Hi Rose,
Word Services is indeed a useful add-on, but I should warn you and
others that it works by installing shortcuts for many of these
functions, and that several of these conflict with default shortcuts
that most VoiceOver users use (for example to move forward and
backwards to previous and next page in the Safari Browser). I'll have
to look these up, but I remember that when I installed these on my G4
PowerBook two years ago I had to spend some time sorting out the
preferences files to remove conflicts with other shortcuts that I was
using.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Sep 27, 2010, Rose Morales wrote:
Hi all,
In the Office 2011 thread, we have been discussing several possible
alternatives to Office for Mac. WHile this is not exactly an
alternative, I thought it would be something nice for all to
consider. I did a search through the group, and it seems no one has
mentioned this Add-on before.
In addition to offering the Bean app for download, the web site for
Bean recommend a number of additional applications. One of which is
WordService. THis is not so much an application as it is an add-on.
THis add-on allows you to add extra functionality to a word
processor which may not already be included: insert contents of
path, insert short date, insert long date, insert time, convert to
initial caps of all sentences, initial caps of words, make all words
lowercase, set all to uppercase, convert spaces to tabulators,
convert all line breaks to carriage returns, convert from Windows to
Mac encoding, convert from Mac to WIndows encoding, remove line
breaks, remove attachments, remove links, remove extra spaces,
remove quotes in emails, etc. There are just too many functions to
list here. The add-on adds all these options and more to your
service menu.
From their readme:
This service provides 37 functions to convert, format or speak the
currently selected text,
to insert data or to show statistics of the selection within all
Cocoa applications (e.g. Textedit, Mail,
Stickies, Notes, Fire, OmniWeb, ProjectBuilder or TeXShop) and
Carbon applications supporting
services.
THey also make reference to this article which describes what
services actually do on/for your mac.
http://highschoolblows.blogspot.com/2005/11/mac-os-x-services-menu-you-never-go-to.html
To install WordService, simply copy WordService.service into your
services folder under the library folder that's in your home folder.
An easy way to get to your home folder in Finder is to hit command-
shift-h. The readme then recommends that you log out and back in
again. However, there's an additional step to get this add-on
working with Snow Leopard. The readme doesn't mention this. I would
assume this is because the add-on is designed for earlier versions
of OSX. But I did some research, performed these steps, and the add-
on worked for me. You will have to go into system preferences,
keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, and select the services category in
the shortcuts categories table. You will then need to check the
boxes of the services you wish to show up in your services menu.
If you're like me, you probably bypass the readme when installing
mac apps unless you see a crucial need. I highly recommend not
bypassing this one. It lists all the functions of WordService and
describes what each one does. It also explains how you can further
customize this add-on if you so choose.
On Sep 27, 2010, at 11:04 AM, Justin Ekis wrote:
I have found a free word processor that has just enough extra
features over textedit to make it sufficient for most of my writing
needs in college. The program's name is bean. I don't have a
feature list in front of me, but I do remember the address of the
site.
http://www.bean-osx.com
I remember not being particularly impressed by the feature list on
the site, but I was curious enough to read the change log for a
little more detail. I realized that though it doesn't have all of
the power of pages, it has those few little extra things that
textedit lacked for my needs.
For those interested in iwork, amazon.com is selling it for $49.99
which is about $30 less than retail and you get free shipping.
Hope someone finds this information helpful.
Justin
On Sep 27, 2010, at 5:15 AM, Rose Morales wrote:
The problem with something like Notepad is that notepad can only
write text files. This is fine if you're just looking to jot down a
note or ten. Hence the name notepad, :). MS Word is designed to let
you format your text. Now, one could use Wordpad, but that doesn't
have a spellchecker. Furthermore, MS Word is able to handle some
pretty advanced word processing features: indices, table of
contents, table of figures, table of authorities, outlines,
bulleted lists, subdocuments, styles, track changes, tables,
charts, simple excel calculations and formulas, mail merge,
envelope labeling, and probably more I'm not thinking of. WHile
your average MS Word user might not even know half of these
features exist, there are others who simply cannot live without
them. Personally, having taken a course in Office, I can certainly
appreciate the idea of MS Word for mac. An awesome word processor
on an even more awesome OS? That sounds lovely. Too bad that won't
happen for awhile. With that being said, let's look at some of
Pages notable features: numerous preloaded templates, the ability
to create custom templates, easy insertion of headers and footers,
styles, track changes, mail merge, footnotes, endnotes, bookmarks,
tables, charts, and formulas. And Pages has the ability to export
not only to word documents but epub, rtf, PDF, and html. You can't
save as .docx yet, which is a pity, but you can open .docx files
just fine.
I'm not saying all this to suggest that everyone immediately love
Pages. We can all agree it lacks some features which word has.
Honestly, my first instinct is to fire up Word when I'm doing some
intense document writing and editing. And I'm a hard core Mac girl.
