Off-Topic: Daisy Readers

[Janina Sajka]

Hi, Trevor:

Trevor Astrope writes:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Janina Sajka wrote:
> >However, if you want to know more about what DAISY is all about, and by
> >inference, what the software is doing, you might want to read some of my
> >articles from Access World about this:
> >
> >http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw050104
> >http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw050103
> 
> Thanks. I've already read those excellent articles. <grin>
Thanks.

> I don't recall 
> seeing a review of the BookPort though. Also, I would have liked more 
> information on the sound quality of each player. I thought the Victor 
> Classic sounded much better then the standard 4-track players, but that 
> could also be due to better quality of the source material.
> 
Wouldn't hurt to say this to the AccessWorld editors. I only do an
ocasional article for them, and I don't usually do the hands on evals.

I will tell you, on a personal note, that I've always liked the Victor
Pro--which is no longer sold. I liked its sound quality and I liked its
speed at responding to navigation commands. I am profoundly disappointed
by players that take too long to respond to "next" and "previous" type
requests. For me, "too long" is anything over a second or so, or maybe
even half a second on average. One of the superb features that DAISY
provides, when the book is really properly coded, is the ability to jump
around based on the book's structure. But, that quickly loses its value
if you have to wait even as much as a second or two for the machine to
respond.


> Anyway, I guess what I'm asking is if it is possible to use all the 
> features of the BookPort without windows? And specifically, how difficult 
> is it to create daisy books in linux if that is all that is required for 
> the BookPort to read files transfered via the usb port in linux...

OK, that's three questions by my count.

1.)	I don't know because I don't know the BookPort's features.

2.)	It's not particularly easy to create DAISY books on any
platform. Windows or Linux, that has nothing to do with it. The DAISY
spec is a markup spec. Think of DAISY as being a lot like web pages--but
with some extra smarts. There's nothing platform specific about either
the web or DAISY.

3.)	I don't understand this consequence you seem to see about
transferring files via a USB port. If you can transfer them, then you
end up with a set of files on the machine where you put them. That's no
different than transferring any other kind of file. Again, the fact that
they're DAISY, and the fact that they might come from a BookPort is
irrelevant. What you can do with them depends on what tools you have to
use with them. In other words, accessing a jpg file with a spread sheet
application won't do much of anythingt useful. Similarly, accessing a
Microsoft Word document with mplayer won't do anything useful. For
DAISY, you need a DAISY player.


> 
> I know I should be asking this question to APH (there, got it right this 
> time), but I'm afraid I already did. Unfortunately, I got a condescending 
> answer, and I quote, "Windows format is pretty standard, and most widely 
> used and all of your screen readers support it."
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Trevor
> 
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-- 

Janina Sajka				Phone: +1.202.494.7040
Partner, Capital Accessibility LLC	http://www.CapitalAccessibility.Com
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Chair, Accessibility Workgroup		Free Standards Group (FSG)
janina at freestandards.org		http://a11y.org