.  This can be handy with a long
search in a large file.

Well now.  You're just about ready to start writing your own files.                     CHAPTER 4: WRITING IN YOUR FILES

Before we can write anything in the Braille 'n Speak, we must create a file in
which to write - or, in other words, open a blank page in our "binder" and
give the file a name.  And speaking of pages, let's talk for a minute about
the Braille 'n Speak "Page":

The Braille 'n Speak needs to know how many "pages" you want to use from the
"binder" for each of your files.  Each of these "pages" can hold up to 4,096
characters, something over four physical pages of braille.  What's most
important to keep in mind here is that you need to define the number of
"pages" you want to use in your file.

The Braille 'n Speak can hold over one hundred and eighty "pages".  Remember,
these are not physical braille pages, nor are they physical print pages.  They
are the Braille 'n Speak's version of "page".  Later, you'll see how easy it
is to determine how many physical braille or physical print pages are really
in your file.

By the way, remember from Chapter 1 that, when the Braille 'n Speak comes from
the factory, it contains several files already.  One of these is the file that
holds your dictionary (called "spell.dic").  It is quite large, taking up 86
"pages" in your machine.  While this still leaves you a lot of room to add
your own files, you may decide to remove the spellchecker dictionary from your
Braille 'n Speak to give you even more room for other files.  It's simply a
matter of how you use the machine and how often you use the Spellcheck
feature.  Even if you do remove it, you can always add the spellchecker
dictionary again later.  

Also, even though you tell the Braille 'n Speak that you want, say, three
"pages" in your file, you can change your mind later and add "pages" to your
file or get rid of extra ones you don't need after all.  The bottom line is
that the Braille 'n Speak's "pages" are each 4,096 characters worth of space.

Now, let's create a file and start writing.  To do this, we first have to get
to the Options menu and its submenu, the Files menu.

4.1 The Files Menu

Like any powerful computer, the Braille 'n Speak lets you manipulate your
files.  From the Files menu you can: open an existing file and work in it,
create a new file, rename an existing file, delete an unwanted file, even make
an existing file bigger or smaller.

One of the best features of the Braille 'n Speak is that you never have to
"save" a file.  Any computer user knows how it feels to work diligently in a
file, creating a masterpiece, only to have it disappear into that dreaded,
computer black hole.  The Braille 'n Speak isn't like that.  The instant you
create a file and name it, that file is "saved" for you and anything you enter
into it, is automatically saved, too - yes, even when you turn the unit off. 
As we have mentioned earlier, turning the Braille 'n Speak on and off does not
affect your files in any way.  It's like turning a radio off and turning it on
again.  Unless someone has come along and fiddled with the dial, you'll still
be tuned to the same station when you turn it on again.

* 4.2 Creating a File

Let's create a file.  To get to the Files menu, press an o-chord.  The Braille
'n Speak says, "Option".  Now write a letter f.  The Braille 'n Speak
responds, "Enter file command".  Notice that we didn't tell you to press an
e-chord yet.  The Braille 'n Speak is now in "menu" mode, waiting for a
command.  Only after you issue a command can you press an e-chord.

Since our immediate goal is to create a file, let's write a letter c.  The
Braille 'n Speak now prompts you for the name of your file with, "Enter file
to create".  Let's call our file "practice".  Write "practice", spelling out
each letter, and press an e-chord.

The Braille 'n Speak now asks for the number of pages in your file with,
"Enter the file size".  Let's just write a number "1" for now.  Remember to
enter the number in ASCII or dropped number notation (dot 2) and press an
e-chord.  By the way, if you just want your file to contain one page, you can
just press an e-chord at the prompt, instead of writing the number 1.  Of
course, if you want your file to have more than one page, you do have to
specify the number of pages you want the Braille 'n Speak to set aside for the
file you're creating.  

* Finally, the Braille 'n Speak asks whether you want braille translation to
be in effect for this file with, "Use Grade 2 translator; enter y or n".  The
default setting is "on", so pressing an e-chord at this point accepts the
default and opens the file for you.  (Or, if you want to write in computer
braille, answer the prompt with an n and Grade 2 braille translation will be
off for this particular file.  In either case, the Braille 'n Speak confirms
that we have created the file by saying, "practice now open".

You're in your file, a blank "page", ready to be filled with your personal
data.  But before we write in this new file, let's talk for a moment about
file naming conventions.

Filenames in the Braille 'n Speak may be up to twenty characters in length. 
We suggest that you name files with no Grade 2 braille contractions.  (You'll
see why later.) However, if you plan to send Braille 'n Speak files to a PC,
modem, or our external disk drive, you must name your files using MS DOS file
naming conventions to prevent confusion for yourself later.

* And, if you name a file with a ".brl", ".bfm", or ".brf" extension, the
Braille 'n Speak automatically turns on Grade 2 braille translation for you,
assuming that the file is meant to be in Grade 2 braille.

Let's briefly describe how MS DOS filenames work for those who may be new to
the concept.  Briefly, MS DOS filenames can have two parts: a "filename"
portion of up to eight characters in length and an "extension" portion of up
to three characters in length, separated by a period.  For example, a file
could be called "address.txt" or simply "address".  But it's not a good idea
to call a file "phonebook" because the PC will only recognize "phoneboo" and
you may think your file "phonebook" never made it to the PC when you
transmitted it.  More on all this in Section 15.5 and Appendix A.  For now,
just be aware of the concept.

Back in our newly created "practice" file, we're almost ready to write some
text.  But we still should check out some things first: We should find out
where the cursor is, how much room there is in the file, and how to get help
if we get stuck.

4.3 Where is the Cursor

Press a wh-sign-chord (dots 1-5-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is
empty".  And it should be.  We haven't written anything yet.  Try going to the
top of the file (l-chord) or end of the file (dots 4-5-6-chord).  Try pressing
a c-chord to hear what's on the current line.  The Braille 'n Speak should
say, "File is empty".

4.4 Room Left in Your File

To see how much room there is left to write in your file (in other words, how
much free space there is after the last character in the file), press an
r-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Room left is 4,096."  Good, that is the
size of one Braille 'n Speak "page" and since we haven't written anything yet,
we should have 4,096 free spaces left to use.  As you start to fill up the
file, this number will decrease.  Don't worry about running out of room,
though.  We can make the file bigger, if we need more space.

4.5 Getting Help

You may have figured out by now that the Help file is a brief listing of
commands.  It assumes that you know how to do things with the Braille 'n Speak
and only want a tickler, a reminder, of the specific way to execute a command. 
It's very handy and is accessible from any file in your Braille 'n Speak.

Just need to jog your memory about a command?  Press a th-sign-chord from
within any file.  (By the way, the th-sign is a question mark in computer
braille.  This may help you to remember that chording the th-sign means help.)
The Braille 'n Speak immediately jumps you into the Help file and says, "Help
now open".

Check through the Help file for what you need - with the Find command, say -
and then press a z-chord to abort this procedure.  You'll find yourself back
in the file in which you were working.  Try it out with your currently open
file, "practice".

4.6 Writing Text in Your File

Well, we're finally ready to start writing.

Write the sentence, "This is a practice file to learn how to write in the
Braille 'n Speak."  Don't worry if you make mistakes.  We can fix them.  As
you write, the Braille 'n Speak is saying every character you braille.  And,
are you remembering to write in Grade 2 braille?

Let's see where your cursor is now.  Do a wh-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak
should say, "Column 56; cursor at 57" - assuming that you didn't make any
mistakes and that you wrote in Grade 2 braille.  We are at position 56 on the
current line and we are 57 characters from the beginning of the file.  Don't
worry if your numbers for cursor location differ from ours.  Remember, this is
only an example.  What's important is that the column number is greater than
zero.  Keep that in mind.

Now do another r-chord and see how much room you have left in your file.  The
Braille 'n Speak should say something like, "Room left is 4,039."  You'll have
to write quite a bit before you run out of room, trust us.  Remember, you're
using up Braille 'n Speak space, not physical space on a piece of paper. 
That's what's so nice.

It's going to be important to know how to format your files for printing and
for brailling.  So let's take a look right now at how to do this before we
write anything else.  We'll look closely at preparing to transmit a formatted
file to a printer or braille embosser in Chapter 15.  Here we'll just focus on
how you control what text goes on each line and each page, and in the next
section, we'll work on preparing the layout of the text.

4.7 Writing Control Characters into a File

In Section 3.4, we said that control characters are special characters used
for formatting your files for printing.  Basically, these special characters
are actually codes that instruct the printer about things like, when to go to
the next physical line on the page, when to go back to the left margin on a
line, how many spaces to tab over, when to go to the next physical page, and
so on.  Some control code sequences get real fancy and we won't discuss them
here.  We'll concentrate instead on the ones you use the most in writing.  A
more complete list is in Appendix D in the back of this manual.

Before we review the commonly used control characters and show you how to
write them, let's backtrack for a minute to review the concept of word
processing in general.  Back in the days when you typed on a typewriter or a
braillewriter, you were limited in many ways.  You could never insert a word
here, delete a paragraph there, change one word to another, copy text from one
page to another, etc., without retyping.  Word processing lets you do all
that, true; but it also eliminates your having to worry about how many words
fit on a line and where to hyphenate words, how many lines fit on a page,
counting over spaces when writing in columns, setting margins, and so forth. 
One of the nicest features of word processing is this: the computer "wraps"
words around lines for you, knows when to go to the next page, and even keeps
track of the number of pages in a document.

Let's take an example, using the sentence we just wrote in our "practice"
file.  At last check, our cursor was at column 56, or the fifty-sixth position
on the line.  And remember that the Braille 'n Speak defines a line as
containing everything between one carriage return and the next.  But anyone
who reads and writes braille knows that the largest braille page can only
accommodate at most forty characters on a line.  When you print this file, the
Braille 'n Speak knows how long to make each line because you will tell it
with settings you control from the Status menu.  (We'll show you more about
that later.)

The point is that you don't have to know where you are on a line as you're
going along writing text.  No bell goes off when you've reached a certain
point on a line to warn you to go to the next line.  Nothing alerts you that
you're at the bottom of a page and had better take this one out and start on a
fresh page.  So how do you start on a new page, even if you've only written a
few lines on the current page?  How do you move down a couple of lines and
indent to start a new paragraph?  That's where control characters come on the
scene.

When the computer takes care of wrapping text from line to line and going from
page to page, it is said to be doing "soft" carriage returns and page breaks. 
When you actually write a control character to force such an action, it is
said to be a "hard" carriage return or a "hard" page break.

A carriage return takes you back to the first physical position (or column) on
a line - in other words, to the left margin.  You write a "hard" carriage
return on the Braille 'n Speak by pressing a dots 4-6-chord.  Write a dots
4-6-chord now into your currently open file, "practice".  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "new line."  Now do a wh-sign-chord.  Notice that the Braille 'n Speak
says, "Column 0; cursor at 58".  This is because a carriage return brings you
back to the left margin of a line.  In other words, your cursor is now
positioned at the beginning of a line, waiting for you to enter text.

A linefeed by itself only moves you down one physical line but does not
reposition you at the left margin of the line.  You don't need to write
linefeeds into the Braille 'n Speak at all, since the Braille 'n Speak has a
way of appending them for you.  This only becomes important when you're
sending a Braille 'n Speak file to a printer or transmitting it to your
computer.  So we'll hold off on the discussion about how to add linefeeds
until we talk about transmitting files in Section 15.1.2.

A tab on the Braille 'n Speak moves you a certain number of spaces to the
right on a line; you determine how many spaces.  To tab on the Braille 'n
Speak, press a dots 4-5-chord.  Try it now.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Column".  Write a "5" and remember to write in ASCII notation (a dropped e). 
Press an e-chord to execute the command.  Now press a wh-sign-chord.  The
Braille 'n Speak says, "Column 4; cursor at 62".  In other words, the Braille
'n Speak spaced over to the fifth position from the left margin and placed the
cursor there for you to write something.  Check this out by pressing dot
3-chords to move the cursor back a character at a time until you hear "return"
when the cursor lands on the carriage return we wrote before.

Now write, "Hello." and press a dots 4-6-chord to issue another carriage
return.  But wait.  Don't we have to move the cursor forward to the end of the
file to where we had previously tabbed?

No.  The Braille 'n Speak protects you from overwriting text.  No matter where
you last read in your file, when you write something, the Braille 'n Speak
jumps to the end of the file and appends to it.  So the "H" of the word
"Hello."  we just wrote is automatically placed on the fifth position of the
line, just where we stopped when we tabbed before.  The carriage return we
just wrote after the word "hello" is now the last character in the file and
anything further we write will be placed after that carriage return.

A formfeed or "hard" page break control character forces your printer to go to
the next physical page.  This means that if you decide you want to start
writing on a new physical page (not Braille 'n Speak "page"), you can write a
control character so that when you print the file, text following the formfeed
character will be printed on the next physical page.  To write a formfeed,
press an x-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak does not prompt you at this point. 
Now write a letter l.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l".  You have
written a "hard" page break into your file.

Now write, "This is Page 2."  followed by a carriage return.

By the way, you write most control characters in the Braille 'n Speak with an
x-chord followed by a letter.  Carriage returns and tabs are so commonly used
that a single-key chord is provided for them.  Later, when we talk about how
to prepare a file for printing, we'll get into more specifics about page
length, line length, and so on.  All of those parameters, and more, can be
adjusted as you need them on the fly.


* 4.8 Writing Repeated Character Strings

Before we start exploring how to format text, that is, how to make it appear
visually pleasing, when printed or brailled, let's stop and look at a neat new
feature that's very simple to understand and use.

When you want to create a border or boundary between one block of text and
another for emphasis or clarity, generally speaking, it's a good idea to write
a line of repeated characters between the blocks of text you want to separate. 
Sighted people use this technique a lot more than blind people in writing
because braille is so bulky anyway, why clutter it up with a whole row of
stars or dashes or whatever.  Even in braille though we see rows of dashes to
indicate that a new print page is about to begin.  We see rows of dots 2-3-5-6
(or parentheses marks) bordering certain texts in catalogs or math books.  And
certainly there are times when we want to leave a lot of blank spaces free on
a line - not necessarily to center the text but maybe to leave space for
someone to fill in a response, say, or to jot down comments about what's on
the page.  In any case, what we're talking about here is the ability to write
the same character repeatedly for a specific number of places on the page.

To do this, we can use the same command we used to create a tab, dots 4-5-
chord.  But this time instead of writing a number, which tells the Braille 'n
Speak to tab over x number of places, we write the character we want repeated,
followed by the number of times we want it repeated, and then press an e-chord
to execute the command.

Let's say we want a row of dashes to appear after the line where the  title of
a chapter appears.  Let's use the title of this section as an example.

In your practice file, go ahead and write a carriage return now to make sure
you're on a new line and then write the title of this section, "Writing
Repeated Character Strings" and another carriage return.  Then press dots 4-5-
chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Column" and awaits your instruction. 
Write a dash (dots 3-6) and, for a print document, something like 65 (or for a
braille document, perhaps 30).  The number of repeats is entirely up to you of
course and depends on the line length you have set.  Make sure you write the
number of times you want the character repeated in dropped number notation and
then press an e-chord.

The Braille 'n Speak instantly places you on the last of your repeated
characters and awaits your next keystroke.  You'll probably want to write a
carriage return  right away because otherwise you may end up wrapping the row
of dashes you just created around to the line below and you probably don't
want that.

Technically speaking, you can't have more than 255 repeated characters but
since that's well over one line anyway, chances are you won't want to use a
number that high anyway and so you're unlikely to run into a problem with this
limit.  And of course, you can't use a number as a repeated character because
when you press a dots 4-5-chord and write a number, the Braille 'n Speak
assumes that number is the number of spaces you want to tab.

As we stated earlier, this feature is most useful for creating visual borders
around text you want to highlight in some way.

Now let's move on to formatting in general, and there's a lot to discuss so we
suggest you take a break now.  Start that section with a fresh cup of coffee
or perhaps tomorrow.  There's a great deal to consider when creating well-
formatted documents.

4.9 Formatting Text

If you're already familiar with word processing, you know that you can control
how text actually appears on paper.  This is true both in braille and in
print.  You don't have to count out how many spaces are needed to center text. 
Even if you insert or delete whole blocks of text, page numbering is accurate
when you finally print any portion of your document.  You don't have to keep
track of how many lines you've used up on each page for headers or footers to
print out where they belong on each page.  You can set up the margins however
you want them and then readjust them for blocking text within your document. 
These are only just a few of the things a word processor can do for you.

As to the physical appearance of the text, word processing can italicize text,
underline it, put it in boldface, even change the shape of the characters you
print.  Depending on your printer, the selection of print types (fonts) can be
huge.

Of course, braille is rather limited when compared to the number of options
you have in print.  There is only one choice in braille for what an "a" looks
like; whereas, in print, the choices are virtually endless.  Italics,
boldfacing, and underlining don't really exist in braille.  But at least you
can emphasize text with the dots 4-6 indicator.

Nevertheless, there are many things you can do whether your document is meant
to be printed or brailled - or both.  You can center text, adjust margins,
number pages, arrange for headers and footers to appear where they belong on
each page, and so on.  Therefore, although you have no control over the
physical appearance of braille characters, you still have much to say about
how text is laid out, even in braille.

