15 Online Material This chapter contains the following topics: Kurzweil 1000 Online Features. Accessing Online Features. General Search and Download Process. Managing Downloaded Files. Searching for and Downloading Books. Looking Through Online Bookshelves. Searching for and Downloading Magazines. Searching for Books from the Classic Literature CD. Obtaining News from Kurzweil. Obtaining Kurzweil Product Updates. Kurzweil 1000 Online Features The main objective of Kurzweil 1000 online features is to provide you with direct access to up-to-date material from a variety of sources. Kurzweil 1000 online access is easy, central, and virtual.Without leaving your computer, Kurzweil 1000 lets you get a wide range of electronic text, such as the following: Books and electronic text from free and subscription-based digital library Web sites, and from the free Kurzweil 1000 Classic Literature CD. Lists of most or all of the items available from a digital library. Magazines from free and subscription-based Web sites. Articles from online encyclopedias. Note: Although the Use the Encyclopedia feature is in the Online menu, its details are in Chapter 6, Reference Tools. News from Kurzweil Educational Systems Inc. Updates for the Kurzweil 1000 product as they become available from Kurzweil Educational Systems Inc. You can keep the material download for your personal use, have Kurzweil 1000 read it and/or convert it into portable formats. For more information about portable file formats, go to Chapter 14, File Portability. The next few subsections provide general information and procedures that are common to all online search and download functions, including file management for downloaded files. In later subsections, you’ll find instructions specific to each type of search. Your Internet Connection The first requirement for online access from Kurzweil 1000 is an Internet connection. The speed with which you are able to search and download material depends on the type of connection you have. For instance, accessing the Internet on a T1 connection at work would be markedly faster than having a telephone line. If you are using a dial-up connection, you should connect to the Internet before you attempt to use these features. Live Web Sites When you request an online search, you are reaching live Web sites. While many sites included on the Sites list in the Search Online Books dialog (ALT+N+S) are available to anyone, some sites provide material only to those who are eligible and registered with the appropriate organizations. From time to time, Kurzweil Educational Systems adds new Web sites. The following are sample Web sites that are part of the list Kurzweil 1000 uses. For a complete list, go to Appendix C, Searchable Web Sites. Bookshare, at www.Bookshare.org, is an online book-sharing community that provides its members with access to copyrighted, scanned books on a subscription basis. Also, just after this selection on the Sites list, is the related Bookshare.org New Books, which lets you search for new Bookshare.org releases. Project Gutenberg, at www.gutenberg.net, is an online repository of electronic text and books. Web Braille. When you use the online magazine or online book search features, you are searching the Web Braille Web site, a service of the Library of Congress. Eligible individuals and institutions have access to electronic text from a variety of sources that the service has put into Braille format. The Web Braille site is password protected. Guidelines for Using Online Material Kurzweil Educational Systems provides online access as a convenience to and as a source of enjoyment for customers, but keep in mind that the material you download should be used within the guidelines of copyright laws. Accessing Kurzweil 1000 Online Features Online options and commands are accessible only through the menu interface. The Online menu is located to the right of the Tools menu in the Kurzweil 1000 menu bar, and contains selections that enable you to search for books and magazines, text from the Classic Literature CD, as well as for news from Kurzweil Educational Systems and for Kurzweil 1000 product updates. General Search and Download Process Selecting a search from the Online menu opens a Online Search dialog. Each type of search has its own Search dialog with unique options as well as common elements that they all share. Refer to the last several sections in this chapter for specific details about each Search dialog. While the system performs the search, the Online Status dialog provides you with ongoing audible status. The Online Status dialog contains five components: Status box (mnemonic ALT+S) announces the status when Kurzweil 1000 completes searching the first site and then again after the last site, or when there’s an error. You can press any key during the search process to hear the current status. Items available for download box (ALT+I) follows. When the search is complete, a checkbox list of books available for downloading is presented in this box. