Walter.Siren@p18.f5.n396.z1.fidonet.org (Walter Siren) (06/22/91)
Index Number: 16359
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
MO> I'm curious, now that you have the new jaws up andrunning, and seeing as
MO> how you seemed to be quite enthusiastic about vocalize as well, what would
MO> you care to say by way of comparing the 2 programs, advantages,
MO> disadvantages etc. Thanks.
Well, Mary, I thought I would come in here and stick my two cents
worth in here. Mary, at this time, I think that the comparison
would not be fare to either. It would be better to wait till the
new vocal eyes comes out to get a good comparison. The reason I
say that is that the things that I would say that jaws is better at
than vocal eyes, is possibly being correctted with new vocal eyes
from what Doug said about it. Both programs are good. The one
thing that I still like about jaws is that you can use macros to do
complicated tasks. That is not going to be correctted with the
new vocal eyes, but might be correctted in the future for those
that like macros. It is true that for most things that vocal eyes
does not need macros for, there are still a few things that I would
like macros for doing.
The one thing that I like about jaws is the jaws cursor which
allows me to stay in contact with my program, and the review mode
does not let you do that, but Doug says that he is going to give us
the best of both review and separate cursor. That is why I say
that one needs to see what all the new vocal eyes gives us before
making a fare comparison. At this time, I would have to say that
you couldn't go wrong with either program, and you need to get the
demos and try for yourself. As you know everbody has a different
oppinion.
Walter
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!396!5.18!Walter.Siren
Internet: Walter.Siren@p18.f5.n396.z1.fidonet.orgGrant.Downey@p0.f9.n381.z1.fidonet.org (Grant Downey) (06/28/91)
Index Number: 16515
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
Wow! Mary, you asked me one mighty difficult question trying to
point out the advantages of Vocal-Eyes and Jaws. These two screen
readers are so good!, have so many excellent features!, and are so
user friendly! that it is not easy to say which one is better or
more advantageous. However I will point out my praises and
criticisms of each program and in doing so illustrate their
advantages and disadvantages.
First of all I think we should look at Vocal-eyes with its
companion speech sinthicizer The Soundingboard put together as the
Desktop Voice Package. This is a combo that is hard to beat as far
as price and features. The soundingboard offers much more than the
standard adjustments of rate, pitch, and tone and Vocal-Eyes offers
many features unique to it. Feature for feature the Desktop Voice
package I believe gives the user the most boom for the buck. Jaws
is sold with the Accent speech sinthicizer. Jaws is an outstanding
screen reading program with power and flexibility with an extremely
well thought out menu system and setup. I'm sorry that they
elected to match such a fine screen reader with the Accent.
When I started with Jaws 2 one of the biggest improvements made
were the additions to the manu system, Extra which has settings
particular to the particular sinthicizer you might be using, less
verbose menus, a separate Jaws cursor voice, the ability to save
configurations frames, environments, voice, and macros, each in a
separate configuration file and finally the smoothness with which
this version of Jaws seems to run is impressive. Jaws work well
with the Soundingboard also except for the Talking Clock function.
Here are some of Jaws drawbacks as far as I'm concerned. I find
that for a totally blind person setting up frames isn't
particularly easy and with jaws is more difficult than most. I
can't get Jaws to handle programs that use bar tracking very well.
Jaws does not have End of Word delay or Trigger delay which are
helpful in communicating with a remote computer.