All of the things we've been talking about can be controlled using
"formatting" commands.  These are actual strings of characters that you write
into your files to make the text come out looking as if you had physically
typed it on a typewriter or braillewriter.  Many of the commands we'll explore
in this section work whether the file is a braille file - that is, a file
written in Grade 2 braille, whether the file is written in computer braille,
or whether you intend to print the file to an ink printer or braille it with a
braille embosser.  These commands affect the layout of the text more than
anything else.  Except for commands that change the appearance of characters,
virtually all of them format either files to be printed or brailled.

First, let's remind ourselves about the types of printers the Braille 'n Speak
recognizes.  We mentioned briefly early on that you can choose between Epson-
compatible or Imagewriter-compatible printers on the Braille 'n Speak.  We
chose these two printers because they are among the most popular types of
printers today.  What do we mean by "compatible"?  Well, here we have to get a
bit technical for a minute but don't be put off.  It's not so hard to
understand the concept.

Have you ever wondered how a printer or braille embosser knows when to go to
the next line, to the next page, to center text, to underline it, and so on? 
As we discussed in Section 4.7, you can write control characters to instruct
the printer to start a new page or move to the next line.  You can also write
special strings of characters into your file that instruct the printer about
the layout and appearance of your document.  These strings are not printed;
rather, they signal the printer to pay attention and perform some command.

But still, how does the printer know how many lines to travel to get to the
next page?  How does it know when it's at the end of a line and needs to move
to the next line when you don't specifically instruct it to do so with a
carriage return and linefeed?

Printers are always busy counting: they count how many lines down the page
have been printed and how many are left to be printed (or skipped).  They can
therefore tell when to change pages.  They count how many characters
(including spaces) have been printed on any given line and how many are left
to be printed (or skipped) before it's time to move down to the next line. 
Even when you instruct a printer to skip lines or tab across a page, or to
print some text in larger letters or "fine print", the printer is still
keeping track of the physical space available on each page.

That's all well and good.  But unfortunately, complications may arise
depending on your printer.  Manufacturers program their printers to be able to
receive our instructions.  But most have done it in their own special way. 
The printer knows what to do because it has what are known as "escape
sequences" that it understands.  These are character strings much like the
ones we talked about writing into your file but they are specific to a
particular printer.  So, in other words, printer x may use a certain escape
sequence (or code) to perform a carriage return, but printer y may use an
entirely different escape code in its internal programming to perform the same
carriage return.

In an effort to avoid confusion, many manufacturers are now programming
printers to understand the escape codes that Epson printers and Imagewriter
printers understand.  So if you're printer is either of these, or if it is
"compatible" with either Epson or Imagewriter - that is, if your printer can
understand the same escape codes as Epson and Imagewriter printers do - then
you're in business.  Learning the formatting commands we're going to discuss
is enough.  Even if your printer is not immediately compatible, it may be
possible to make it compatible by flipping a switch on your printer or by
tricking it into thinking it's an Epson or Imagewriter.  Check your printer
manual, or with your dealer, or with the technical support staff of your
printer's manufacturer.

If your printer is not compatible with either of the types supported by the
Braille 'n Speak, you'll need to learn the appropriate escape codes for your
printer to format your documents properly for printing.  In that case, rather
than using the fairly uncomplicated commands we'll show you here, you'll
probably need to use at least some escape codes in your files.  Generally,
escape codes begin with the "escape" character, a control character available
to you, just like the control character for carriage return we've mentioned so
often.

To write an escape code that begins with the escape character, press an x-
chord and then write an ow-sign (dots 2-4-6).  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"escape".  Then write whatever other characters make up the string.  Remember,
this is not a Braille 'n Speak command.  So you don't end it with an e-chord. 
Probably a space is all you need to end the string.

Having said all that, let's now return to formatting commands the Braille 'n
Speak understands and that are supported by Epson and the Imagewriter
printers.  All of these commands begin with a $ sign (dots 1-2-4-6).  Wait,
isn't that the ed-sign?  Yes, but it's also the dollar sign in computer
braille.  It's important to keep this in mind since, when numbers are part of
a string, you must write them in computer braille.  Also, you must surround
all formatting commands with spaces.  If you don't, the Braille 'n Speak
assumes that you want to print the string because it assumes that the string
is part of your text.

Incidentally, in addition to using the dots 4-6-chord to force a carriage
return (a hard return), or two of them to indicate a new paragraph, or a
Control-L (x-chord followed by the letter l) to force the text to continue on
a new page (a hard page break), you can use formatting strings.  The string '
$l ' means "new line", the string ' $p ' means "new paragraph", and the string
' $f ' means "new page".  

Let's move on now to margins since they affect everything else.


* 4.9.1 Setting and Adjusting Margins

Whether you're intending to print or braille a document, you may want to
adjust your margins - especially if you want to block off sections of text by
indenting or outdenting it.  In print, in particular, you may want to make all
your text align to the right margin or to some left margin different from the
one you normally use.  You may want a bigger or smaller top or bottom margin.

We have set certain defaults for you in the Status menu for creating ink print
and braille documents.  In a minute, we'll look at how to change these
defaults with formatting strings.  But here is how the formatting process
works by default with respect to page lengths and line lengths.

Brailling: By default, we assume a braille line length of 33 characters and a
left margin of 1 character.  Since you can have literally 34 characters across
an 8-1/2 by 11 inch piece of braille paper, these defaults mean that you have
32 places across each line for printable text to appear.  Your left margin is
1 and by default your right margin is also 1.  In other words, the embosser
will know that it must provide you with an empty space in the first place on
the line, and then after printing up to the 33rd place on the line, it must
wrap your text to the next line on the page.

Likewise, we assume there are 25 printable lines on each braille page and a
top margin of 1.  Since there are a maximum of 27 possible lines on each
braille page, your embosser will know that it must provide you with a blank
line at the top of each page, then print up to 25 lines, provide another blank
line for your bottom margin of 1 line, and then move on to the next physical
page.

Printing: It works more or less the same way for ink print documents, except
that the defaults are a line length of 75 and a left margin of 10, giving you
65 places for printable characters going across the page and a right margin of
10.  In addition, the default page length is 60 with a top margin of 6, giving
you 54 printable lines of text.  If page numbering is turned off in the Status
menu, when the printer encounters the 60th line on a page, it forces the
printer to go to the next physical page.  If page numbering is turned on in
the Status menu, when the printer encounters the 60th line on a page, it
counts an additional 6 blank lines and then moves to the next physical page. 
In either case, you end up with a bottom margin of 6 blank lines.

All of the formatting commands begin with the $-sign and most of the margin
commands are followed immediately by the letter m, and then usually by some
number specifying the number of spaces you want the margin to have.  Let's
take an example.

The print defaults we provide assume that you have a print font whose size
accommodates 10 characters per inch (going across the page) and 6 lines per
inch (going down the page).  Therefore, our defaults provide you with a one-
inch margin all around the text on the page.

There might be times, however, when you want to have different margins - say,
half an inch instead of 1 inch margins.  Let's see how this would work out
with some sample numbers.

Assuming you're starting with a left margin of 10 (which is literally 10
spaces from the left edge of the page and is the default setting for ink print
documents), to set your left margin to 5 instead, write, 'space $-sign m l 5
space'.  We place the single quotes around the exact string characters for
clarity and readability.  When written properly the string reads, $ml5 with a
space written on either side of it.  Our new left margin of 5 has actually
brought the left margin closer to the left edge of the page by 5 spaces.

Assuming your right margin is set to 0 (which by default is 10 places away
from the right edge of the page), change your right margin by 5 with the
string ' $mr5 '.

For sample purposes, let's assume that page numbering is turned off, since
this is the default in the Status menu anyway.  With a starting top margin of
6 (which is also the default for ink print documents), let's change this
margin to 3 with the string, ' $mt3 '.  To change the bottom margin also to 3,
write, ' $mb3 '.

Since the printer's default pagelength is 60 with a top margin of 6 and we've
now changed the top margin to 3, we should also change our page length to
compensate for our new margins.  The new page length should be 63, giving us a
top margin of 3, 60 printable lines of text, and a bottom margin of 3.  So our
new settings provide half an inch margins all around the text on the page.

If you want to increase the size of the margin you already have, and you
already set it to 5, for example, you increase it by placing a plus sign (dots
3-4-6) before the number in your string.  So you'd write, ' $ml+5 '.  In our
example, that would now give us a left margin of 10.  If you increase the
right margin by 5 with ' $mr+5 ', your right margin would be 10 spaces from
the right edge of the page.  

When you want to return to a margin you had before, place a minus sign (dots
3-6) before the number in the string.  So in our example, to return the left
margin to 5 (5 spaces from the left edge of the page), you'd write, ' $ml-5 '.

If you want to "outdent" text - that is, have text "stick out" on a line at
the margin to the left of your current margin - write the string, ' $out '. 
The text following that string appears to the left of where you are by one tab
stop.  We'll talk about tabs in detail and how to set them later in Section
4.9.3.

Suppose you started out with a left margin of 5 spaces and have now increased
it 5 spaces further in from the left edge of the paper, giving you a current
margin of 10.  Then to make the first line of text "stick out" to the left of
the rest of the text, write the string, ' $out '.  Text on your current line
begins at the 5th space from the left edge of the page, but then wraps back
into your present margin of 10 on subsequent lines.  This is especially
effective for numbered items, like questions on a survey.  

You may have heard the word "justification".  No, we're not talking about
"justifying your actions".  In computerese justification has to do with
aligning text to margins.  It really should be called "alignment".  But since
the lingo is "justification", we use it here, too, and the string that
"justifies" text uses the letter j.

Of course, text is normally "left-justified", or aligned to the left margin. 
Whether the left margin is at the left edge of the page, 5 spaces in (as we've
set it), or however many spaces in from the left edge, text always aligns to
the current left margin unless you do something specific to force it to align
to something else.  For example, you can tab at the beginning of a line to
force text to start further in from the current left margin.  When text
"wraps" around to the next line, or when you force it to start on a new line
with a "hard carriage return", however, it aligns itself to the current left
margin.

To "right-justify" text means to make it align to the right margin, however
you have that margin set and regardless of how you have the left margin set. 
So, since we've set our right margin to 5 spaces from the right edge of the
page, if you write the string, ' $jr ', all your text after that point will
align itself to that margin.

To return to a normal left-margin justification of your text, write the
string, ' $jn '.

To adjust text to align itself as much as possible both to the left and right
margins (only in print, not in braille), you can write the string for "full
justification", ' $jf '.  The printer then apportions the text as evenly as
possible across the page so as to prevent visual gaps in its layout and make
it more visually pleasing.  Of course, since in braille the goal is usually to
squeeze as much text as you can on each line without losing its meaning, we
suggest keeping your braille files set to no justification, which is the
standard or default setting anyway.

* We just touched on the subject of page length a few minutes ago when we said
that your braille embosser counts either 25 or 27 lines on a braille page. 
Similarly, we said that ink printers count 66 lines on a print page.  Ink
printers assume a bottom margin of 0 if page numbering is turned off, as we
said above, and a top margin of 6.  Further, the default line length is 75 and
the default page length is 60.  If you're familiar with a word processor (like
WordPerfect), you're used to seeing lines and margins referred to in terms of
inches rather than physical lines or characters across a page.  The number of
lines and characters per inch varies according to the "point size" (height)
and the "pitch" (width) of your characters.  And that depends largely on font
type.  Even when starting with a particular font type, you can change the
pitch and point size of text by making it larger or smaller for a portion of
the text.

Remember that we said fonts were styles of printing for characters.  You may
have heard of the Pyka or Elite fonts on a typewriter.  Ink printers are able
to produce many other fonts.  The choice is a matter of visual preference and
you may need to ask for a coworker's or friend's opinion as to what font looks
right for your document.  For example, the font known as Prestige is very
professional-looking, Courier is the most common font, and Script looks almost
like handwriting.  All in all, it can be very confusing, and may certainly be
mind-boggling if you've never seen or worked with print.  The bottom line
though is to consider how the ink printer counts vertically and horizontally.  

Generally, for a standard 8-1/2 by 11 inch page, the printer assumes 6 lines
per inch and 10 characters across the page.  So it counts 66 lines vertically
and 80 characters horizontally.

So for example, if you set a top margin of 6 and don't set anything else -
such as the page length, which is set to 0 by default- the ink printer says,
"Okay, I have 72 lines per page.  But since I can only count up to 66 lines
per page, I'll take these extra 6 lines and put them on the next page, and
then I'll do a formfeed to a third page so that I can start counting again." 
In other words, you have a mess.  You need to set a page length that the
printer can understand.

To set the length of your page, you have to keep that 66-line limit in the
forefront.  Whatever your top margin is and whatever your bottom margin is,
you need to subtract them from 66 to obtain the number to which you set your
page length.  So, if your top margin is 6 and your bottom margin is also 6 (as
set by the printer itself), your printable page length is 54.  You set the
page length with the string, ' $pl54 '.

Let's say that you decide to have top and bottom margins of 3.  Subtracting
them from 66 gives you a page length of 60 and so your page length string
would be, ' $pl60 '.

Likewise, you can affect the page width.  Use the string, ' $pw ' followed by
a number to instruct the printer how many characters it should print across
the page.  Again, like the example of top and bottom margins, if you have a
left margin of 5 and a right margin of 5, you have to subtract them from the
total number of characters that can fit across a line.  As we suggested
earlier, for ink printers this can vary widely, depending on the font type. 
In any case, we'll assume that 80 characters fit across the page.  So, using
our example of left and right margins of 5, subtracting them gives 70 and so
your line length is 70.  You'd set the line length with the string, ' $pw70 '. 
By the way, when you increase the left or right margin, you don't have to do
anything about the line length.  The printer remembers that your original line
length was, say, 70, as in our example.

Of course, if you decrease the size of your left or right margin, you have to
keep in mind your total printable line length so you don't run into the mess
we described above of more lines than the printer can count for a page.  Let's
use our example with left and right margins set to 5 and the printer counting
a printable line of 70 characters.  If you reset your left and right margins
to, say, -10, you're saying that your printable character count is 80 but
you're asking the printer to count a total of 90, and since it can't, you'll
have a problem.  

In braille, you probably want a line length of 40 or 30, depending on whether
you're using the larger or smaller paper available for brailling.  This
generally means left and right margins of 1 since you can fit 42 characters
across a page from edge to edge for the larger 11 by 11-1/2 inch paper and 32
characters across for the smaller 8-1/2 by 11 inch paper.  Of course, your
braille embosser may not give you a choice about paper size, in which case,
you'd need to set up all your files to the same parameters.

4.9.2 Formatting and the Status Menu

During our brief walk through the Status menu in Section 1.5.2, we ran across
format parameters as we browsed through the various choices.  The group begins
with the setting for Imagewriter or Epson and continues through the setting
for the top margin in braille.

Let's take a look at these settings now with respect to how they apply to our
present discussion.

It's crucial to keep in mind that the format strings that use the $-sign
override equivalent Status menu settings.  But it's equally important to
understand that you don't necessarily have to use the $-sign strings at all. 
If your document is fairly simple - that is, without justification of text,
without indented text, and so on - you don't need to include format strings in
your file for line length, page length, and margins.  You can simply set them
through the Status menu.

This can be especially handy when you intend to braille the document as well
as print it because the Status menu lets you set both print and braille
parameters for the same file.  Obviously, you can't set your file up with '
$ml5 ', which you intend as a left margin for your print file and expect that
the braille left margin you set to 1 through the Status menu is also in
effect.  As we said, format strings override Status menu settings.  So, the
way to avoid confusion is to use only the Status menu settings when you intend
to braille and print the same file.

Of course, you can still use format strings for centering, page numbering, and
so forth.  But be careful if you decide to increase or decrease a margin.  For
example, let's say you set your print left margin through the Status menu to 5
and the braille left margin to 1.  Then if you decide to increase your left
margin by 5 by writing the format string ' $ml+5 ', both your braille and
print files will show a new left margin of 10.  Why?  Again, the format string
overrides the braille left margin setting in the Status menu.  So we recommend
that you use one or the other, but not both, methods for formatting margins,
line lengths, and page lengths.

Here's how you set things up, using the Status menu.

One particular setting in the Status menu can affect whether the margins, line
length, and page length settings for your ink printer work for all your files. 
This is the "make parameters file-specific" setting.  

It's important that you understand up front that, regardless of how the "file-
specific" setting is set, the formatting strings we've discussed in the
previous section override any equivalent settings in the Status menu.

Also, notice that we were careful to emphasize that the "file-specific"
setting applies to ink printing.  Since braille margins are generally the same
from file to file anyway, this setting does not affect braille format
parameters.  So whatever settings you have in effect in the Status menu for
braille margins, line length, and page length, they apply to all files you
braille.

However, chances are, you don't want all the files you print to have the same
margins, line length, and page length.  So you can turn the setting on to
insure that they print out with your file-specific settings.

Bring up the Status menu with the usual st-sign-chord.  You'll be wherever you
were the last time you exited the Status menu.  So you may have to cycle to
the Format Parameters grouping with dots 5-6- or dots 2-3-chords.  Or, jump to
the first setting in the grouping by writing an l.  This brings you to the
choice for Imagewriter or Epson.  If you haven't already done so, choose the
appropriate printer with an i for Imagewriter or an e for Epson.  Then press a
dot 4-chord.