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys and the SPACEBAR to select any number of items. You can also search the list of books by pressing CONTROL+F. In the find dialog that opens, type in a word or partial word, then press ENTER to search the list. Kurzweil 1000 reads the first item it finds. Press F3 to hear the next matching item, and SHIFT+F3 to hear the previous matching item. Search Again (ALT+A) is active only if you have chosen not to download any items. Choose this command to go back to the Online Search dialog with the selections and entries you just used for this search. OK and Cancel. You can also use the ENTER key to OK the download. When you OK a download, Kurzweil 1000 downloads the materials in the background so that you can continue to use other functions and applications. You can download multiple files. If there are multiple file formats, you can select the format you want. This is especially helpful for downloading Braille versions of BookShare documents. Once downloaded, you can open and read the file or files. Notes: • Certain sites, like Bookshare.org, are subscription- or member-based, and require a user name and password when downloading and opening files. • Bookshare.org also grants institutional accounts. With this type of account, an employee of the institution logs on, and downloads books on behalf of members, such as students. Each downloaded book needs to be associated with the member who gets it. If you log onto Bookshare with an institutional account and attempt to download a book, Kurzweil 1000 asks you to select the appropriate member from a list of members associated with the account. Unexpected Search Results If you don’t get the results you expected, or nothing is found, check your search parameters and try another search strategy. It could also be that the material you are looking for is not available at the site(s) you specified. Also, because the Web sites are live, you may encounter problems when they change their content. Exiting Kurzweil 1000 During a Download If you try to exit from Kurzweil 1000 while a download is in progress, you’ll hear a warning. If you continue, Kurzweil 1000 stops the download. Managing Downloaded Files You can find downloaded files in the Download folder in the Kurzweil Educational Systems folder, or you can automatically open files you have recently downloaded. Opening Downloaded Files 1. Open the File menu and choose Open or press ALT+F+O. Kurzweil 1000 asks if want to open the recently downloaded file or files. 2. Press ENTER. Notes: If you want to open an older downloaded file, find it in the Download folder. Depending on the size of the file, it may take a few minutes to open. If you are opening an encrypted Bookshare.org document, the system asks you to enter your password again. It’s a good idea to rename the downloaded files after you open them and place them in another folder. Consistently organizing your files can help you find them quickly at a later time. Using Online Cache to Store and Update Site Access For some Web sites, Kurzweil 1000 downloads a complete list of the site’s contents when you begin a search. You can specify how frequently the program refreshes that list. A frequent refresh of a site’s contents guarantees your access to new materials on the site. However, it can slow down your search time. Online Cache is available in the Configuration Settings tab page. You can request Kurzweil 1000 to perform the cache function Always, or if the list is older than 7 Days or 30 Days. The default is 7 days. To configure the online cache option: 1. Open the Settings menu and select Configuration. The Configuration Settings tab page opens. 2. Use the TAB key or ALT+C to go to the Online Cache list box. 3. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to select 7 Days, 30 Days or Always Refresh. 4. Press the ENTER key. Searching for and Downloading Books To access the Online Search for Books dialog, do one of the following: Open the Online menu and choose Search for Books. Or press ALT+N+S. Or press the ENTER key as this is the default menu selection. The Online Search for Books Dialog The Online Search for Books dialog contains the following components along with the OK and Cancel commands: Search list box (mnemonics ALT+S) lets you indicate search by Title or by Author. Contains combo box (ALT+C) in which you type the title or author name. Depending on what you chose in the Search list box (Author or Title), the box also contains a list of up to either your last ten Author or Title searches. Use the UP/DOWN arrows to retrieve a name or title from the list. A list box from which you can select the conjunction and, or to combine conditions to help you hone in your search. Go to the subsection Performing Complex Searches and Refining Searches for more information. Another Search list box with another Contains text box below it for your combination search. These two boxes are available only when you specify a conjunction. Query text box (ALT+Q). When you finish specifying your search parameters, they appear in this box and you’ll hear the contents. You can edit the contents of this box to refine your search and perform power searches. Go to the subsection Refining Searches and Performing Complex Searches for details. Sites box (ALT+T) lists available Web sites for your search. Each item has an associated check box. By default, all sites are checked. To check or uncheck an item, use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to go to the desired one, then press SPACEBAR. Kurzweil 1000 uses the message voice for checked items, and the reading voice for unchecked items. Pressing CONTROL+Y lets you hear whether or not an item is checked. You can use the Save Settings feature to save your preferred search sites. For example, if you know you don’t want to search the Baen site every time, you can deselect it, save and load the setting to eliminate the need to deselect it each time you run a search. Performing a Simple Search for Books 1. Open the Online Search for Books dialog. 