|
| |
Released 18th June 2003
SIBELIUS SPEAKING 3
(Please note that this product requires Sibelius Version 3. The Student
version of this product will NOT work.)
Dancing Dots is pleased to announce the release of Sibelius Speaking 3 which
is compatible with Sibelius 3 and JAWS for Windows 5! Dancing Dots and David
Pinto have worked closely with Freedom Scientific, manufacturer of JAWS, and
Sibelius Music Software, manufacturer of the Sibelius notation software, to
bring you the best and most stable version of Sibelius Speaking yet. Our warm
thanks to these manufacturers who have listened to our requests for enhancements
and fixes to their own products which have vastly contributed to the addition of
new and improved features and the overall performance of the Sibelius Speaking
scripts. And, of course, David Pinto once again proves worthy of his title as
Scripting Master of JAWS for Windows!
Most of all, we are deeply grateful to the late, great Ray Charles who worked so
closely with David to suggest helpful features. Ray was tireless in his efforts
to make Sibelius Speaking and Sibelius itself as user-friendly as possible and
loved using the software so much that he agreed to endorse Sibelius (see
http://www.sibelius.com/products/sibelius/users.html). David and Ray had a
truly special relationship that was based on both a deep respect for each others
talents and their common goal of making music education and technology
accessible to the blind community.
We dedicate this release of Sibelius Speaking to the memory of Ray Charles.
Ray certainly belonged to the music world at large but he also belonged to blind
musicians everywhere in a unique way. Through his collaboration with David Pinto
over the past 2 years, Ray has left a genuine gift to us.
Prospective customers should visit
http://www.dancingdots.com/prodesc/SibSpeaking.htm to learn all about
Sibelius, the superb music notation software to which our Sibelius Speaking
scripts and tutorial package gives the JAWS user excellent access.
To order, customers outside of the United States are requested to contact their
local dealer. If purchased from Techno-Vision Systems Ltd., please call us
on (01604) 792777, or e-mail:-
upgrade@techno-vision.co.uk
Remember that you must use the English version of Sibelius and the U.S. Windows
keyboard lay-out even if you are running Sibelius on a laptop PC, in which case,
you must also use an auxiliary PC keyboard that has a complete, standard num
pad.
What's New in Sibelius Speaking 3?
There are so many new and improved features that I cannot list them all here. I
will list some highlights below excerpted from David Pinto's "What's New"
document for Sibelius Speaking 3:
Vastly improved New Score Dialog:
After selecting a score from the manuscript list box, you can TAB to other
areas of the dialog and select other options that will configure your score the
way you want it. In fact you can set up your tempo, Time Signature, Pick up bar,
Composer, Title etc. In other words, you can set up all of the basic parameters
of your score.
Numerous handy new features in the Instruments dialog
Access to the Sibelius Mixer settings. The Mixer allows you to optimize the
playback quality of your score. In the Mixer, you can change the following
parameters of any of the staves in the score. The Volume and Pan setting.
The Mute and Solo status. The sound that a staff uses for playback. The MIDI
Synthesizer that the sound comes from, and the MIDI channel that the sound is
assigned to.
STOPPING AT THE CURRENT BAR DURING PLAYBACK: As you know, if you press P, you go
into playback. And if you press P while in playback, you pause at the current
position. Well folks, now, during pause, if you press TAB, the transport will
close, and SS will focus you in the score at the bar and staff where you
stopped. This is a feature that sighted users would love to have. Well now
you've got it!
NEW FEATURES FOR THE F5 KEY.
In SibSpeaking for Sib 2, you had to press F5, 3 times in order to run the staff
layout test. Then you would wait 10 seconds or so, as JAWS ran down every staff
in the score. Well now, you press CONTROL F5, and the staff layout test is run
immediately, without JAWS having to run down the staves.
The online help has been greatly expanded. The Sibelius Speaking Help Table of
Contents accessed with CONTROL F1, used to open JAWS Message Boxes. Now it opens
Help documents in WordPad. There are 3 exceptions. They are, Hotkeys,
Alternative Hotkeys, and Keypad Assignments. These are list boxes where you'll
get a dialog list for that particular category. So, there is no longer any help
in message boxes.
As usual, pressing F1 will give you all the information you need about the
current item in the score. Pressing F1 when you are not in the score will tell
you about the current control you are on, for instance if it's a checkbox, how
to check and uncheck it.
Pressing F1 twice, used to bring up Sibelius' own Help program. Now, however,
pressing F1 twice will just repeat the last thing that JAWS said.
This used to be accomplished by pressing SHIFT+F1.
To bring up Sibelius' own Help program, press F1, 3 times.
Other Cool New Features
When navigating or pressing F1, JAWS will tell you if your on a grace note.
This is also true even if you are not in the More Notes Template.
As you know, pressing F2 once plays the notes at the current position. Now,
pressing F2 twice, will play approximately 1 bar of music, starting from the
beginning of the current bar.
If you have hidden notes, rests or any other items, so that they wont get
printed out, then when you navigate in the score, JAWS will tell you when an
item is hidden.
When creating a pick up bar, the pickup bar is automatically set to bar 0.
FIXES.
1. The Graphic labelers are much more stable.
2. Consistent graphic recognition is much more stable.
3. TABBING into the score after inserting Rehearsal marks, Tempo and Metronome
marks returns you to the bar you were initially in.
4. In the Go To Bar dialog, when pressing SPACE on the OK button, SS acts
correctly to return you to the correct bar and correct staff. It's just like
pressing ENTER on the OK button.
5. Tie on and Tie off were failing to be reported sometimes. This is fixed.
6. Writing lyrics with F8 has been stabilized.
7. On some systems, JAWS was too often thinking that the properties panels were
not displayed. This has been, fixed.
8. Fixed Display and Configure prop and keypad for those computers that were
failing it.
9. When creating text or searching for text, sometimes the text would be off
screen and JAWS could not speak its contents. This problem has been minimized.
Regards,
Bill McCann
President
Dancing Dots
|