Now you're at the setting for print line length.  The default is 75, as we
mentioned in the last section.  Change it to your printable line length,
keeping  in mind our discussion of how to arrive at the right number.  For
example, write 70 (using dropped number notation, of course).  Then press an
e-chord to enter your choice and another dot 4-chord to move to the next
setting.

Now you're at the setting for print left margin.  Write a 5, say, and press an
e-chord to enter it and another dot 4-chord to move to the setting for print
page length.

Keep in mind our earlier warnings about page length and write 54, for example. 
Then press an e-chord to enter it.  Now press another dot 4-chord to see the
setting for print top margin.  Go ahead and set it to something like 3, as in
our earlier example.

You could stop here by exiting the Status menu with an e-chord.  Or, if you
want to set braille margin, line length, and page length settings, continue as
above with dot 4-chords to move to each one and set them as we have shown. 
Then exit the Status menu with an e-chord.

4.9.3 Document Layout

How nice not to have to count out exactly how many spaces it takes to center
text or to make columns of text! How convenient not to have to count how many
lines of text you can write in order to fit a running header or footer on each
page and not to have to rewrite that header or footer on each page! How
pleasant not to have to worry about numbering pages - especially when you edit
your text so much by adding and deleting, moving and copying, whole sections
of it!


Centering Text

Let's first talk about centering text.  You can center text a line at a time. 
It's pretty straightforward.

To center a line of text, write the format string, ' $c ' before the actual
text you want centered.  Press a dot 4-6-chord (a hard carriage return) to end
centering.

If the text to be centered runs over one line, you'll need to center each line
by hand.  Here's one instance where checking the location of the cursor can be
very helpful.  If you'll recall, the wh-sign-chord command tells you where the
cursor is in terms of how many characters you are from the beginning of the
file, as well as how far you are from the last hard return.  Your decision
about where to break up text to be centered over more than one line depends on
whether you intend to braille or print the document and on whether you have
Grade 2 braille translation in effect.

For example, if you want to braille your document on 8-1/2 inch by 11 inch
paper (with a line width of 32 characters) and the text you want to center is
the name of the present chapter, including the chapter number, you won't make
it on one braille line.  Better to cut it up so that "CHAPTER 4" appears
centered on the first line, and "WRITING IN YOUR FILES" appears centered on
the next line.

On the other hand, if you want to print your document and you're writing your
file in Grade 2 braille, remember that the number of characters may expand
when turned into print.  So for example, if the text to be centered includes
the word "character" (2 spaces worth in Grade 2 braille), which expands to 9
spaces worth in print, you need to take that into account when deciding where
to cut up what portion of the text goes on which line to be centered.

Headers and Footers

Now, what if you want the centered text to repeat on each page.  This is
called a "running" header or footer, depending on whether it's at the top or
bottom of the page.  In a way, page numbers are the simplest example of
running headers or footers since you set them up in much the same way as text,
and since you can position them to "run" on each page.

To tell the Braille 'n Speak what text you want to use as a header, write the
format string, ' $hb '.  Then write the actual text of the header, including
centering, and any other format strings you want to use to make the header
appear as you want it to on each page.  Here again, a hard carriage return
(dots 4-6-chord) ends the header, just as it ends centering.

Suppose you want to disable the header temporarily - say, to insert a page
with a chart on it that needs a header of its own that you want to use only
one time.  In such a case, don't bother marking that header with the ' $hb '
string, just write it out.  To disable the running header for that page,
though, begin the page with the string ' $h- '.  Start the next page with a '
$h+ ' string to resume the running header.

Footers work much the same way, except that the format string is, ' $fb ' to
create the running footer, ' $- ' to disable it, and ' $f+ ' to enable it
again.

Tabbing

Now let's get into tabbing.  To set up tabs to create a table, for instance,
first decide how many spaces to have between columns and how many columns fit
on your page.  This depends not only on the amount of text in each column, but
also on the width of the page.  As you probably already know, in braille this
is very limited.  Tables in braille only work after much planning.  We'll take
a simple example.

Say you want three columns of numbers across a page and you know that none of
the numbers has more than 5 digits in it.  So you can make the space between
each column 3 spaces wide.  Set up the columns with the string, ' $ts '
followed by the number of spaces you want the tab to move you.  In our
example, this is the string, ' $ts3 '.  Remember, this only sets up the size
of the tab.

To actually move by tabs then, write the string, ' $t ' followed by the text
of the column.  So a line in our example reads something like this:

" 123 $t 4567 $t 8910 "

If you don't need to set a tab, but you do need to start text a certain number
of columns in from the left margin, write the string, ' $to ' follow by a two-
digit number.  So for example, if you want to start 7 spaces in from the left
margin for a particular line of text, precede the text with ' $to07 '.

Page Numbering

Now let's talk about page numbering.  It's ever so nice not to have to concern
yourself with numbering pages by hand.  But you do have some control over the
location of page numbers, especially in print, and whether the pages are
numbered using Arabic numerals (like 1, 2, 3, and so forth) or whether they
are numbered using Roman numerals (like I, II, III, and so on), as for tables
of contents.   

To set up your file to number pages, enter the Status menu with an st-sign-
chord and jump to the "Number pages" option by writing the number sign (dots
3-4-5-6).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Number pages, off".  Turn on numbering
with a y.  Turn it off again with an n.  Exit the Status menu with an e-chord.

Or, to set the page number and type of numerals to use, first use the format
string, ' $pnar ' for Arabic numerals, or ' $pnrn ' for Roman numerals.  Then
use the format string, ' $p ' followed by a number from 1 to 999 to establish
the starting page number.  That's good when you're setting up a file which is
a continuation of another.  For example, if the present file is Chapter 2 of
your great American novel, you want to start it with the page following
wherever Chapter 1 ended - say, 26.  So your page number format string would
read, ' $p26 '.

Now you need to decide where to position the page number.  For braille files
that are going to be printed by a braille embosser, page numbering always goes
in the same place, on the top right of the page.  But for files you intend to
print, you have six options.  They include the top left, top center, and top
right of the page, or the bottom left, bottom center, or bottom right of the
page.  Use the format strings ' $pntl ', ' $pntc ', and ' $pntr ' for the top
left, center, and right positions.  Use the strings ' $pnbl ', ' $pnbc ', and
' $pnbr ' for the bottom left, center, and right positions.  If you want no
page numbering at all, you could also use the format string ' $pnnp ' for no
numbering instead of turning off the setting through the Status menu as
described above.

Next is how to change the appearance of printed characters.

4.9.4 Changing the Appearance of Print Text

As we mentioned earlier, not all printers let you change the appearance of
text with the format strings we describe here.  Only printers that are Epson-
or Imagewriter-compatible understand these strings.  All printers understand
centering, tabs, page numbering, and so on.  But if your printer is not
compatible with the two we support, you may have to use escape codes for that
specific printer to achieve the same results.

To make text appear in boldface, use the string, ' $bb ' to start boldface and
the string, ' $bf ' to finish it.  To italicize text, start it with the
string, ' $ib ' and finish it with the string, ' $if '.  To underline text,
start underlining with the string, ' $ub ' and finish with the string, ' $uf
'.  Finally, to doublestrike text to make it look even more emphatic, use the
string ' $dbsb ' to begin and the string, ' $dbsf ' to finish.

If you want to stop printing altogether before the end of your file, for
example, after the first page in a two-page file, write the string ' $ef ' at
the point where you want printing to stop.  And, if you don't want to stop
printing, but you want to pause the printer between pages, write the string, '
$w ' to make the printer wait after printing each page so that you can insert
another page, or so that you can examine the page you just printed.

If you want to double- or triple-space a print document (for example, a
document for school that a professor needs to grade), write the string, ' $ls
' followed by a number.  So ' $ls2 ' makes your document print with a blank
line between each printed line, and with four blank lines, instead of two,
between each paragraph.  What's nice is that you can double-space a portion of
a document, but leave other portions in single-space mode by using these
formatting strings.  In Section 15.2.4, we'll show you a quick way to get a
whole document to print double-spaced without having to insert formatting
strings into the document itself.

4.9.5 Inserting a Time Stamp on a Printed Document

In Section 7.2.4, we'll show you how to insert a particular date and time into
a file without having to write it in by hand.  However, using format strings,
like the ones we've been discussing, you can insert a "stamp" onto a printed
document of the date and time the document is printed.  Clearly, you may not
always print a document the minute you create it.  In fact, in most cases, it
may be days or weeks before you need to print it.  Or it may be minutes.  In
any case, some jobs require very accurate time-stamping, for example, a
receptionist taking messages who prints a message the instant it is received.  
To insert a date and time stamp into your file so that the date and time it is
printed appears in the document, write the string, ' $tm ' for the time and '
$dt ' for the date.

4.9.6 Skipping Blocks of Text to Print 

What do you do if there's a portion of your file you don't want to print?  For
instance, let's say that you have a five-page file but you only want to print
from Page 3 to Page 5 because the printer jammed on Page 3.  Place the string,
' $( ' just before the area you want to skip and then the string, ' $) ' just
after the block of text to be skipped.  Page numbering should still be in
effect accurately.

4.10 Selecting your Writing Mode

By this time, you may be wondering how to write so that each character isn't
spoken back to you as you braille.  Let's show you a couple of options.

You can have each word spoken as you complete brailling it instead of hearing
each character spoken as you braille it.  Also, you can have the keys click as
you braille, or you can have a totally silent keyboard as you braille.

Get into the Speech Parameters menu with an ar-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Speech parameters".  Press the spacebar.  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "Key Click on".  Press an e-chord.  The Braille and Speak says, "Exit". 
Now try writing something in your file.  You'll hear a short click each time
you press a key and the characters are no longer spoken as you braille.

Enter the Speech Parameters menu again and press the spacebar.  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Silent keys".  Exit the Speech Parameters menu and write
something in your file.  Notice that the Braille 'n Speak is totally silent as
you write.  And if you try to read what you just wrote, you may be surprised.

From the factory, the Braille 'n Speak comes with cursor tracking turned on. 
Cursor tracking means that the speaking cursor is at the same place as the
writing cursor.  What, two cursors?  Well, in effect, yes.

Remember our long discussion of reading by words, characters, or lines, even
by sentences or paragraphs, in Chapter 3?  When you're reading, the Braille 'n
Speak is keeping track of where you are.  We even showed you how to find out
where that cursor is with the wh-sign-chord.

But now that you're writing, the Braille 'n Speak has to remember where you
are as you write and where you are as you read.

Isn't it the same?  Not necessarily.  You might be writing down a reminder to
yourself but have to go back and read a date to include in that reminder, for
example.

As long as you don't have a silent keyboard for writing, you're okay because
the Braille 'n Speak is saying each letter or word you're writing and
therefore is tracking what it is speaking.  But if your keyboard is silent and
you still want to track where you are writing, rather than tracking the last
thing the Braille 'n Speak spoke, cursor tracking must be on.

Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and then jump to the setting by
writing the letter c.  If the setting happens to be off, write a y to turn on
cursor tracking.  Exit the Status menu with an e-chord.  Then, still with your
silent keyboard in effect, write something and then read the current word. 
You should now hear the last word you wrote.

For those cases where you need the speaking cursor where the Braille 'n Speak
last spoke, turn cursor tracking off by re-entering the Status menu and
writing a c followed by an n to turn it off, or you can press a p-chord to
bring up the Parameters menu from anywhere in your file.  Write a c to jump to
the setting and turn off cursor tracking at the prompt, "Cursor tracking, y or
n?"  Remember that you don't have to press an e-chord.  From the Parameters
menu, responding to the prompt is all you need to do.  You should immediately
be back where you last were in your file.

The choice between having cursor tracking on or off really depends on what
you're doing and you'll probably find uses for both.  However, mostly we
suggest keeping it on to avoid confusion about what you last wrote.  


While having a totally silent keyboard may be great in a meeting, you may want
some feedback about what you're writing.  Of course, you could always read
what you have written in the usual manner, with current line or sentence
commands, and so on.  But you might find it convenient to hear words spoken as
you braille them into your file.

Press a g-chord from anywhere in your file.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Interactive, okay".  Try writing something.  Words are now spoken as you
braille.  You can turn this feature off again simply by issuing another
g-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Off, okay".  Try writing in both modes
to find the one that is most comfortable for you.

But you may be more interested in tracking what you're reading than what
you're writing in a file.  For example, if you have a set of notes in the
Braille 'n Speak to which you're responding, you might want to write your
comments at the end of the file but not lose your place as you read the notes. 
In such a scenario, you want the cursor not to track what you are writing.

Turn cursor tracking off from either the Status menu or the Parameters menu. 
Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord and write a c.  You hear, "Cursor
tracking, on".  Respond with an n and exit the Status menu with an e-chord. 
From now on, what you write is appended to the end of your file as always, but
you'll be able to continue reading elsewhere in the file.  Turn cursor
tracking back on by re-entering the Status menu and responding with a y to the
prompt, then exit the Status menu with an e-chord.

Or, simply enter the Parameters menu with a p-chord and write a c.  At the
prompt, "Cursor tracking, enter y or n", write a y.  The Braille 'n Speak
confirms, "Okay" to once again track what you are writing.

Finally, just one more setting you might want to turn on before we move into
how to edit your work.  On a typewriter, a bell warns you when you're
approaching the end of a line.  Even though you don't have to bother with all
that on the computer because it automatically word wraps for you, there may be
times when you do want to know where you are on a line.  Is there a way to
have the Braille 'n Speak "ring a bell" for you at the appropriate time?

Not a bell, a beep.  You can set the beep to go off anywhere from the first to
the 255th character after the last carriage return or carriage return/linefeed
pair.

Enter the Status menu with an st-sign-chord (dots 3-4-chord).  Jump to the
setting for column beep by writing a q.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Beep at
column 0" as set from the factory so that no beep goes off at all.  Change the
setting to some number between 0 and 255 (best to set it to something like 70
for a print file, or 40 for a braille file).  The only times you might want to
set it to something longer is for computer programming code, perhaps.  Write
the number in dropped number notation, as always when answering a prompt from
the Braille 'n Speak with numbers.  Then press an e-chord for the Braille 'n
Speak to accept your change, and another e-chord to exit the Status menu. 
From now on, as you write, whenever you pass over the column you set - say, 70
- the Braille 'n Speak beeps to let you know.  Turn off column beeping by
resetting it to 0.


Practice writing.  Don't worry about braille mistakes for now.  We can fix
them, as you'll see in the next chapter.                         CHAPTER 5: EDITING TEXT 

Like any good word processor, the Braille 'n Speak lets you revise what you
have written.  You can overwrite text, insert new text in between existing
blocks of text, even delete text you no longer want.  The Braille 'n Speak
takes care of moving text aside to make room for new text you're inserting,
and it squeezes things back together again should you decide to get rid of
some text.  And, as we alluded to earlier, it takes care of reformatting your
pages so the layout of your text still looks fine when you print.

First, let's try overwriting some text.

5.1 Overwriting Text

Unless you specifically command the Braille 'n Speak to overwrite or insert
text, you're always adding to the end of the file when you/re writing.  You
can overwrite either a single character or a whole block of text.

Write a couple of carriage returns to separate this practice section from your
previous one in the last chapter.  Then write the words, "Today it is warm.",
remembering to write in Grade 2 braille.  Now move your cursor back to the
second character of the word "today".  The best way is probably to move back a
word at a time with dot 2-chords until the Braille 'n Speak says the word
"it".  Press a dot 3-6-chord to see what character you're on.  It should be
the "x" that represents the word "it" in Grade 2 braille.  Now press a dot
3-chord twice to position your cursor on the d of "td", which in Grade 2
braille represents the word "today".

We're going to change the "today" to "tonight" by overwriting the d with an n. 
Press an ow-sign-chord (dots 2-4-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Overwrite".  Write the letter n.  That's all.  Now read the current word with
a dots 2-5-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Tonight".

Now, if you want to overwrite more of this sentence, press the ow-sign-chord
again.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Continuous overwrite".  All this means is
that when you write a character, it replaces the one under the cursor instead
of jumping to the end of the file and adding it there.

So in our present example, move your cursor onto the w of "warm" (and we'll
assume that you wrote it in Grade 2 braille).  Now press the ow-sign-chord and
hear, "Overwrite".  Press it again and you'll hear, "Continuous overwrite". 
From now on, everything you write will overwrite the character under the
cursor.  To turn off continuous overwrite mode, simply press the ow-sign-chord
once more and the Braille 'n Speak says, "Off".

What you hear when you're overwriting depends on how you have your Braille 'n
Speak set to respond to what you write.  Review Section 4.10 that discusses
the various writing modes, if you're unclear about this.

Basically, if you have the Braille 'n Speak set to echo your keystrokes, when
you overwrite a character, you hear first the character you just wrote, then
the character that is now under the cursor.  So in our example, as we start to
write the characters for the word "cold" to replace "warm", you hear,
"Overwrite c ar".  That's because the "ar" is one braille character, of
course.  Now write the o and you hear, "Overwrite o m" because the "ar" has
been replaced by the "o" you just wrote and the "m" is now under the cursor.

If you are using a silent keyboard, you'll just hear the character onto which
the cursor has moved but not the character you just wrote.

