New Features

New Features in 1999

• Support for the New Textbook Rules (still under development)
• Further Improvements in Automatic Table Formatting, supporting the new BANA Table rules.
• Ability to Import files from up to date versions of Microsoft Word. Please note: You must have a Windows 95/Windows 98/Windows NT system for the fix to work. It does NOT work on pure DOS or Windows 3.x systems.

New Features in 1998

• Release of Version 2 MegaDots, loaded with new features.
• The File Importer is smarter than ever: it identifies what kind of document you're importing (i.e., a letter, poetry, etc.) and automatically applies the appropriate styles to the imported document. This important and intuitive step minimizes the time and effort it used to take to make great braille. MegaDots 2.0 imports Windows Help Screens, which are otherwise very difficult to access with speech or refreshable braille. For users who want total control, automatic features of the importer can be temporarily and selectively disabled.
• Optically scanned documents are automatically recognized and cleaned up - before you even edit your document! First, the scanned document's format is cleaned up. For example, optical scanners often break up paragraphs inappropriately or misnumber lists of items. MegaDots correctly formats these areas. It can even remove the garble that results from scanning pictures or graphics within the text. The text itself is then cleaned up, one word at a time. MegaDots will find and correct any obviously misspelled words before you even view your imported document. Running headers, footers and page numbers that occur on each page are removed and used for print page indicators in the document.
• If you simply need quick reading materials, use our new included program, MiniDots. MiniDots creates well-formatted braille using the new file importer and automatic cleanup. You don't even have to open the document.
• New, Improved Spell Checker. We've added over 20,000 words to the dictionary. The Spell Checker now recognizes over 110,000 words.
• New Large Print Features! Create beautiful large print up to five times as tall and wide as standard fonts (up to 64 point). MegaDots supports your printer's scalable fonts for the most attractive possible large print. With new large print page indicators, you'll be able to follow page numbers from the original text.
• New Advanced Inkprint Printing Capabilities. We're proud to present these useful features designed specifically to make learning and proofreading braille easier. And while we were at it, we threw in quite a bit for users who need high quality, customizable inkprint, too.
• MegaDots now supports all modern inkprint printers, including postscript printers. Choose from ten different kinds of inkprint braille. Make inkprint braille and text on the same page in three different formats: side by side, word by word, and line by line. Side by Side displays the braille page next to the print page on one sheet. Word by Word puts the print word directly over each braille word. Line by Line mode puts the print line above each braille line. Now you can choose from any font installed in your printer. Adjustable vertical and horizontal spacing makes inkprint layout to your most exacting specifications.
• Get a detailed document overview with the Interpret Format feature. New Interpret Format screen shows you what's in your document: how many and which styles it uses; whether there are tabs, running headers, or print page indicators; and other useful information. This overview helps you check the "big picture" of your document. Make global changes to your document. For example, change all Poetry paragraphs to Body text. Within the overview, you can ask for greater detail. For example, you can view just the poetry in your document, or all of the print page indicators. Within one of these views, you can jump straight to that place in the text. Or, stay within the view, and make changes there. Use Interpret Format to adjust the importation of a document. When used right after import, you can adjust MegaDots' document cleanup, how MegaDots selects styles and what import features or styles to use while importing.
• Easy Table Formatting! Braille Planet has worked with the pickiest braille transcribers to revamp our table formatting. Making the most complex braille tables is now a snap. MegaDots follows all of the new BANA and British table rules. MegaDots will automatically squeeze the table to fit on the braille page. If you braille table is too wide for the braille page, MegaDots can put it on two facing pages. Column Blocking lets you cut and paste entire columns. Format your word list in columns with Make Clipboard Columns. This feature now lets you choose the number of columns you want to generate.
• MegaDots now handles diacritics. MegaDots now supports all of the diacritical marks shown in the textbook format codebook. This speeds up another laborious aspect of making braille.
• Better Voice Options. MegaDots version 2.0 contains a good configuration for Jaws for Windows version 3. Now your Windows screen reader (if you have Jaws for Windows 3) can read your DOS application.
• Version 2.0 also includes the freeware speech program PROVOX and the shareware program Tiny Talk. You can use PROVOX at no charge. The use of Tiny Talk requires the payment of $40 to Braille Planet for an unlocking code. The $40 is passed on to the screen access developer to help him improve your software. Braille Planet does not collect any portion of that fee. We are pleased to be in a position to offer so many choices to those who already have Windows screen readers and do not want to pay hundreds of dollars for a DOS Screen Reader in order to use MegaDots.

New Features in 1997

• Press Alt-Z to renumber, insert, delete, edit or search by inkprint page indicators. This is the feature braille transcribers have been wanting for years. Load a textbook file and press Alt-Z. You will have more fun than is ever allowed by law. Press F1 in the Alt-Z screen for more specific details.
• You can use the delete key in Control-J G or Control-J D to remove paragraphs or documents.
• When you get a file list by pressing F3 F2, you can now copy a file to a floppy disk or to another directory by pressing F4.
• There is now an option in the Advanced features in the Preferences menu to have an Autosave before major operations (such as F5, Control-G, Alt-F9, and Control-F3).
• If you crash, MegaDots will now be more helpful. It will attempt to save your file(s) onto an UNSAVED directory and will take you out of MegaDots. When you go back in, you have the option of retrieving the files it saved. You can check these and if they seem OK, you can save them to the working directory.
• If you leave MegaDots without saving your work, you can get it back. Get back into MegaDots and press Control-L the first thing you do.
• If you end a macro with Shift-Alt-M, then the macro is a special looping macro, which repeats itself until any searches fail, or some other error occurs. If you use Shift-Alt-M when not recording a macro, MegaDots re-runs the last macro.
• You can make any segment of text a protected zone. Mark a block any press control-F M (M stands for make protected).
• Escape now stops a macro or a global replace.
• The macro TRANS.MAC saves your current file as an inkprint file FILE.MEG, and then opens a new file FILE.BRL as a separate braille file. This lets a transcriber flip back and forth between the braille file and the inkprint file, without the possibility of changes to your file. It is recommended transcribers put this on Shift-F5 using Preferences - Macros.
• The macro MDR.MAC converts your previous global replace into a rules file and asks you to name it.
• A macro can have a point in it where it waits for the users to press Enter or F10 before it continues. A macro file must be manually edited to use this feature. Insert a <wait-done> command in the appropriate spot to make this happen.
• back to home page