For my every day writing, I use Text Edit, and I love it. I call it
WOrdpad on steroids because Wordpad doesn't have a spellchecker,
the ability to save to PDF, or the ability to implement basic
styles. At any rate, what I am suggesting is that we as Mac users
(those of us with Pages at least) step back and say, okay, Pages
isn't word. But what can it offer me? Is there some word processing
I could be doing in Pages which I previously only did in Word? And
if we don't know the answer, why not try creating that document in
Pages when we're not on a time crunch? We might just surprise
ourselves. In an effort to remain objective, I will also take the
opportunity to include this link in my post. It is to Pages reviews
on macupdate.com.
http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=17494
On Sep 27, 2010, at 5:51 AM, ISAAC OBIE wrote:
Hi Kawal,
Frankly, I don't like programs like MS Word because it's too big
for what I want to do. It's huge, clumsy and plain a pain in the
posterior. I love notepad! I think Notepad can do all I want
including cleaning up a file.
Now when I really get in to the Mac I think Text edit might do the
trick. I honestly don't know yet. Maybe Esther's "Simplenote"
might do it. I'll have to explore that at some point.
Isaac
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kawal Gucukoglu" <kawal_gucuko...@sent.com
>
To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2010 4:27 AM
Subject: Re: Microsoft Office 2011 and VoiceOver
I too will be switching to I works rather than working with
Microsoft Products in the future.
Kawal Gucukoglu
On 27 Sep 2010, at 12:53 AM, gkearney <gkear...@gmail.com> wrote:
It is interesting to note that the ribbons were accessible, much
of
the user interface is as well. It is the main content areas that
are
not accessible.
Greg
On Sep 27, 6:16 am, "Dave Taylor" <davetay...@tafn.org.uk> wrote:
I bet that if they tried, they would soon realise that the
ribbons would be
difficult if not impossible to implement with VO anyway. As it
is, their
insistence on these awful things is one of my key drivers for
making the
switch, though there are many others too. Mike, the podcast
where you
install Snow Leopard is as good a demonstration as anything of
how far
things have come on the Mac side, I'm afraid it is the opposite
story,
almost the reverse story, on the windows side!
Cheers
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
[mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Arrigo
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 11:03 PM
To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Microsoft Office 2011 and VoiceOver
I don't think he said it was a beta. It is very disappointing
indeed,
really, Microsoft has no excuse for this one, it's not like
they were not
aware of accessibility and voice over, they just chose not to
do anything
with it. Apple has created a built in screen reader and
provided the APIs to
make programs accessible, Microsoft has definitely shown their
interest in
this. At least on the mac, there are alternatives that will
handle Microsoft
Office files, namely iwork and open office.
On Sep 26, 2010, at 3:18 PM, M. Taylor wrote:
Hello Greg,
Thank you so much for providing this info.
I cannot begin to relay how sad and disappointed I am at the
news of
Microsoft's Office 2011 VoiceOver inaccessibility.
Wow!
You know, when I installed the very first beta of Windows 7,
it was
completely accessible. That is to say, as soon as one
launched the
installation program for Windows 7, a very clear voice prompt
asked if
audio
assistance was required. This came as a total surprise to me,
to say the
least. I answered in the affirmative and was able to install
Windows 7
without any sighted assistance, whatsoever. I installed that
first beta
on
three of my computers. By the way, the voice that was used to
guide me
through the setup was not that of Narrator--it was much clearer.
Astonishingly, with the release of the next beta of Windows 7,
this
feature
was removed. I was shocked, disappointed, and angry, to say
the least.
It was then that I began considering purchasing a Macintosh.
It's been much too long to recall how I came to learn
Microsoft's reason
for
removing this feature but they said they removed it for
security concerns;
to which I exclaim, "TommyRot!!!!!" Or, to put it in the
vernacular,
"That's a load of crap!!!!"
Greg, is it possible that the final release of Office 2011
will be
VoiceOver
accessible? I mean, you reviewed a beta, did you not?
Perhaps I'm just
grasping at straws, eh? (Smile)
Thanks again for giving us a proverbial "heads-up" on this one.
Most Sincerely,
mark
-
-----Original Message-----
From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com
[mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Greg
Kearney
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 2010 1:22 AM
To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com;
macvoiceo...@freelists.org; Mary Beth
Janes; Mike Shebanek
Subject: Microsoft Office 2011 and VoiceOver
It is my sad duty to report that after getting a chance to
test Microsoft
Office 2011 for Mac that it is no more accessible in this
version than in
any of the previous versions. As in the past it is impossible
to interact
with any of the content areas of the program. You are not able
to review,
read or edit the text area in Word or Excel.
It should not be clear to all that Microsoft has no intention
of ever
fixing
these issues. I communicated directly with Microsoft over the
same failing
in Office 2008. The fact that after a complete rewire of the
programs they
remain inaccessible to the built in screen reader of the OS to
me speak
volumes about Microsoft's total lack of commitment to
accessibility on the
Macintosh platform and may well speak to Microsoft's general
commitment to
the platform as well.
Gregory Kearney | Manager Accessible Media
Association for the Blind of WA - Guide Dogs WA
PO Box 101, Victoria Park WA 6979 | 61 Kitchener Ave, Victoria
Park WA
6100
Tel: 08 9311 8246 | Fax: 08 9361 8696 |www.guidedogswa.com.au
Tel: 307-224-4022 (North America)
Email: greg.kear...@guidedogswa.com.au
Email: gkear...@gmail.com
-
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