You don't necessarily have to replace every character in succession.  You
could skip a word, a line, or whatever.  You can go ahead and read any of the
text in your file, jumping around with the usual chord commands you use to
read.  Even the Find command works while in Continuous Overwrite mode.  When
you're ready to overwrite something else, just move the cursor to that
character and start writing.

Don't worry if you forget to turn off Continuous Overwrite when you turn off
your Braille 'n Speak.  That, and changing to work on another file, turns it
off just as well.  The only thing you may want to keep in mind is that, if you
overwrite the last character in your file and forget to turn off Continuous
Overwrite, you'll keep overwriting that last character, instead of appending
to the end of your file.

But what happens if you are appending to the end of your file and want to back
up - for example, over a word you misspelled.  We look at backspacing next.  

5.2 Backspacing and Rubbing Out a Character

Finish overwriting "warm" with "cold" and then turn off Continuous Overwrite
with an ow-sign-chord.  You should hear, "Off".

Now write the word "file".  Recall that the Braille 'n Speak takes you forward
to the end of the file and what you write gets appended to the last character
in your file.  So, since the last word in the file is "cold", we've just added
the word "file" right after the previous sentence without a period, a space, a
carriage return or anything.  That won't do at all.

We could simply delete this last word "file", couldn't we?  Well, not the way
it is now, we couldn't.  It's attached to the previous word.  The Braille 'n
Speak isn't smart enough to know that "coldfile" is two words.  That's our
mistake.  We'd better delete this word "file" by backspacing over each
character and deleting it as we backspace.  To do this, press a b-chord.  The
Braille 'n Speak may or may not say anything, depending on how a certain
telecommunications setting, duplex, is set, and we'll discuss duplex in
Section 13.2.3.  For now though, just check out what the current character is
with a dot 3-6-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak should say, "l".  That means it
back spaced over and erased the e in "file" and the cursor is now on the l. 
Press three more b-chords and then a dots 3-6-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak
should now say, "d".  That of course is the "d" of "cold.  Why not add a
period to complete that sentence.

Try backspacing over a few more characters, putting some back and backspacing
over them again, maybe even overwriting some of them.

Our next challenge is deleting text.  So let's move along.

* 5.3 Deleting Text

You can delete blocks of text regardless of where the text is located.  The
Braille 'n Speak lets you delete one or more chunks of text at a time.  You
can throw away blocks of text, groups of characters, words, lines, sentences,
and paragraphs.  You can delete from the current cursor location to another
point in the file or to the end of the file.  And you can even empty out the
file completely, but be careful with that.  It may be hard to recover deleted
text later on.

The text you delete from your file goes into the Clipboard file, a temporary
"trash can" of sorts.  But that trash can is always being emptied out, so you
may not be able to retrieve something from it if you change your mind.  For
example, if you delete something, then insert text, or use the Braille 'n
Speak's calendar, calculator, or clock, the text you deleted is gone.  In
effect, the trash collector came by and emptied the trash can of the deleted
text, and somebody else came by and put other stuff in it.  This is why the
Clipboard file is so handy, but also rather like a sieve.  You have to move
fast to retrieve deleted text.

The Braille 'n Speak's Clipboard is one Braille 'n Speak page in length.  As
we described it earlier, this "page" is 4,096 characters worth of space.  If
you delete a larger block of text than one Braille 'n Speak page, you hear,
"Clipboard overflow".  In effect, the trash can was full and the rest of the
text spilled out.  Too bad.  The only text you can retrieve (if you move fast)
is the first 4,096 characters of the deleted block of text.

To prevent this from happening however, there is a way to make the Clipboard
bigger than one Braille 'n Speak page.  Check out Section 6.9 to see how to
change a file's size.  The Clipboard is a file after all, just like your other
files.  Your Braille 'n Speak uses it to hold data temporarily.  But you can
alter its original size if you know you're going to be manipulating large
chunks of text.

* There are two ways to handle the contents of the trash can.  When you delete
text, you can empty the Clipboard each time you delete something, or you can
add to the pile of deleted text in the Clipboard instead.  If you empty out
the Clipboard each time you delete, you probably won't be able to recover any
data later on because that text will have been lost.  But if you add to the
pile of deleted text in the Clipboard, you might be able to recover some of it
later if you find you need it back.

Even if you don't make the Clipboard bigger, sometimes you can recover deleted
text.  We talk about how to recover data in general in Appendix A, COMMONLY
ASKED QUESTIONS.  Right now, let's focus on how to delete text within our
currently open file, "practice".

Since deleting text can be a tricky business, the Braille 'n Speak makes you
work a little.  Move your cursor onto the beginning of the text you want to
delete, and be very clear about how much you want to delete.  You then need to
enter the Delete Parameters menu.

* Like the other menus we've discussed, pressing a c-chord tells you the
current choice, an l-chord brings you to the first choice (block), a dots 4-5-
6-chord brings you to the last choice (cursor to end of text).  Dot 4-chords
move you forward a choice, dot 1-chords move you back a choice.  Or, as we'll
show you here, you can jump to the choice you want by pressing its first
letter.  Once you've selected a choice, execute your deletion  by pressing an
e-chord or an ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6-chord).  Pressing an e-chord empties
out the trash can of whatever it had in it before your current deletion and
ing-sign-chord adds your current deletion to the pile that's already in the
trash can.  
Here's an example.  Let's start by moving to the top of our file with an
l-chord.  Now read the current line with a c-chord.  It should say, "This is a
practice file to learn how to write in the Braille 'n Speak."  Find out where
the cursor is with a wh-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak should say, "Column
0, cursor at 1".

Now enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "Enter delete parameter".  Let's write a c (for character).  When we
write the c, the Braille 'n Speak says, Character".  It's now waiting for us
to tell it how many characters we want to delete.  If we only want to get rid
of one character, the one currently under the cursor (which happens to be the
dot 6 that capitalizes the word "this" in our text), all we have to do at this
point is press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak assumes that we meant to
delete only the character under the cursor.  Or, if you're in a real hurry and
just want to delete the character currently under the cursor, just press d-
chord twice.

Try that now.  Press a second d-chord.  Press a dots 3-6-chord to read the
character under the cursor.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "th".  It worked.  We
deleted the dot 6 capitalizing the word "this".

Now let's suppose we want to delete a few words.  We want to get rid of the
words "this is a".  So let's re-enter the Delete Parameters menu with a
d-chord and at the prompt, "Enter delete parameter", let's write a w.  This
time, however, when the Braille 'n Speak says, "Word", let's write a 3
(remember to write an ASCII 3, a dropped c) and press an e-chord.  Now do a
dots 3- 6-chord to see where the cursor is.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "p". 
Press a dots 2-5-chord to read the current word.  The cursor is on the p of
the word "practice".

To delete lines, at the prompt, "Enter delete parameter", write an l.  To
delete sentences, write an s.  To delete paragraphs, write a p.  (And remember
that the Braille 'n Speak thinks of a paragraph as all text between two or
more carriage returns.)

* Now let's take another example of deleting text but this time let's add the
current deletion to the trash can instead of emptying it.  Using this method
of deleting text can prove useful when you're doing a lot of deletions in a
file and want to be able to recover a deletion you made a while back in the
current editing session.  However, be clear that this process only works as
long as you don't do another kind of activity that affects the Clipboard.  If
you add deleted text to the Clipboard and then perform an insertion, the
deleted text you added to the trash can will be lost.

* Get to the end of the currently open file with a dots 4-5-6-chord and press
a carriage return (dots 4-6-chord).  Write, "This is a test of adding deleted
text to the Clipboard."  Finish with another carriage return.  Then move your
cursor back to the beginning of the text you just wrote.  You should be on the
dot 6 of the first word, "This" and we're about to delete this whole line of
text just as before, except that now, we'll add the deleted line to the
Clipboard instead of emptying out the Clipboard first and then placing this
text in it.

* Press a d-chord to enter the Delete Parameters menu.  Write an l so we can
delete the current line.  Then press an ing-sign-chord to execute the
deletion.  Your Braille 'n Speak says, "Appended, okay."  The line we just
deleted is now in the Clipboard appended to whatever text was already there
from a previous deletion or insertion or whatever.

All of these Delete parameters work the same way as outlined above in the
examples of deleting a character and deleting words.  In summary, to delete a
single chunk of text, you place your cursor somewhere within the text you want
to delete, enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord, write the
appropriate parameter - for character, word, line, sentence or paragraph - and
press an e-chord.  To delete groups of characters, words, lines, sentences and
paragraphs, you need to follow the parameter letter designation with a number,
and then press an e-chord.

Incidentally, when deleting sentences, you don't have to be in Read by
Sentence mode.  However, when you delete lines, it's a good idea to be in Read
by Lines mode - to be on the safe side.  
To delete from the current cursor location to the end of the file, write a z
at the prompt, "Enter delete parameter".  The Braille 'n Speak says, "All?" 
If you press an e-chord, all text from your current cursor location to the
very last character in the file is zapped away.  But be aware that, even
though your text is gone, the file size is still the same.  It's not as if you
ripped pages out of your binder.  It's more as if you took an eraser and wiped
out all the writing on those pages but kept the pages themselves.

Oops, we changed our minds and don't want to delete anything after all.  Or,
we do want to delete something but realize we haven't placed the cursor on the
text we want to delete and we've already pressed a d-chord.

The easiest way to abort a delete command is to press a z-chord from wherever
you are in the deleting process.  Of course, once you've pressed an e-chord,
it's too late.  The Braille 'n Speak has executed your delete command.  As
mentioned earlier, you might be able to recover from such a mistake if you
move fast.  But we won't complicate matters here with that procedure.  Just
know that you might be able to retrieve text out of the trash can if you
haven't closed the lid yet, so to speak.

What if we want to wipe out the contents of this file - sort of like erasing a
blackboard.  Understand that we're not talking about deleting the file itself
here - just its contents.
Here again, you can use the z for zapping the contents away.

Let's go through an example of zapping a file's contents (or part of a file)
without deleting the file itself.

Get to the physical Page 2 that we created a little while ago.  We'll erase
everything that's on that page.  First, get to the top of the file with an
l-chord so that we're all starting from the same place.  Find the "hard" page
break control character.

Remember how to use the Find command and how to write control characters? 
Press an f-chord.  At the prompt, "Enter text to find", press an x-chord
followed by an l.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Control l".  Then press an
e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak should say, "This is Page 2."  Yes, that's what
we had written after that control-l.  Good.

Let's get rid of the junk that we wrote for practice on Page 2.  Check what's
under the cursor first, though.  Press a dots 3-6-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "Control-l".  Do we want to get rid of the formfeed character?  No.  We
still want to have a physical Page 2.  We just want to get rid of all the text
on it.  So let's move a character to the right with a dot 6- chord.  Now we
should be on the dot 6 of the first word after the control-l.  Enter the
Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord.  When the Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter
delete parameter", write a z.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "All".  Press an
e-chord.  Now the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay."  What's under the cursor? 
Check it out with a dots 3-6-chord.  It should be on the control-l.

We suggest you practice deleting text for a bit.  Write some junk text.  Then
move your cursor to various places within the file and delete different
portions of text.  Write a couple of sentences and get into "Read by Sentence"
mode.  Then delete a sentence.  Try deleting the entire contents of the file,
too.  After all, this is only practice.  You can't lose anything important.  

Next, we're going to look at inserting text.  So we'll assume that you're
starting with a blank practice file again.

5.4 Inserting Text

As we have pointed out, when you write, text is appended to the end of the
file, unless you specifically issue a command to overwrite existing text or to
insert text prior to the end of the file.

You can insert up to one Braille 'n Speak page (4,096 characters worth of
text) at one time anywhere in your currently open file.  In fact, there's a
way you can insert even more text than that at one time, as we'll see shortly.

When you issue the Insert command, you enter an "Insert buffer" - a scratchpad
of sorts.  This is called the Clipboard.  Yes, it is that same file that
served as a trash can for deleting text in the last section.  You'll recall
that the text is not actually "thrown away" into the trash can until you press
an e-chord or perform some other function (like inserting text).  Similarly,
when you're inserting text, it is not actually moved from the Clipboard and
added to your file until you press an e-chord.

If you decide to cancel the insertion, you can press a z-chord at any time and
no text is inserted into your file.  Until you perform another function - like
deleting text, using the Braille 'n Speak's calendar, calculator, or clock -
the text you had started to insert remains in the Clipboard.  This is why
we're calling it a scratchpad for inserting text, rather than a trash can, as
we did for deleting text.

While in the scratchpad, you can use the backspace (b-chord) to erase
characters, just as you can when you're writing).  And you can see what you've
written thus far by pressing a c-chord.  In fact, all the reading commands
work while you're in Insert mode.

As with the trash can for deleting text, a scratchpad can also run out of room
to scribble the text you want to insert.  If you plan to insert large blocks
of text into a file, you should make the Clipboard big enough to hold the
block.  Otherwise, you'll have to keep inserting segments of the large block
of text no bigger than 4,096 characters each.  That can be time-consuming and
confusing with a large block of text.

Generally, you move large blocks around when you're copying from one file to
another, and we'll show you later on how to "paste" text from the Clipboard
into your files.

For now though, let's take a simple example of inserting text.  Let's write a
sentence in our empty file, "practice".  Make sure you're at the top of the
file with an l-chord and that it's empty with a c-chord.  If it is, when you
press a c-chord you'll hear, "File is empty".

Write, "This is a practice session on how to insert text into a file."  Let's
add the word "learning" before the word "how".  Move your cursor back to the
word "how" by pressing dot 2-chords until the Braille 'n Speak says, "how". 
Press a dots 3-6-chord to see what's under the cursor.  It should be on the
"h" of "how".  Now press an i-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Insert mode
active".  Write the word "learning" followed by a space, then press an e-chord
to let the Braille 'n Speak insert the text.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Okay".

Now check what's under the cursor.  It should be on the space, the last
character you inserted.  Read the entire sentence with a c-chord.  It now
says, "This is a practice session on learning how to insert text into a file".

Later, you'll see how easy it is to insert calculation results or calendar
information into your file without retyping it.  We'll discuss those more
sophisticated features in their respective sections in Section III.

Practice writing text and inserting things within it, deleting text, etc.  Get
comfortable with these word processing basics before you move on to the next
section on "cutting and pasting" text.

* 5.5 Copying Text into Your File

* The Clipboard can also be a temporary storage area for text you want to move
or copy from one place to another in your file, or even between files.  In
Section 6.10 we'll talk about copying the contents of an entire file into the
currently open file, but here we'll concentrate on copying and moving text
within our currently open file, "practice".

* As we saw in Section 5.3, the Clipboard can store text you put into it in a
couple of different ways.  Remember that when you're deleting text, you have
the option of emptying the trash can (the Clipboard) every time you delete
something, or adding the text you're deleting to whatever's already in the
Clipboard.  When you copy text into the Clipboard, the process is somewhat
similar.  That is, you can empty the Clipboard before you copy your text into
it, or you can append the text you're copying into the Clipboard to whatever's
already in the Clipboard.  Again, it's critical to keep in mind that whichever
method you choose, when you perform another activity that affects the
Clipboard, any text in the Clipboard at that time is wiped out so these
methods are only temporary means of storing data.

To copy or move a chunk of text, you have to mark one end of it.  Then you can
work with the block of text preceding or following the mark.

Start out with a clean slate.  Empty out your file and write the sentence,
"This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a file."  Follow
this sentence with two carriage returns to prepare us for a new paragraph.

Now let's copy the text, "This is a practice session ", including the space
after the word "session".  We'll put it after the two carriage returns.  To do
this, find the beginning of the text we want to copy.  In this case, it's
easy.  Simply go to the top of the file with an l-chord.  To mark the
beginning of the text, press an m-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Mark,
okay."  Now move your cursor forward with dot 5-chords until you're on the
word "on".  Essentially, what we're doing is marking the beginning of the text
we want to work with and marking its end by placing the cursor where we want
to stop.

* To copy this marked text into the Clipboard, press a gh-sign-chord (dots
1-2-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Copy or Append, press c or a". 
Write a c if you want to wipe out the contents of the Clipboard before your
text is copied into it.  Write an a if you want the text you're copying to be
added to whatever's already in the Clipboard.  If you write a c, the Braille
'n Speak responds with, "Copied."  If you write an a, the Braille 'n Speak
says, "Appended".  In either case, you're left exactly where you started from
when you began this copying process.

* For our example, we'll respond to the prompt, "Copy or Append, press c or a"
with a c so that the text we're copying into the Clipboard is the only text in
the Clipboard.  If we went to the file called Clipboard now, we'd see that our
marked text, "This is a practice session ", is stored there.  Let's copy this
marked text from the Clipboard back into our file.

By the way, notice that the text is not removed from your file.  If you press
a c-chord, you hear, "This is a practice session on learning how to copy text
into a file."  Press a dots 4-5-6-chord to get to the end of the file.  Then
press an ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Paste
what?"  Write a letter c to copy the contents of the Clipboard into your file. 
Since you can paste other information into a file, such as a date from the
calendar, you must respond to the prompt "Paste what?", in this case with a c
(for "Clipboard").  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Clipboard, okay".  If
Interactive mode is on, it adds, "This is a practice session."