Vocal-Eyes control panel seems somehow cumbersome when compared to
Jaws 2 but on the other hand it controls a lot more functions and
offers more choices than Jaws I thin it's a draw. I've found that
setting up windows is easier with Vocal-Eyes, setting the bar
tracker, and checking attributes seems to be to be easier with
Vocal-Eyes. Jaws 2 now has a similar response when saving and
loading files as Vocal-Eyes making knowing what is happening
easier. I may be mistaken but I believe Vocal-Eyes in its review
mode only reads from line 1 through line 24 which is quite a
disadvantage where as the Jaws Cursor covers all twenty five lines
down and eighty columns across. Of course Vocal-Eyes relies on
Hot keys and Jaws macros each of which have their place and that
to is a draw one system is no better to me than the other. I like
the way that Vocal-Eyes handles Wordperfect, the way it's
hyperactive monitoring works, the ability of vocal-eyes definable
hot keys, the way the character dictionary works, and when used
with the Soundingboard's exception dictionary it is really
effective
Jaws 2 is an extremely fast running program with extremely quick
loading of configuration files. A weakness of Vocal-eyes is its
slowness relative to the time it takes to get the configuration
files loaded and the application program working. With Jaws 2, I'd
say that Wordperfect loads in 3 to four seconds where as with
Vocal-Eyes it takes almost ten on a 8386 system with 20 megahurt
clock.
So, where are we? It's pretty even, Mary. What we are comparing
are two excellent screen readers each doing things a little
differently but both performing splendidly. We are talking about
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!381!9.0!Grant.Downey
Internet: Grant.Downey@p0.f9.n381.z1.fidonet.orgRick.Alfaro@f8.n369.z1.fidonet.org (Rick Alfaro) (06/28/91)
Index Number: 16532
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
Grant,
There is one item I would like to clear up in your
comparison of jaws and vocal eyes. I didn't quote your
message here, but you mentioned that vocal eyes could only
look at 24 lines of the screen when in review. This isn't
correct at all. If you are experiencing this, it is because
your current window was set to cover 24 lines. vocal eyes,
(V1.1) will look at the window the way you have it set when
in review. If your window is set to lin 1 column 1 for top
right, and line 24 column 80 for bottom left, then when you
go into review, that is exactly the area you will have
available for looking at unless you press f2, which will
switch you to full screen, allowing you to review everything
regardless of your window settings. vocal eyes 2.0 will
handle this a little differently. In 2.0, you will be able
to specify in your set file what window is active when you
go into review. You can set it for current window, full
screen, or previous setting. The first 2 are fairly clear.
Previous setting means that vocal eyes will remember your
window co-ordinates from the last time you were in review,
and use those for the next time review is entered. Thanks
for an interesting comparison however. I just wanted to
clear up that one little thing...
Regards,
Rick
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!369!8!Rick.Alfaro
Internet: Rick.Alfaro@f8.n369.z1.fidonet.orgDoug.Geoffray@f8.n369.z1.fidonet.org (Doug Geoffray) (06/28/91)
Index Number: 16586
[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]
GD> I may be mistaken but I believe Vocal-Eyes in its
GD> review mode only reads from line 1 through line 24 which is
GD> quite a disadvantage where as the Jaws Cursor covers all twenty
GD> five lines down and eighty columns across.
Grant,
I am not sure why you believe Vocal-Eyes can only read 24 lines. Actually,
Vocal-Eyes is capable of reading a screen that is 99 characters by
99 rows. It definetly can read all the standard 25 lines on the screen.
I believe what you may be referring to is once you are in review, by
default, Vocal-Eyes will limit your movements to the current window. If
your window was setup for 24 lines, than Vocal-Eyes would only allow
you to read 24 lines. You can at any time in review mode press F2 for
the full screen or the current window. Vocal-Eyes version 2.0 allows
you to setup if you want to be confined to the current window or the
full screen by default when you enter review mode. Reguardles, you can
press F2 to toggle to the other setting.
GD> I like the way that Vocal-Eyes handles
GD> Wordperfect.
Wait until you see version 2.0 work with WordPerfect. The menus, spell checker,
thesuars, reveal codes and list files options all work great with NO user
intervention at all. In fact, with the new autoloading ability, you don't
even have to load the voice environement. Vocal-Eyes will do that for you
automatically.
GD> A weakness of Vocal-eyes is its slowness
GD> relative to the time it takes to get the configuration files
GD> loaded and the application program working.
I would assume the problem lies in the batch file which is reloading Vocal-Eyes
to load the new voice environment. With autoloading, I don't believe Vocal-Eyes
can be beet!
Regards,
Doug
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Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!369!8!Doug.Geoffray
Internet: Doug.Geoffray@f8.n369.z1.fidonet.org