* Also, keep in mind that we chose to empty the Clipboard before we copied
text into it.  So when we invoked the ing-sign-chord to paste text from the
Clipboard back into our file, or to another file for that matter, the only
text that got pasted was the text we had copied into the clipboard.

* But suppose, on the other hand, we added the text we wanted to copy into the
Clipboard, and the Clipboard already had other text in it - say, from a
previous deletion.  In that case, when we invoke the ing-sign-chord to paste
the text we had copied into the Clipboard back into our file, everything in
the Clipboard would get pasted - the text we had copied and whatever else had
been in the Clipboard before.

* Such a situation can either be wonderful or disastrous unless you're
careful.  So plan ahead when answering the gh-sign-chord prompt that says,
"Copy or Append, press c or a".  If you do choose to add text to the
Clipboard, make sure you know exactly what the Clipboard already has stored in
it or you could be very surprised at what gets pasted into your file.

Back in our example now, let's  see what's under the cursor.  With a dots
3-6-chord, you'll see that the cursor is on the dot 6 of the word "This".

But wait a minute?  Didn't we say earlier that the Braille 'n Speak always
appends text to the end of the file?  Why did we have to do a dots 4-5-6-chord
to get to the end of the file before copying the text from the Clipboard? 
Let's find out.

Go back to the top of the file with an l-chord.  Press an ing- sign-chord,
then write a c).  Now read the current line.  We think you'll hear, "This is a
practice session This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into
a file."  What happened?  The Braille 'n Speak inserted the text where your
cursor was, not at the end of the file.  Text gets appended to the end of the
file only when you are writing it, not when you're copying it.

Incidentally, having a mark at a significant place in your file, such as a
particular account number you're always needing to look up, means that you can
jump to that mark quickly.  Just press a number-sign-chord followed by an m. 
You may recall that pressing the number-sign-chord brings up the prompt,
"Move."  But this command also recognizes marks.  Pressing number-sign-chord m
immediately jumps you to the mark and your Braille 'n Speak will read you the
first line of the marked text.  

But what a mess we made in our example.  Let's get rid of this extra garbage
before we get thoroughly mixed up.

5.6 Deleting Blocks of Text

There are two methods for deleting a portion of text.

The first way to prepare a portion of text for deletion is to mark one end of
it, just as we did for copying in the previous section.

Get to the top of the file with an l-chord and press an m-chord.  The Braille
'n Speak says, "Marked, okay."  Now move the cursor to the second occurrence
of the word "This".

Enter the Delete Parameters menu with a d-chord.  At the prompt, "Enter delete
parameter", write an m.  The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Mark".  Enter an
e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay".  Now read the current line. 
You'll hear, "This is a practice session on learning how to copy text into a
file."  Whew! That extra text is gone.

The second way to prepare a portion of text for deletion is to block it from
the current cursor location to the next occurrence of a particular word (or
string of characters).  Place your cursor on the first character of the text
you want to delete.  Enter the Delete Parameters menu and at the "Enter delete
parameter" prompt, write a b (for block delete).  Then write the specific
string of characters that marks the place where you want deletion to stop. 
Press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak finds the next occurrence of the
string you provided and deletes everything from your current cursor location
up to (but not including) that string of characters.

Here's an example.  Empty out your "practice" file first so we're all starting
at the same place.  Then write, "This is a practice session.  We are learning
about  block copying and block deleting."

You want to get rid of some text, but you don't want to start all over again. 
So move your cursor to the beginning of the sentence (in our case, the top of
the file).  We want to take everything out up to the word "we".  Press a d-
chord to bring up the Delete Parameters menu, and at the "Enter delete
parameter" prompt, write a b.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Block".  Then write
the word "We".  (If your file is in Grade 2 braille, as we assume here, you
should make sure to include the dot 6 which capitalizes "We" in the sentence. 
Otherwise, everything is deleted, including the dot 6, and your sentence will
start with a lowercase letter "w".)  End your character string with an e-
chord.

The block of text is gone and your cursor should now be on the dot 6 that
capitalizes "We" and, since your cursor had been at the beginning of the file,
it should still be there, except that now the first word in the file is "We".

Play around with the concepts of copying text from one place to another and
deleting blocks of text.  In Section 6.10, we'll learn how to copy an entire
file into your currently open file.  Oh well, if you happen to copy the wrong
file into the one you have open, at least now you know how to delete all that
unwanted text.  Right now, let's turn to another powerful editing tool, the
Find and Replace function.

5.7 Find and Replace Text

A computer's ability to replace text can be a gold mine and save you a lot of
retyping, but if you replace the wrong text, you could find yourself with a
massive editing job ahead of you, so read through this section with care. 
Let's see how it works.

You begin with the f-chord that we learned about in Section 3.5.2.  When you
hear the prompt, "Enter text to find", you write the text you want the Braille
'n Speak to look for, but instead of pressing an e-chord as we showed you to
have the Braille 'n Speak perform the search, press an r-chord.

The Braille 'n Speak then says, "Enter replacement text."  Write the new text
that you want to replace the old text, and press an e-chord so that the
Braille 'n Speak knows what the new text is.

Now you hear, "Replace, Skip, All."  Write the first letter of your choice (r,
s, or a).

Selecting r replaces the current occurrence of the text you asked the Braille
'n Speak to find with the text you want to substitute.

Selecting s tells the Braille 'n Speak to skip this occurrence of the text you
asked it to find and to go find the next occurrence.  When it finds that next
occurrence, the Braille 'n Speak asks you the question again, "Replace, Skip
All."

You could go along in this way, checking each occurrence of the text you want
found and possibly replaced.  Press a c-chord when you arrive at an occurrence
of the text to make sure whether you want to replace it or skip it.

If you're definitely sure that you want to replace all occurrences of the text
you asked the Braille 'n Speak to find, select the letter a from the prompt,
"Replace Skip All".  We suggest great caution - at least at first - with a
"global" replacement.  You'll see why in our next example.

Suppose you're writing an article about the TV show, "Entertainment Tonight",
often referred to as ET.  Who wants to write out the full name of the program
each time it's mentioned?  In the days of the typewriter, you had no choice. 
But now you can just write ET throughout your article and then do a "global"
replacement of the abbreviation when you're finished.

In this particular example, what do you think happens if you replace every
instance of "et" with the real name of the program.  Words like, better, meet,
and countless others, are captured as well and you have a lot of work ahead of
you to clean up the mess.


But if you had the setting for distinguishing capital letters turned on and
searched only for the letters "ET", a global replacement of that abbreviation
could save you a lot of time and energy.

The point is that you have to be very careful when replacing text globally. 
It's an invaluable tool and experience will show you how to wield it
effectively.  Meanwhile, we suggest you practice.

One especially treacherous pit that most word processing geniuses have fallen
into at one time or another has to do with replacing format strings or control
characters.  For example, don't think you can just replace every instance of a
carriage return with a space, or two spaces with just one, or a bunch of
asterisks that make a pretty border around text with nothing at all.  If, for
instance, there are 65 asterisks going across a line to make a demarkation
visually between one set of text and the next, and you tell the Braille 'n
Speak to replace every two asterisks with nothing so that you can have a
braille file free of these extraneous decorations, guess what happens when you
replace them all?

That's right.  You still have one left.  See, since there were 65 of them, and
you told the Braille 'n Speak to take out each set of two, there's one left
over.  This is only a minor example of using global replacement without
thinking it through carefully.

On the other hand, the time saved in not having to write out "Braille 'n
Speak" every time we've use the phrase throughout this manual is a real
godsend.  We promise you.  Every instance of "bns" turns into "Braille 'n
Speak".  But even here, we had to be careful because there are a handful of
times when we do want to use that abbreviation.

Again, we recommend that you practice writing some text and then replacing
parts of it till you're comfortable with the concept.


In the next chapter, you'll discover how to manipulate files themselves.  But
before you tackle that, get real comfortable with all of the concepts we
covered in this chapter.  We've covered a lot of ground.                       CHAPTER 6: MANIPULATING FILES

As you've seen, the Braille 'n Speak lets you create files to enter your
personal data.  Soon you'll have many files in your Braille 'n Speak and will
need to do things like rename them, change their sizes, and simply open them
to read and write in them.  You might want to look at a list of your files,
delete ones you no longer need and create new ones.  All of these options are
handled through the Files menu.

Let's use our currently open "practice" file as a starting point to explore
the Files menu.

What's the name of the currently open file?  When we turn on the Braille 'n
Speak, we hear, "Braille 'n Speak Ready, filename is open".  Recall that the
Braille 'n Speak knows what file you were in and where your cursor was within
that file the last time you turned it off.  So when you turn the Braille 'n
Speak on again, hearing that file's name is very helpful.

But what if you're working in a file and get interrupted by a long phone call,
or if you can't remember what file you were working in before lunch (and you
forgot to turn off the Braille 'n Speak).  Hopefully, you weren't running on
battery, wasting valuable battery time.  Anyway, you just want to know the
name of the file that's open.  You could press a z-chord - normally used to
abort commands - from anywhere within your currently open file to hear its
name, size and whether braille translation is on for this file.

Since we're concentrating on the Files menu options in this chapter however,
let's see how to find out its name from there.  Enter the Files menu. 
Remember how we did this before to create our "practice" file?

First, enter the Options menu with an o-chord and the Braille 'n Speak says,
"Option".  Then jump to the choice by writing an f.  You are prompted, "Enter
file command".  Write a t to hear, "practice, one page, braille file is open;
enter file command".

This tells us that the open file is our "practice" file, that it is one
Braille 'n Speak "page" in size, and that it is a "braille" or Grade 2 file. 
Finally, we hear the Files menu prompt again, "Enter file command".
To get back into the file wherever you had stopped in it, just exit the Files
menu with a letter e.  Notice that you don't have to press an e-chord, just an
e.  "Exit" is one of the choices on the Files menu.  Any time you want to exit
the Files menu to return to your currently open file, simply write an e and
the Braille 'n Speak says, "Exit".

* By the way, pressing an e-chord or a z-chord also exits the Files menu.  And
now there's a way to view the myriad choices available to you in the Files
menu in case you don't remember how to jump to a particular one with a single
keystroke from the "Enter file command" prompt.

* 6.1 Exploring the File Command Menu

There are so many things you can do with the Files menu that we decided to
include a way from within the Files menu for you to view a list of all its
commands.  It's true that you can simply invoke a Files menu command with a
single keystroke and most of them are very intuitive (like c for "Create a
file").  But there are just so many that having a list of them readily
available is helpful.  In the following sections of this chapter, we'll go
through many of the commands you can issue from within the Files menu, but in
the present section, let's just check out the list of commands the Files menu
has available.

From wherever you are in your currently open file, press an o-chord to bring
up the Options menu, then write an f to hear the prompt, "Enter file command." 
From the "Enter file command" prompt, press a th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6-
chord).  Notice that this is the same command that invokes help from within
your currently open file.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "File Command menu" and
waits for you to press something else.

Now, recall from our exploration of the Status menu way back in Chapter One
that there are certain standards for navigating around a menu or list on the
Braille 'n Speak.  These also hold true here.  Press a c-chord to hear the
current command choice, in this case, "Exit Files menu".  Press a dot 4-chord
to hear the next command choice, "Create file".  Press a dot 1-chord to hear
the previous one, the one we were just on, "Exit Files menu".  Pressing dots
4-5-6-chord takes you to the last command choice in the list, ""Change name of
current folder", and pressing an l-chord takes you back to the first command
choice, "Exit Files menu".

There are so many Files menu commands that we won't spend time here listing
them all but see Appendix B for a complete list.  For the remainder of this
chapter, we'll concentrate on the commands you use the most from within the
Files menu and in other sections of this manual, we cover the other commands
available from within the Files menu where appropriate.

To exit the list of commands available in the Files menu and hear the "Enter
file command" prompt itself again, simply write an invalid keystroke, like a z
for instance, and you'll hear, "Invalid file command, enter file command".  Or
point to one of the valid command choices in the command list with dot 4-
chords and dot 1-chords and press an e-chord to invoke it.

So for example, from the command list prompt, "File Command menu", press a c-
chord and hear, "Exit Files menu", then a dot 4-chord and hear, "Create file",
pressing an e-chord at this point causes the Braille 'n Speak to prompt you,
"Enter name of file to create".  Remember, you can always abort the process
with a z-chord.  So do that now if you don't really want to create a new file
at this time.

If you press a z-chord from within the File Command menu, you get kicked out
of the Files menu altogether and end up back in your currently open file
wherever you left off, not at the "Enter file command" prompt.  So it's
important to know where you are in this process or you could find yourself
writing something in your currently open file that you intended to be a
response to a Files menu command.  Just be clear that you understand:  When
you press o-chord and then write an f, you hear, "Enter file command."  This
is a prompt from the Files menu itself.  When you press a th-sign-chord and
hear, "File command menu", you're in a list of available commands within the
Files menu.

Experiment a bit.  Navigate around the File Command menu a little before
moving onto the rest of this chapter.  There's a lot to cover.  So don't move
on until you're ready.

6.2 Listing Your Files

Right now you should have very few files in your Braille 'n Speak: some from
the factory and the "practice" file we created together.  But as we keep
stressing, it won't be long before you have many files in your Braille 'n
Speak.  So let's see how to get a listing of the files you have and how to
move from file to file.

Remember how to get into the Files menu?  From your currently open file, press
an o-chord and then write an f to bring up the prompt, "Enter file command."

From the Files menu, write the letter l to check out your current list of
files, write a q to get a "quick" list (just the filenames), or write a v to
get a "verbose" list (with all relevant file information about each file). 
Press a v-chord to copy your files list temporarily to the Clipboard.

Let's check out how many files we have.  You should be in your "practice"
file.  It doesn't matter what text you have in it right now.  We'll just
assume that you're starting from there.  

Get into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by the letter f.  At the
prompt "Enter file command", write an l.  The Braille 'n Speak should say
something like this: "File list; Help, 6 pages; Clipboard, 1 page;
Calendar.brl, 1 page, braille file; Spell.dic, 86 pages; Practice, 1 page,
braille file; 67 pages remaining, enter file command."  The number of "pages"
remaining depends on the number of files that came with your unit from the
factory, of course, and also depends on the sizes of your files.  This is just
an example.

Notice that, at the end of the list, you hear, "Enter file command."  You're
still in the Files menu after hearing your file list.

Let's check that our "practice" file is still the currently open file with a
t.  The Braille 'n Speak should say, "practice, one page, braille file, is
open.  Enter file command".

For practice purposes, let's create a couple of new files before we look at
how to move from file to file.  Create a file called "temp" for "temporary"
and another called "names".  We'll use the "names" file as an address book
later on.  We'll walk you through creating the "temp" file and let you create
"names" by yourself.

To create the file "temp", press an o-chord and at the "Option" prompt, write
an f to enter the Files menu.  At the prompt "Enter file command", write a c. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file to create."  Write "temp" and press an
e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter the file size".  Let's make this a
file with two Braille 'n Speak "pages" so that we can play with the size of
this "temp" file later.  Write a 2 (dropped b) and press an e-chord.  The
Braille 'n Speak now says, "Use Grade 2 translator, enter y or n".  Write a y. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "temp now open".

Go ahead and create the "names" file.  You'll be in that file ready to write
something when you finish creating it.  If you like, you may enter a few names
and addresses, phone numbers, etc.  A good idea is to write a single carriage
return between each part of an entry and a double carriage return between
entries.

For example, "Jane Doe, carriage return, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  carriage
return, Washington, DC, double carriage return; John Doe, single carriage
return, 555-1234, double carriage return ..."

This way, you can move from entry to entry by simply pressing dots 5-6-chords
to move forward or dots 2-3-chords to move backward.

We'll assume that you're in the file "names" as we proceed with our next
topic, showing you how to move from file to file.

* 6.3 Navigating Through Your Files

Now let's explore moving from the beginning to the end of our existing files,
checking out the names of each file along the way.  We know how to get a list
of all the files, but how do we quickly find the first file, or the last one
or one somewhere in the middle?

Each file in the Braille 'n Speak is numbered, starting with 0 for the Help
file.  Moving to a file does not mean you can read it or write in it.  All
we're doing is "pointing" to files - physically moving to the place in the
Braille 'n Speak's memory where the file is located, something like finding
the "tab" in our "binder" of files.  When you find a tab, you check out its
name and either turn to the pages within it or you move to the next tab, or
the previous one, or skip to the last one or the first one in your binder. 
That's all we're doing here.

To move from file to file, get into the Files menu with an o-chord followed by
an f.  At the "Enter file command" prompt, you can do the following:

To move to the first file, press an l-chord.  To move to the last file, press
a dots 4-5-6-chord.  To move back one file in the list, press a dot 1-chord
and to move to the next one in the list, press a dot 4-chord.

To see the name of the file you're currently pointing to, press a c-chord and
to spell out its name, press a dots 2-5-chord.

Does anything sound familiar about these commands?  They sound suspiciously
similar to the commands for navigating around a currently open file - finding
the top of a file with an l-chord, reading the current line with a c-chord,
spelling the current word with a dots 2-5-chord, etc.  You can memorize the
Files menu commands to move from file to file quickly by remembering how
similar they are to the ones you already know.  The major difference is that
when you use one of these commands from within the Files menu, it points to a
file.  Then it  reads you the file's name, the number of pages it contains,
and whether braille translation is active for that file.

* If all you want to hear is a file's name, though, without any other
information about it, from within the Files menu just press dot 3-chord to
move back a file and dot 6-chord to move forward a file.  The Braille 'n Speak
says the file's name and waits for you to enter another Files menu command.

* Remember that all you're doing with dot 3-chord and dot 6-chord (just as
with dot 1-chord and dot 4-chord) is pointing to a file's name.  If you exit
the Files menu after hearing a file's name, you'll find yourself back in
whatever file you had open before you brought up the Files menu.  Shortly,
we'll show you how to open a file once you're pointing to it from within the
Files menu.  But first, practice navigating through the files list itself.

From your currently open file, "names", press an o-chord followed by an f to
get the prompt, "Enter file command".  Now press an l-chord.  The Braille 'n
Speak should say something like, "File number 0, Help, 6 pages".

* Now press a dot 4-chord to hear, "Clipboard, 1 page."  Press another dot
4-chord to hear, "Calendar.brl, 1 page, braille file."  Press a dot 1-chord to
go back a file and hear, "Clipboard, 1 page."  Press a dots 2-5-chord to hear
the name of this file spelled out, "File number 1, Clipboard, c l i p b o a r
d, 1 page".  Press a dot 6-chord to hear just the name of the next file in the
list ("calendar.brl", and then a dot 3-chord to hear the previous file's name
again, "clipboard".

Just for fun, let's see what happens when you write a t.  (Maybe you can't
remember which file you last opened.) The Braille 'n Speak should say, "names,
1 page, braille file, is open.  Enter file command."  Now press a c-chord. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "Clipboard, 1 page."  Why?  Even though our
currently open file is "names", we're looking at the "tab" for the file called
"Clipboard".  See the difference?

The file we're pointing to may not be the one that's open.  If we want to open
the file we're pointing to, we have to tell the Braille 'n Speak to open that
file with an o-chord.

Knowing whether the file you're pointing to in the Files list is currently
open is crucial.  Basically, you can issue a Files menu command to affect a
file in two ways: if the file is already open, you can affect it with a
command from the Files menu by writing the first letter of the command (for
example, r for Rename).  But if the file is not open, you must point to it
first and issue the command from the Files menu with its corresponding
letter-chord command (for example, an r-chord for Rename).

Let's look at how to open a file next.

6.4 Opening an Existing File

So we're moving along, checking the names of our files and run across the one
we want to open, even though we already have "names" open.  We stopped at
"Clipboard".  That's not a good file to open because that's the Braille 'n
Speak's trash can, scratchpad and temporary storage area.

Let's get back into our old "practice" file.  At the prompt "Enter file
command", press a few dot 4-chords until you hear, "practice, 1 page, braille
file."  Press an o-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "practice now open".  We
can go ahead and read or write here.

What happened to "names"?  How nice that the Braille 'n Speak took care of
closing it and saving that file for us without our having to do anything. 
This is a departure from the usual procedures you follow with files on your
standard personal computer.  The Braille 'n Speak is unique in that you never
have to save a file - not when you go to open another file, not when you turn
off the unit.

It seems simple enough to open a file by moving to it and opening it with an
o-chord when you have just a few files.  But think about what it would be like
to have to do that if you have thirty files.  What's an easier way?

If you know the name of the file you want to open, all you have to do is tell
the Braille 'n Speak its name and the unit will find it and open the file for
you.  For instance, let's say you're in the file "practice" and want to go
back to the file, "names".  Press an o-chord followed by an f to get to the
Files menu prompt, "Enter file command".  Then write the letter o.  The
Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file to open".  Write out the name of the file
and press an e-chord.  Almost instantaneously the Braille 'n Speak says,
"names now open".

If you're in a file and realize you need some information from the file you
last opened, press an o-chord followed by the letter l to bring up that file
again.  You don't even need an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak remembers what
file you opened last and takes you there, placing you at whatever point you'd
stopped in that file.  Pressing o-chord l again returns you to the file from
which you started at the point where you'd stopped working in it.  Or, you can
flip back and forth between these last two files you've opened by pressing
dots 1-2-5-6-chords.

So, for example, if you have "names" open, but want to check something in your
"practice" file (which was the file you had opened last), just press an o-
chord l to bring up the "Practice" file.  Then, when you finish getting what
you need from it, return to your "names" file in a flash by pressing another
o-chord l.

Even if you turn off the Braille 'n Speak it remembers the last two files you
had opened.  So when you turn the machine on again, not only does it place you
back in the file in which you were last working at the point you had stopped,
it can jump you to the file you had opened before that one and place you at
the point you had stopped in it, as well.  This feature can be especially
useful if you find yourself juggling between, say, your Calendar file and your
"Names" file all the time.

Now, for practice, try opening a file that doesn't exist.  Bring up the Files
menu with an o-chord f.  At the prompt, "Enter file command", write "hello"
and press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Can't find that file. 
Enter file command."  This means that the file doesn't exist or that you wrote
an incorrect name.  If you really think you have a file by the name you wrote,
it might be that you spelled it differently.  So you can move around from file
to file with dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords until you're pointing to it, hear
its correct spelling with a dots 2-5-chord, and then open it with an o-chord.

And speaking of filenames and how you spell them, take care how you name your
files.  What do you think will happen if you name a file "Mary" using Grade 2
braille?  The Braille 'n Speak will let you name your file that way.  It's not
smart enough to know that you're writing Grade 2 braille when you're in the
Files menu.  Braille translation works only from within a file.

What happens when a file called "Mary" written in Grade 2 braille is pointed
to, opened, appears as part of a files list, etc.?  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"comma m greater y."  It sees the dot 6 and "ar" signs all as ASCII symbols,
not as contracted braille.  So we suggest that you always name your files
using uncontracted braille.

Oh-oh.  Did you use Grade 2 braille when you created "names"?  If so, don't
worry.  You'll see how to rename it shortly.  But first, let's check out
another way to open files, using a shortcut, numbers.

* 6.5 Opening an Existing File by Its Number

* Did you notice when we moved from file to file that file numbers as well as
file names were spoken?  When we go to the beginning of the files list from
the Files menu with an l-chord or to the end of the list with a dots
4-5-6-chord and even when we press a c-chord to see the name of the file
currently being pointed to, the Braille 'n Speak always says something like,
"File 0, Help, 6 pages".  This is because files in the Braille 'n Speak's
memory are numbered sequentially.  You can have a maximum of 127 files in RAM
and 992 in Flash, assuming that each file is small.

Actually, the number of files you can have in the Braille 'n Speak at any
given time varies with their sizes at that time.  If you have a file with
thirty Braille 'n Speak pages - a substantial size, by the way - chances are,
the total number of files you'll be able to fit in the Braille 'n Speak will
be far less than the upper limits we provide here.  We suggest you create
small files and add Braille 'n Speak "pages" to them as needed, rather than
have valuable space taken up with blank Braille 'n Speak "pages".

But to get back to the original point of this section: The Braille 'n Speak
numbers files sequentially.  The Help file is 0, the Clipboard is 1, and so
on.  If you frequently need to jump to a certain file, just open the file by
its number.

* Note: It's important to keep in mind that although the Braille 'n Speak can
hold up to 127 files in RAM, you can get to only the first hundred files by
using a two-digit number from 00 through 99.  For files numbered higher than
99, you'll need to open them  through the Files menu.  Also, files stored in
Flash cannot be opened by number.  Technical details are in Appendix A.  For
our present discussion though, let's see an example of opening a two--digit
numbered file located in the RAM portion of your unit.

Bring up the Help file from whatever file you're in right now.  What's the
easiest way, remember?  Press a th-sign-chord and the Braille 'n Speak jumps
into the Help file with the prompt, "Help is open".  (Depending on how many
files were loaded into your unit from the factory, the number in our example
may be off.  But go ahead and open the file whose number we suggest anyway for
practice.) For example, let's say that you want to get into the fifth file on
your Braille 'n Speak.  That might be the file we created a little while ago
called "temp".  From the Help file, press an o-chord and you'll hear the
prompt, "Option".  Now instead of getting into the Files menu as we've been
doing, simply write 04, remembering to use dropped numbers.  (Why 04?  The
numbers of the files start with 0 for the Help file; therefore, the fifth file
in the Braille 'n Speak is numbered 04.) The Braille 'n Speak says something
like, "Temp now open."  It's that easy.  You don't even have to press an
e-chord.  In this case, the Braille 'n Speak doesn't need it.

What happens if you write the number for a non-existent file, like 9 (given
our present number of six files)?  No problem.  The Braille 'n Speak merely
says, "File doesn't exist" and leaves you exactly where you were in your
currently open file.

Of course, if you try to write a file's number in Grade 2 braille, the letter
i, instead of the ASCII dropped i, the Braille 'n Speak will really reject
your request, saying, "Invalid input" and still leave you exactly where you
were in your currently open file.  The thing to be careful of in using the
o-chord from within a file to get to the Options menu is that, if you write a
letter the Braille 'n Speak thinks is a real option, like the letter f we've
been working with, it will take you to that option.  In the case of the letter
f, we already know it's the Files menu.

Now let's move forward with several housekeeping file commands.

6.6 Renaming a File

How about changing the name of our file called "temp" to "drill".  We're just
going to practice doing things to this file as if it had data, so we can play
with it without danger of messing up anything important.

We'll assume that your currently open file is "temp".  Let's enter the Files
menu in the usual way with an o-chord followed by an f.  At the "Enter file
command" prompt, write an r.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter filename". 
Write the filename "drill" and press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Okay, enter file command".

Note that we're still in the Files menu.  To get back into the currently open
file, now called "drill", all we have to do is write an e to exit the Files
menu.

But what if you want to change the name of another file, one that is not
currently open?  The first thing to do is to "point" to the file.  Remember
how that's done?  Let's change the name of the file "names" to "address".  We
don't have to open that file.  We just have to point to it.  So from the Files
menu, at the "Enter file command" prompt, press a couple of dot 4-chords until
you're on "names".  Then press an r-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter
filename".  Write "address" followed by an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak now
says, "Okay, enter file command" just as it did before.  Where will you be
when you press the e to exit the Files menu?  Right.  Back in the file "drill"
because that is the currently open file.


Notice the difference in the two commands just discussed for renaming a file:
You issue the command with an r if the file is currently open and with an
r-chord if you are pointing to the file but it is not currently open.  Keep
this in mind as we move through the next few commands.  They work the same
way.

6.7 Write-Protecting and Unprotecting a File

To guard against a serious blunder, such as accidentally deleting your address
file, you can "protect" files from deletion or from being overwritten in some
way.  For files that are absolutely essential, it is a good idea, especially
if you want to try out a new command on the Braille 'n Speak that affects
files (for example, changing its size).  Protecting a file is like putting a
"lock" on it in effect, safeguarding yourself against losing or scrambling its
contents.

The Protect and Unprotect commands work the same way as many other commands
within the Files menu.  If a file is already open, writing a p from the Files
menu protects the file.  If the file is not already open, point to it first,
then issue a p-chord command to protect it.  The corresponding command pair is
the letter u and u-chord for Unprotecting files.  Let's go through an example.

Open your file called "drill", if you're not already in it.  Now get into the
Files menu with an o-chord followed by an f.  At the "Enter file command"
prompt, write a p.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is write-protected; enter
file command."  Exit the Files menu with an e and try writing something in
your "drill" file.

Every time you write a character, the Braille 'n Speak says, "File is
write-protected."  Oh, you can read the file just fine.  But now you can't
write anything in it.  In fact, your "drill" file has nothing in it right now
anyway.  But if it did, you would only be able to read its contents, not write
in the file.  
Let's protect our "address" file, shall we?  You wouldn't want to lose that. 
Bring up the Files menu with an o-chord followed by an f and at the "Enter
file command" prompt, press some dot 4-chords and dot 1-chords until you're
pointing to "address".  Now press a p-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "File
is write-protected; enter file command".  Great.  Even though the "address"
file is not currently open, we were able to protect it by pointing to it first
and then issuing a p-chord.

Now let's get back to our "drill" file and Unprotect it in case we want to
write something in it or do something else with the file.  Just exit the Files
menu with an e.  Remember, you never opened your "address" file, just
protected it.  So now you should be back in "drill".  Bring up the Files menu
and at the "Enter file command" prompt, write a u.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Unprotected; enter file command."  That's fine.  Simply exit the Files menu
with an e and write something in your "drill" file.  You should be able to do
that with no hitches now that the file is unprotected again.

Another way to protect a file - not so much from glitches, but for privacy in
the event someone else has access to your Braille 'n Speak - is to put a
password on the file.

Enter the Files menu and open the file you want to protect with a password. 
Then bring up the Files menu again.  Write a w.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Enter password".  Write a word with special meaning to you that is not likely
to be guessed by others and make sure it contains no more than six characters. 
Or, write a set of letters and numbers that means something to you but that
would be gibberish to anyone else.  Press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "Enter password again."  Re-enter the same password and press another e-
chord.

From now on, when you want to open this file, you'll get the prompt, "Enter
password" each time you press an o-chord from the Files menu to try to get
into the file.

If you write an incorrect password, the Braille 'n Speak kicks you into the
Help file, saying, "Help is open."

To take the password away from a file, bring up the Files menu and press an o-
chord as if you're going to open it.  At the "Enter password" prompt, press a
dot 5-chord followed by an e-chord.  At the second, "Enter password" prompt,
press another dot 5-chord, followed by another e-chord.  From now on, the file
can be opened again without a password.

Next, we'll see how to delete files you no longer need.

6.8 Deleting Files

Let's delete the file called "drill".  After all, it's just a junk file we're
using for practice.  We'll assume that you're currently in the "drill" file as
we go through this example.  Get into the Files menu and at the "Enter file
command" prompt, write a d.  The Braille 'n Speak says, ""Enter file to
delete".  Write the name of the currently open file, "drill", and press an
e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Delete drill, are you sure; enter y or
n?"  Press a y.  The Braille 'n Speak confirms, "Okay, Help is open; enter
file command."  Since you just deleted the file you had open, the Braille 'n
Speak put you back into the Help file.

But now, let's look at a slightly different scenario where the file you want
to delete is not the file that is currently open.  Let's get rid of our file,
"practice".

First, get into your file, "address".  It should still be protected from when
we worked through that example.  Don't worry that you can't write in it for
now.

Get into the Files menu and at the "Enter file command" prompt, write a d.  At
the prompt, "Enter file to delete", write "practice" followed by an e-chord. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "Delete practice, are you sure; enter y or n?" 
Write a y.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay, enter file command."

Where do you think you'll be when you exit the Files menu with an e?  Right. 
Back in your "address" file.  Why?  Because the file you just deleted is not
the file you had open.  So the Braille 'n Speak went out into the binder and
found the file you wanted to delete, chucked it and returned you to your
currently open file.  It's like tossing something in the wastebasket under
your desk.

Here's another example of file deletion.  This time, let's look at what
happens when we don't have a file open, but are pointing to a file we want to
delete.  Open up the Help file with a th-sign-chord.  Get into the Files menu
and at the prompt "Enter file command", use dot 4-chords till you reach the
file "address".  You're pointing to it, but it is not open.  Press a d-chord. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, "File is write-protected".  Good.  Remember, we had
protected the "address" file from just this kind of potential disaster.

If the "address" file had not been protected though, the Braille 'n Speak
would still have a safeguard for you.  The prompt would have been, "Delete
address, are you sure; enter y or n?"  All you'd have to do is write the
letter n, and the Braille 'n Speak would simply say, "Enter file command" and
you'd still have the Help file open.

Our final example involves deleting a group of files with similar names.  If
you're accustomed to using MS DOS file naming conventions and wildcards, this
section will be old news to you.  But check out the command that lets you
delete groups of similarly named files.

From Section 4.2, you'll remember that we explained how MS DOS uses a two-part
name for files: the filename portion can be up to eight characters in length
and the extension portion can be up to three characters in length.  A period
separates the two parts.  So a typical filename is something like,
"letter.txt" or "address.doc".  We also said that you don't have to have all
eight characters for the filename portion or all three characters for the
extension portion, and in fact, you can have just the filename portion without
the period and the extension.

For many MS DOS commands, you can use "wildcard" characters when you want to
affect a group of files with similar names - for example, if you want to copy
a bunch of files all ending with the extension "txt", or if you want to delete
a group of files all beginning with the numbers "123".

Likewise, the Braille 'n Speak understands these wildcard characters for
certain file commands.  The first of these commands we've encountered is the
command to delete files.

The wildcard characters are the asterisk ("*" or dots 1-6 in computer braille)
and the question mark ("?" or dots 1-4-5-6 in computer braille).  The asterisk
replaces a group of characters, the question mark replaces an individual
character.

For instance, say, you have the files, "letter.txt" and "letter.doc".  The
wildcard name for these two files is "letter.*" because the part that is the
same in both files is the filename "letter" and the part that is different is
the extensions "txt" and "doc".  Therefore, the wildcard is the extension
portion.

Likewise, if you have the files, "dates.txt" and "rates.txt", the wildcard
name for them is, "?ates.txt" because everything in their respective names is
the same except for the wildcard first letter in their filename portions. 
(For further examples, see Appendix A.)

What does all this have to do with deleting files?  If you have a group of
files in the Braille 'n Speak with similar names that you want to get rid of,
from the Files menu write a g.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter file to
delete".  The filename you write should include at least one wildcard.  Just
remember to write in computer braille the asterisk and/or question mark you
include as part of the filename.  The Braille 'n Speak finds the files with
all the names that match your wildcard description and says something like,
"Delete file '*.txt', y or n?"  Write a y to accept the deletion or n to
cancel it.  Clearly, this is a command to be used with caution but it can save
you time when you have a large number of files to delete that have some part
of their names in common.

If you are extra cautious of deleting groups of files all at once, use
wildcard characters with the d command instead of the g command from within
the Files menu.  When you respond to the d command with a wildcard filename
pattern, it forces the Braille 'n Speak to ask you whether you want to delete
each file it finds with your wildcard character pattern instead of asking you
if you want to delete the whole group at once.  This may seem tedious with a
large group of similarly named files.  But it is a safety net, just in case
there's one file out of that big bunch you really don't want to delete after
all.

The next thing we'll look at related to manipulating files is changing their
size.  Let's play with this concept next.

6.9 Changing the Size of a File

Throughout this section, we've talked a lot about the Braille 'n Speak "page".
2 Let's briefly review this concept.

A Braille 'n Speak "page" is really a block of Braille 'n Speak memory
consisting of space equal to 4,096 characters.  If you consider that a
standard 11 by 11-1/2 inch piece of braille paper can hold a maximum of one
thousand characters, you can see that 4,096 is a lot.  It's like having four
pieces of braille paper each filled with characters in every single cell.  And
of course, that's not how braille pages are filled.  You have spaces - which
by the way, computers count as characters.  You have blank lines for
formatting purposes, etc.  Blank lines are counted by a computer as the
control characters we mentioned earlier, carriage returns and linefeeds.

Since the Braille 'n Speak's memory is not "pieces of paper", but rather a
continuous space to be filled with characters, and since the Braille 'n Speak
doesn't care whether those characters are text or control characters, the
blocks of 4,096 characters worth of memory called "pages" are hefty chunks of
memory.

Usually, when you create a Braille 'n Speak file, it's a good idea to create
it with only one "page".  Unless you know that you're going to be filling up
the file very rapidly with data, why waste valuable Braille 'n Speak memory by
creating a file that has many blank "pages"?

But the time will no doubt come when you do need to add a "page" to an
existing file.  The Braille 'n Speak lets you add space to a file, but only in
chunks or "pages" of 4,096 characters worth of space.  Let's see how this
works.

First you might want to check how much room there is left in your file. 
Unless you've gotten a "File is full" message when you try to write, or a "not
enough room" message when you try to copy or insert, you're still okay.

Let's work with your "address" file.  Press an r-chord from anywhere within
your file to see how much room you have left.  Chances are, you have plenty. 
Now open the Help file with the shortcut, th-sign-chord (dots 1-4-5-6-chord).

Another way to check how many characters are in a file is through the Files
menu.  Bring it up with the usual o-chord followed by an f and write a wh-
sign-chord (dots 1-5-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak says something like,
"Help 20,785 bytes, enter file command."  Remember, the number of characters
counted includes everything in your file: control characters, spaces,
decorative characters, formatting strings, and so on.  But it does give you a
very accurate reading of the size of the file that you're pointing to from
within the Files menu.

Bring up the Files menu again and this time write just a wh-sign.  The Braille
'n Speak says, "Enter filename".  Write "address" and press an e-chord.  The
Braille 'n Speak tells you its size even though you haven't pointed to it with
dot 1- or dot 4-chords, and even though the "address" file is not currently
open.  If you answered the "Enter filename" prompt with a wildcard
description, such as the ones we described in the previous section, the
Braille 'n Speak would tell you the sizes of all the files fitting the
wildcard pattern you wrote.

In any case, you can use a wh-sign-chord from the Files menu to get the size
of the open file, and just a plain wh-sign to get the size of the file you're
pointing to even if it's not open, or the sizes of a group of files with
similar names.

Now leave the Files menu with an e.  You should be back in the Help file. 
Since the last file you had open before you got into the Help file was
"address", and since you got into Help with the th-sign-chord, pressing a z-
chord should reopen "address".

Run through this example a couple of times for practice.  We jumped around a
lot just to show you how flexible your Braille 'n Speak is about leaping from
file to file and giving you information about them quickly and efficiently.

Now we're going to make our "address" file bigger.  Even though right now it's
big enough, let's practice adding a "page" to it.  First we have to Unprotect
it because otherwise the Braille 'n Speak won't let us do anything to the
file.

Find the file "address" from your Files menu and open it, if you're not
already there.  Don't worry that the Braille 'n Speak tells you the file is
write-protected.  Get into the Files menu and Unprotect the "address" file
with a u at the "Enter file command" prompt.  The Braille 'n Speak should say,
"Unprotected; enter file command."  Now just write an e to exit the Files menu
and get back into your "address" file.  Check out how much room there is left
in the file at this point with an r-chord.  It should be considerable, over
thirty-five hundred characters worth, anyway, unless you have entered lots of
names and addresses.  Under normal circum stances, we'd say, fine.  Leave the
file as is and don't add to it.  But for practice, let's make the file bigger. 
Get into the Files menu and at the prompt, write a b.  The Braille 'n Speak
says, "Enter number of pages to expand."  Press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Okay."  And where do you suppose you are?  Yes.  Right where you
left off within your "address" file.  The Braille 'n Speak simply gave you
another "page" worth of memory and put you back where you were in the file.

If you want to increase the size of your file by more than one page at once,
answer the prompt with a dropped number, indicating how many extra pages you
want.  But unless you know that you're going to be filling a file with a lot
of data quickly - such as a file from your computer - it's probably better to
increase pages one at a time so that you don't waste valuable Braille 'n Speak
space.

How much room do you have in the "address" file now?  Press an r-chord.  The
number should be well over eight thousand.

Let's return the "address" file to its original one-page size.  This is really
too big for our purposes right now.  Get back into the Files menu and write an
s at the "Enter file command" prompt.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter
number of pages to subtract".  Press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Okay" and once again leaves you back in your file, just where you had left
off.

If you want to decrease the size of a file, answering the prompt with the
number of pages you want to remove deletes them from the end of the file.

Did you get that?  When the Braille 'n Speak adds or subtracts "pages" from
your file, understand that the block is being added to or subtracted from the
end of your file.  You can't, for example, be five lines into a file, and
decide that you want a blank chunk of space between where you are and the next
block of text you already had in this file.  Or, that you have a chunk of text
you no longer want and therefore you'd like the Braille 'n Speak to subtract
that block using the commands just described.

How do you add and delete text?  We covered that earlier.  You use the Insert
command or the Delete command within your file for those kinds of activities. 
The commands described in the present section have to do with big chunks of
Braille 'n Speak memory.  Can you see how crucial it is to keep track of free
space in a file and to know how many characters are actually in that file
before removing pages from the end of your file?

Just as with previous commands within the Files menu, you can make a file
bigger or smaller, adding or subtracting Braille 'n Speak "pages", when those
files are not open.  As with other Files menu commands, you point to the file
first and then issue a b-chord or s-chord (for bigger and smaller
respectively) and follow the prompts to make the file being pointed to bigger
or smaller.

Now that we have more than one file of personal data in the Braille Lite,
let's see how to copy an entire file into the one you have open.

* 6.10 Copying an Entire File into the Currently Open File

Well, by now you should have at least a "practice" and an "address" file in
your Braille 'n Speak.  Be adventurous and create a couple of other files,
too.  Or, start adding information to your "calendar.brl" file.

What we'll talk about in this section is how to copy an entire file into the
one you currently have open.  Let's take an example.

Suppose you're writing a school paper in a file called "paper" and have all
your bibliography information in another file called "bibliography".  You were
very diligent when you wrote your bibliography notes in that file and you made
sure that it was alphabetized and punctuated properly.  Who wants to have to
retype all that into your actual paper?  So we'll copy that bibliography file
into this one.

The first step is to find out how many Braille 'n Speak pages your currently
open file contains.  Remember?  You can do this by entering the Files menu and
writing a t to hear the Braille 'n Speak report information about this file,
including how many Braille 'n Speak pages it contains.

Next, you'll need to know how many pages the "bibliography" file contains. 
Assuming you're still in the Files menu after you found out the number of
pages your currently open file has, move to the "bibliography" file by
pointing to it with dot 1-chord or dot 4-chord until you hear its name.  Then
press a c-chord to hear a report about information on this file.

Remember that your currently open file is still "paper".  All we've done here
is point to the "bibliography" file to check out the number of Braille 'n
Speak pages it contains to make sure we have enough room in the file we do
have open to accommodate it.

Return to your currently open file now by pressing an e, e-chord, or z-chord. 
Any of these keystrokes will exit the Files menu and put you back into "paper"
again where you left off in that file.

If the "paper" file you're working in isn't big enough, you'll need to make it
bigger so it can accommodate the incoming file.  Review Section 6.9 to see how
to do that.

Assuming your currently open file is big enough, or that you've made it big
enough, to fit the incoming file, move your cursor to the place where you want
to insert the incoming file.  In our case, this is a bibliography so we'll
make sure we're at the end of the currently open file with a dots 4-5-6-chord.

It's critical to place your cursor exactly where you want the insertion to
take place because the file will be copied wherever your cursor is located. 
Even if where you want the new file to be is at the end of the current one,
you should probably write a carriage return or a hard page break at the point
where the new file is to be inserted.  Otherwise, the new file may align
differently once it's copied into your current file than it did when it was a
separate file.  Words may wrap differently and page numbering may be way off
from what you expect.  So be clear about where you want the new file to go in
your current document or you could have a mess on your hands.

The good news though is that you can delete large chunks of text as we saw in
Section 5.6.  So in case you end up with the wrong file or it's in the wrong
place, you can recover.

Okay, we're ready to copy.

Press an ing-sign-chord (dots 3-4-6-chord) and you'll hear, "Paste what?" 
Write a letter f (for File) and the Braille 'n Speak says, "File, enter
filename."

Write the name of the file you want to insert ("bibliography" in our example)
and press an e-chord.  The file is instantly inserted at your cursor position
and, if Interactive mode is turned on, the Braille 'n Speak begins reading its
contents to you.  If the Braille 'n Speak starts chattering away the contents
of the file, you can shut up the speech with a z-chord.  And you might want to
do just that if the file you've just inserted is long.

In the event you miscalculate the number of Braille 'n Speak pages you need
for the incoming file, when you try to insert it, the Braille 'n Speak says,
"Not enough room" and leaves you back in your currently open file exactly
where you were at the point where you expected the file to be copied.

Also, remember that all you've done is copy the file, not removed it.  The
original is still intact, thank goodness.

Practice awhile with the commands we've gone over in these last few sections. 
We've covered a great deal.  The next thing we need to do is to find out how
much room we have free in the Braille 'n Speak.

* 6.11 Free Space in the Braille 'n Speak

* As you add and delete files and change their sizes, the amount of free space
in the Braille 'n Speak varies.  From time to time, it's good to check out
just how much free space you do have left, especially if you're about to add a
biggie.  This way you can find out how many "pages" you have left in RAM as
well as how much memory you have left in FLASH.

* From the Files menu, simply write an f at the "Enter file command" prompt. 
The Braille 'n Speak reports that you have x-number of "pages" left and how
much "flash" memory you have left.  For example, you'll hear something like,
"184 pages remaining; 2045K FLASH; enter file command".  Of course, this
example is for an empty Braille 'n Speak.  No doubt, your unit will say
numbers that are very different.

* And since we have so much room to work with, why not set up our files into
more organized groupings for easier access.  After all, who can remember the
names and numbers of up to 127 files in RAM and up to 992 of them in Flash. 
The facility to create folders will help a lot.  So let's look at this next.

* 6.12 Working with Folders

Recall from Section 1.2 that we mentioned you can organize your files into
folders for easier use.  Now that you know how to create your own personal
files and work with them, you'll find that your files list may rapidly grow
out of control.  In other words, there's no reason why you couldn't have a
phonebook file, followed by a letter to a friend, followed by a file
containing your notes from class, your recipe file, and so on.  And what about
external programs like the checkbook writer and BrailleBase, GraphIt, or
BrailleTerm, that you might also have loaded onto your unit.

Such a hodgepodge  is okay for a while but who can keep track of it all after
twenty or thirty files have been created.  With the expanded capacity of your
Braille 'n Speak, there's no telling how many files might be floating around.

Let's return for a moment to our description of the Braille 'n Speak as a
"binder" with tabs separating each group of pages into "files".  As we said in
Section 1.2, you might decide to separate groups of related files into
different "binders" or "folders".

For example, your recipes file, your diet chart, and your restaurant menus
could be in a folder called "food".  Your checkbook, budget information, bank
statements and the like could be in a folder called "money".  And how about
all those games you downloaded from our BBS to play in your spare time?  Why
not put them all in a folder called "games".

As you can see, having folders can make life much simpler once you have more
than just a few files in your Braille 'n Speak.  Let's see how it all works.

* 6.12.1 Running in Folder Mode

The first thing you need to understand is that when you create folders and put
your files into them, you're not really making extra copies of your files. 
When you have "Folder mode" turned on, it simply means that you can access
your files in a more organized way.  But there is still only one copy of each
of your files in your unit.

To insure that you don't think you've lost files you thought you had, we've
made "folder mode" a setting you can toggle from the Status menu.  If you're
an old-time user, it's important to realize that if the feature is turned off,
your unit will behave as it always has, allowing you to view your files
through the Files menu as we learned earlier in this chapter.  But when
"folder mode" is turned on, you have the option of flipping back and forth
between viewing your files in the standard way we explained in Section 6.2, or
in the new way, a folderful at a time.

To turn on "folder mode", enter the Status menu with the usual st-sign-chord
(dots 3-4-chord).  Now jump to the setting that toggles this mode on and off
with an f-chord.

From the factory, we have set the "folder mode" to "off" so you should hear,
"Allow folder mode, off" the first time you bring up this setting in the
Status menu.  To turn it on, write a y.  Any time you want to disable "folder
mode", simply toggle it off with an n.

While "folder mode" is turned on, you'll be able to move files in and out of
folders you create with ease.  And we provide an initial couple of folder
names for your convenience.


Now that we have toggled "folder mode" on from within the Status menu, let's
look at how it affects the way we can view and bring up our files.

* 6.12.2 Navigating through Folders

Once folder mode is in effect, you can flip between viewing your files as you
always have or viewing them in their respective folders.  To do this, enter
the Files menu from wherever you are in your currently open file.  Pressing
the spacebar toggles between "all files mode", which is the way you've been
viewing your files up to now, and "folder mode", which is the new way to view
your files in whatever folders you put them.

Go ahead and try this now.  We'll assume you're in your "practice" file so
we're all starting from the same place.  Bring up the Files menu with an o-
chord, followed by an f.  At the prompt, "Enter file command", press the
spacebar.

Since this is the first time we've invoked folder mode, you should hear,
"Folder mode, RAM startup, RAM  folder, enter file command".  In fact, when
folder mode is in effect from within the Status menu and you have toggled the
Files menu to view your files in their folders, whenever you bring up the
Files menu, you'll hear the name of the current folder before you hear the
familiar prompt, "Enter file command".

Now, what is this RAM startup folder?  Since your unit is equipped with RAM
and Flash memory, and since you can have folders in either memory area of your
Braille 'n Speak, the default names of your RAM and Flash folders are "RAM
startup" and "Flash startup".  Make sense?

At the moment, the "RAM startup" folder contains all your files because we
haven't moved any of them to another folder, and we haven't created new files
in another folder.  Your "Flash startup" folder is present but has no files in
it since we haven't moved any files from the RAM area into the Flash memory
area.

To move from file to file in the current folder, you can just use the same dot
1-chord to move back a file and dot 4-chord to move forward a file that you've
always used when looking at your files list.  To move from folder to folder,
press dots 2-3-chord to move back a folder and dots 5-6-chord to move forward
a folder.

Right now, all you can do is flip back and forth between your "RAM startup"
and your "Flash startup" folders.  From the Files menu prom, "Enter file
command", press dots 5-6-chord.  As we said, the "Flash startup" folder has no
files at present and so the Braille 'n Speak reports, "Flash startup" folder;
folder is empty, enter file command".  Flip back to your other folder with a
dots 2-3-chord and you'll hear, "RAM startup, RAM  folder, enter file
command".

To hear the name of the currently open folder, from the "Enter file command"
prompt, write a dots 2-3-5-6-chord.  Right now, you'll hear either "RAM
startup, RAM folder selected, enter file command" or "Flash startup folder,
Flash folder, selected, enter file command".  But once you have a few folders
set up, this feature will come in handy.

Just as you're able to jump from file to file if you know a file's number, you
can jump from folder to folder when you know a folder's number.  You can have
up to twenty folders in your Braille 'n Speak and you can jump through the
first ten of them using dropped numbers from 0 through 9.  The "RAM startup
folder is numbered 0 and the "Flash startup" folder is numbered 1.  When you
start creating your own folders, as we'll show you in the next section, each
one will have its own number.

Finally, to jump to the first folder in your folders list, press dots 2-3-6-
chord and to jump to the last one in the list, press dots 3-5-6-chord.

Next, let's create a couple of folders with more personal names and start
putting our files in order.

* 6.12.3 Creating a Folder

The Braille 'n Speak lets you create up to twenty folders.  But it's very
important to make sure you're in folder mode before attempting to create a
folder.

In other words, make sure that the setting "allow folder mode" in the Status
menu is turned on, and upon entering the Files menu to create a folder, set
your unit to view files by their folders by pressing the spacebar to hear,
"folder mode, RAM startup, enter file command".

(Incidentally, the Braille 'n Speak remembers how you left these settings when
you turn it off so you don't have to put them into effect every time you power
up your unit.)

Once you're sure you're in folder mode from within the Files menu, you're
ready to create a folder.  Press the ing-sign (dots 3-4-6).  The Braille 'n
Speak says, "Enter folder name".  Let's make a money folder so we can keep all
our financial records in one place.  Write "money" and remember to spell out
each letter.  Don't ever use Grade 2 braille contractions in file or folder
names.  Press an e-chord.

Now you should hear, "Enter f for Flash or r for RAM folder".  For practice,
we'll write an r, meaning that this folder will be stored in the RAM portion
of your unit.

Why choose RAM for the location of the "money" folder?  Since one of the main
things you'll be doing with the files in your "money" folder is editing them
to reflect hopefully your growing, not dwindling,  bank account, the folder
that contains your financial records must be in RAM.

Once you respond to the last prompt, the Braille 'n Speak creates the folder
and places you back at, "Enter file command", ready to accept your next
command.

Now, simply follow the steps we've just taken to create the "money" folder to
make yourself a "food" folder.  But place it in the Flash portion of your unit
instead of in RAM where we put the "money" folder.  Why?  Well, you probably
won't be editing recipes and restaurant menus much.  And hopefully, not even
your diet chart.

Okay, the next step is to begin organizing your files into specific folders. 
Of course, our files ("practice", "address", and so on) are just samples.  You
can call your files anything you want.  We suggest you create a few files with
junk data in them so you can practice how to put files into folders, .  When
you're through practicing moving them in and out of folders, feel free to
delete them or fill them with real data, if you prefer.

Before you move to the next section then, create yourself a few files like
recipes, diet, menus, checks, savings, credit, mortgage, and stocks.  Put some
junk data into each one.  Any file you create is placed into the RAM portion
of your Braille 'n Speak's memory, not the Flash portion.  Remember, you can
only store files in Flash, read them, and move them from folder to folder, but
that's all.  The junk files you're creating for practice are all in your "RAM
startup" folder for the moment.

Once you've created some files to play with, you'll be ready to move onto the
next section where you'll see how to put all these files where they belong.

* 6.12.4 Moving a File into a Folder

Throughout this section, we'll be using sample filenames for our examples. 
Let's say we want to move the "recipes" file into the "food" folder.  Logical. 
The first step is to point to the "recipes" file.

If you're not already in it, open your "practice" file so we're all starting
from the same place.  As we indicated in the last section, any file you have
created thus far is in the "RAM startup" folder because you haven't moved into
another folder yet.  So the "recipes" file is currently in your "RAM startup"
folder, as well. 

Starting from your currently open file, "practice", bring up the Files menu
and find "recipes" by using dot 1-chords and dot 4-chords until you hear its
name.  Now press a gh-sign-chord (dots 1-2-6-chord).  The Braille 'n Speak
prompts, "Select a folder, RAM startup, RAM  folder".  So not only are you
asked to choose in what folder you want this file to be placed, you're also
given the name of the folder where the file is currently located.

To find the folder where you want the file to go, press dots 2-3-chords and
dots 5-6-chords to move backward and forward respectively through the names of
your existing folders.  When you hear the name of the folder where you want
the "recipes" file to go, in this case, "food", press an e-chord.

The Braille 'n Speak says, "Please wait,", pauses for a second, and then,
finishes with, "Enter file command".

Make sure you're clear about what's happened here.  The file has not actually
been moved in the Braille "N SPEAK itself unless you've moved it from a folder
in RAM to a folder in Flash.  You do not have two copies of the file, one in
the "RAM startup" folder and another in the "food" folder.  What you do have
now is the "food" folder with the file called "recipes" located in it, and no
longer a file called "recipes" in your "RAM startup" folder.  But you are
still in the "RAM startup" folder and the file you have open is still the
"practice" file.  Just because you moved the "recipes" file into the "food"
folder doesn't mean you moved there and opened a file within that folder. 
You're still sitting in whatever file you had opened before you pointed to
"recipes" to move it into the "food" folder.  In our case, that's the
"practice" file, and that file happens to be in the "RAM startup" folder.

Now let's see what to do if you want to put a bunch of files into a particular
folder all at once.

* 6.12.5 Moving Groups of Files into a Folder

Suppose you have a bunch of related files that you want to put into a
particular folder.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could just pick up the whole
bunch and plunk them down where you want them to go all at once?  Here's how. 
First, we'll take a step-by-step example, then run through some shortcuts.

Let's begin by opening the "practice" file, if you're not already in it.  As
an example, we'll put all our money-related files, like checks, savings,
mortgage, etc., into the "money" folder.

Bring up the Files menu and this time write a gh-sign without chording it. 
The Braille 'n Speak says, ""practice" is not marked".  What this means is
that the file currently being pointed to, in this case, the one that's open,
is not tagged for being moved into another folder.  To tag this file so it can
be moved into our "money" folder, press the spacebar or a y.  Otherwise, press
a dot 4-chord or dot 1-chord to point to another file in your files list and
see if you want to tag that one.  Who wants to put a "practice" file into the
"money" folder.  We'll skip "practice" and press dot 4-chord to see what else
there might be to tag.

And by the way, if you mark a file and later decide to unmark it because it
was the wrong one, say, or because you don't really need that one after all,
you can point to the file and press an n.  This unmarks that particular file. 
Then you can move on with a dot 4-chord or a dot 1-chord to tag or untag other
files in your files list.

Back in our example, we'll say the next file the Braille 'n Speak sees in your
files list is "stocks".  The Braille 'n Speak says, "stocks" is not marked". 
This time go ahead and press the spacebar to tag the file for moving into our
"money" folder.  The Braille 'n Speak confirms with, "stocks is marked".

Okay,  now press another dot 4-chord and let's suppose the next file you point
to is ""mortgage" so the Braille 'n Speak reports, "mortgage is not marked". 
Again, it makes sense to put this file into the "money" folder so press a
spacebar to tag the file.  You'll hear, "mortgage is marked" to confirm the
file is tagged for moving.


Another dot 4-chord brings us to "diet is not marked".  We'll skip this one
because it doesn't belong in the "money" folder.

One more dot 4-chord points us to, "savings is not marked".  Yes, this one we
do want to tag so press a spacebar and you'll hear, "savings is marked".

Sooner or later you'll come to the end of your files list or decide that you
have enough files now in the tagged list.  When you're finished tagging the
files you want to move into the "money" folder, press an e-chord.  The Braille
'n Speak says, "Select a folder, RAM startup, RAM folder".  You're being
reminded what folder you're in right now and being asked to what folder you'd
like to move these tagged files.  Press dots 5-6-chords and dots 2-3-chords
until you hear the name of the folder where you want the group of files to go.

Once you hear, "money folder", press an e-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says,
"Please wait, okay, enter file command".

Where do you suppose we are now?  Are we in the "money" folder?  No.  We're
still in "RAM startup".  And what file is open?  Press a t and you'll hear
something like, "practice, 1 page, braille file, is open, enter file command". 
Why?  Remember that all we've done is to move a group of files into another
folder.  We've not actually gone into that folder and opened up a file within
it.  That's easy to do.  And we'll do that next, now that we have some files
in other folders to open.

To verify where you are, exit the Files menu with an e or e-chord and you'll
see that you are indeed still in your "practice" file, wherever you had left
off within that file.

As we said at the beginning of this section, there are a few shortcuts to mark
groups of files you want to move into a folder.  After you write the gh-sign
and hear that your currently open file is "unmarked", don't press the spacebar
or y to mark it, or move through your files list a file at a time to decide
which ones to mark.  Here are some things you might do instead.

You can press a y-chord to mark the currently pointed to file and jump
immediately to the next one without having to press a dot 4-chord to get to
it.  You can press an r to mark all the files in the RAM portion of your
Braille 'n Speak's memory, or an f to mark all the files in the Flash portion
of memory.  You can even press an m to mark all the files in your currently
selected folder.  A u unmarks them all in case you change your mind about
moving all the files in your currently selected folder into another folder.

And finally, you can mark (and unmark) similarly named files in your currently
selected folder. To do this, press an m-chord to mark, a u-chord to unmark. 
The Braille 'n Speak prompts you with, "enter filename" and waits for a
filename pattern with a wildcard in it.  (See Section 6.8 for a full
discussion of wildcard characters in filenames.)  Press an e-chord after
writing in the wildcard pattern.  All the files with that pattern get marked
and are ready for moving to a folder.  If you decide to unmark a group of
similarly named files, write a u-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak prompts you for
a filename and again waits for a wildcard pattern.  This time when you write a
wildcard pattern and press an e-chord, all the files in your currently
selected folder having that pattern get unmarked.  They aren't tagged and so
they won't be moved into another folder.

Once you've selected the files you want to move and press the e-chord that
prompts you to select a folder, you can find that folder by moving through the
folder list a folder at a time as we saw in our example above, or you can jump
to the folder you want if you know its number from 0 through 9.

So you see, if you have a lot of files to move around, and a lot of folders to
juggle, there are some shortcuts you can take to move bunches of files all at
once.
 
Now let's go and look at how our stocks are doing.

* 6.12.6 Opening a File in a Different Folder

Since we're still sitting in the "practice" file, all we have to do to get to
our "stocks" file is to select its folder, "money", then point to the file and
open it.  Let's go through this example step by step for clarity.

Starting from "practice", which is in the "RAM startup" folder, bring up the
Files menu and press dots 2-3-chords and dots 5-6-chords until you hear,
"money, RAM folder, enter file command".

at this point, if you write a q, say, to hear a "quick" listing of your files,
you should hear only the names of the files in the "money" folder.  Press dot
1-chord and dot 4-chord until you find your "stocks" file and then open it
with the usual o-chord.  That's all there is to it.  And if you're lucky,
you'll be reading about how those stocks you bought yesterday are soaring
toward a record high.  Maybe it's time to sell before the market takes a dive.

Seriously though, the only potential confusion you might run across in finding
files in their respective folders is that when you're in the Files menu
looking through your files list for a particular file and you don't see it,
you might think it's gone somehow when in actuality, it's just in another
folder.  One way to clear this up right away is to toggle out of "folder mode"
temporarily with a spacebar to hear, "All files mode".  At this point when you
go through your files list, you'll hear the names of all your files regardless
of what folders they're in and regardless of whether they are in RAM or Flash
memory.

But what do you do when you have a file you want to edit or a program you want
to run, and it's being stored in a Flash folder.  We'll look at this next.

* 6.12.7 Moving Files between RAM and Flash

Now that you understand how to move your files into specific folders, and that
those folders can be stored either in RAM or Flash, what happens when you want
to work with one of those files that's stored in a Flash folder.

If you'll recall from our earlier discussion of Flash memory, you can store
files in Flash memory and you can read them from there but you cannot edit
them.  And, if you want to run an external program that's stored in Flash,
you'll have to bring the program file into RAM in order to run it.

As you've seen, it's not hard to move files from one folder to another,
whether the folder is in RAM or in Flash.  But what if you don't really want
to dig around looking for the folder in which a file is located.  You just
know that you want to add something to your "recipes" file, for example.

Whether you're in "folder mode" or "all files mode", which you can toggle from
within the Files menu, there are many ways to get to the file you want.  But
when that file is in Flash and you want to edit it or run it (if it's a
program), you have to bring it out into RAM.  Here's how.

From your "practice" file, the currently open file, bring up the Files menu. 
Since we're in "folder mode", you'll hear something like, "Files menu, RAM
startup, RAM folder, enter file command".  Let's toggle out of "folder mode"
with the spacebar.  You should now hear, "All files mode", enter file
command".
At this point, your Braille 'n Speak will behave as it always has.  In other
words, you won't be able to go to a particular folder, just run through your
files list.  Write a q to hear your files list now.  Notice that your Braille
'n Speak tells you when a file is in Flash by saying "Flash file" after
announcing its name.

In our example, "recipes" is in the Flash portion of your Braille 'n Speak's
memory.  We want to add that scrumptious new, not-for-calorie-counters,
chocolate cheesecake recipe into the "recipes" file.  So we need to pull the
file into RAM in order to be able to add to it.

Point to the "recipes" file from within the Files menu as you normally would
with a dot 1-chord, dot 4-chord, dot 3-chord or dot 6-chord.  When you get to
it, the Braille 'n Speak says something like, "recipes" Flash file".  Now
press a gh-sign-chord.  The Braille 'n Speak says, "recipes, Flash file, move
to RAM; enter y or n?".

Press a y to move the file into RAM.  The Braille 'n Speak asks you to,
"Please wait", pauses for a moment, and then confirms, "Okay, enter file
command".  If you had changed your mind and had pressed n at the prompt, the
Braille 'n Speak would have said, "Abort, enter file command".

In either case, where do you suppose we are now, in "recipes"?  No.  We're
still in "practice", where we were before starting this procedure.  All we've
done is move the "recipes" file into RAM so we can work with it.  But we
haven't yet opened it.  To do that, bring up the Files menu, point to the file
using one of the several methods we've discussed, and then   open it with an
o-chord.  Now you can add that delicious cheesecake to your arsenal of waist-
expanding desserts.

That's all there is to it.  Once you're done adding to the "recipes" file, you
may return it to Flash using the same method we just described.

Note that if you move the file you have open into Flash, that file will no
longer be the currently open file.  The Braille 'n Speak places you in the
Help file the minute the file you had open is moved into Flash memory.  The
reverse is also true.  If you're reading a file that's stored in Flash memory
and decide to edit some of its text, when you move the file into RAM you won't
be in that file any longer.  Instead, you'll be in the Help file and you'll
need to go and open the file in the usual way in order to work with it.

Okay, just a couple more housekeeping commands to learn about folders and
we'll be done with this chapter.

* 6.12.8 Changing the Name of a Folder

Suppose you have a folder whose name is no longer useful or you misspelled the
name you wanted it to have in the first place.  Just as there's a way you can
rename a file, so too is there a way to rename a folder.  Here's how.

Bring up the Files menu from wherever you are in your currently open file. 
Let's change the name of our "food" folder to "diet".  After that cheesecake,
we'll need one.  Find the "food" folder with dots 2-3-chords and dots 5-6-
chords.  Once you hear its name, press a ch-sign-chord (dots 1-6-chord).  The
Braille 'n Speak says, "Enter folder name?"  Write the new name "diet" and
press an e-chord.  The name of the folder is instantly changed and you're
returned to "Enter file command".  It's as easy as that.

The final thing to cover is how to get rid of folders you no longer need.

* 6.12.9 Deleting a Folder

First of all, remember that folders are simply pointers of sorts, allowing the
grouping of your files into logical categories that make sense to you.  When
you delete a folder, it must be empty of all files.  As we saw in the last
section, it's quite easy to move files between RAM and Flash and from folder
to folder.  So when you decide to delete a particular folder, you must first
either delete all the files it contains or move them to another folder for
safekeeping.

It's critical you realize that when you delete a file, it's deleted from your
unit altogether, regardless of whether you're in "folder mode" and regardless
of what folder the file is in, or even whether the file is in RAM or Flash. 
Once you've deleted it, it's gone.  Sometimes you can recover a deleted file
if you move fast (see Appendix A).  But in general, once you've deleted a
file, it's gone.

So if you plan to delete a folder but keep its files, move them first.  The
Braille 'n Speak will not let you delete a folder that has files in it.  If
you try, you'll hear, "Folder is not empty, enter file command".

Now let's say we want to delete our "money" folder since we're broke anyway. 
Those stocks took a nose-dive this morning.

Bring up the Files menu from your currently open file and find the "money"
folder with dots 2-3-chords and dots 5-6-chords.  When you hear its name,
check out the names of the files in the folder with one of the methods you
know, say, q for a quick listing of the files.  You might want to keep some of
them, like the "checks" or "savings" files.  So first move them to some other
folder, maybe just to your "RAM startup" folder temporarily.  Delete that
"stocks" file and make sure the folder is empty before proceeding.

Now, still  from the Files menu, write a dash (dots 3-6-).  Since the folder
is empty, the Braille 'n Speak says, "Okay, enter file command".  The "money"
folder is now gone.

Well, that's about it for folders.  You're done with this chapter - at last!


SUMMARY

We've covered a vast number of ideas in Section II.  It's worth reviewing them
carefully until you're thoroughly comfortable with them.

There are other Files menu commands yet to examine, believe it or not.  And,
there are other things we can do within files: add a date from the calendar,
or a calculation result from the calculator, figure out the number of physical
braille or print pages that are in a file, etc.  We'll cover these
sophisticated concepts in detail in the next two sections.  We'll examine a
bunch of very handy features the Braille 'n Speak provides for you. 
Nevertheless, if you've mastered the concepts of the present section, you're
well on your way to making the Braille 'n Speak an indispensable tool.