2. Specify whether you want to search by title or author in the Search list box. 3. Type all or part of the title or author in the Contains combo box. 4. TAB to the Sites checkbox list. 5. Press the SPACEBAR to uncheck the Web sites you don’t want to search. By default all the sites are checked. 6. Press ENTER. The Online Status dialog opens. As Kurzweil 1000 searches the sites based on your search condition, you’ll hear the status. When the search is finished, available books you can download appear in the Items available for download checkbox list, and your cursor is now in the first item of the list. 7. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to navigate the list and the SPACEBAR to select each desired item when you hear its name. You can also search the list of magazines by pressing CONTROL+F. In the find dialog that opens, type in a word or partial word, then press ENTER to search the list. Kurzweil 1000 reads the first item it finds. Press F3 to hear the next matching item, and SHIFT+F3 to hear a previous match. To get more information about any item in the list, press F7. 8. Choose the OK command. Kurzweil 1000 downloads the materials in the background and lets you know when the download is complete. 9. If the book you selected to download is from the Bookshare.org Web site, and this is the first time you are requesting to download from the site during this work session, a dialog appears requesting your user name and password. If you are not a member of Bookshare.org, you will not be able to download the book. Certain books from Baen Books also require prior registration with the Web site. In those instances, Kurzweil 1000 asks for your user ID and password before downloading. The mnemonic, ALT+U, takes you to the user name text box; ALT+P to the password text box. When typing in your password, the system voice echoes each character with "asterisk." Note: You can save the user name in a settings file to save time. Go to Saving Your Settings in Chapter 12, Working with Settings for details. 10. OK or Cancel the download. Performing Complex Searches Performing searches can be a bit of an art. To get the results you want, you very often have to refine your search. There are two ways you can do this: by using combined conditions and/or by specifying a complex query. Using Combined Search Conditions Following are examples of combinations of search parameters that you can use in the Online Search for Books dialog: Part of a title and/or another part of a title. Suppose all you remember are the words "adventures" and "Crusoe" in the title and cannot recall the author. By specifying "adventures," selecting the conjunction "and," then specifying "Crusoe" also for the title, you should get results with "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe" in the list. Part of a title and/or part of an author’s name. What if you remember a book by Oliver Wendell Holmes and its title contains the word "breakfast?" By specifying "breakfast" as part of the title, selecting the conjunction "or," then entering "holmes" for the author, you would get a list of books by Holmes with the word "breakfast" in their titles. Part of an author’s name and/or part of another author’s name. If you remember only the authors’ names but not the book they wrote, you can specify one of their names; try "jackman." Select the conjunction "and." Then specify the other author’s name, "russell." The results would include the title "Flying Machine." Using Complex Queries In the Online Search for Books dialog, the Query text box follows the second set of title and author boxes. You can use ALT+Q to go directly to it. Whatever you specified in the simple or combined conditions in the Online Search dialog appears in the Query area. You can edit the text already in the Query area or bypass the other conditions and type your complex query directly into the Query box, following the correct syntax. Kurzweil 1000 query syntax is subject-verb-object. The subject is either "title" or "author." The verb is always "contains." The object is the text string you provide. Kurzweil 1000 presents the object within quotation marks. Complex queries are strings of combined conditions in this syntax. To combine the conditions, you use the conjunction "and," which you denote with the ampersand character (SHIFT+7 keys), and the conjunction "or," which you denote with the vertical line (SHIFT+\ keys). An example of a complex query is: title contains "A" & title contains "B" & author contains "X" | author contains "Y" Looking Through Online Bookshelves Access to Online Book Repositories has always been through a search mechanism, but sometimes it’s nice to simply look through a list of all of the available items. This can be done with most, but not all, repositories. About the Look Through Bookshelves Dialog The Online Search for Books dialog contains the following components along with the OK and Cancel commands: Sites list box (mnemonic ALT+T) presents most of the Web sites for online books, as well as the Classic Literature CD. But unlike other Kurzweil 1000 Web site lists, you can choose only one site. Status box (ALT+A) provides progress on the process. Items available for Download (ALT+I) is a checkbox list, sorted by title then author. Sort by list box (ALT+S or the shortcut CONTROL+S) lets you re-sort the list between Title and Author. To view and download a bookshelf: 1. Do one of the following: Open the Online menu and choose Look through the Bookshelves. Or press ALT+N+L. This opens a dialog. The cursor is in the Sites list box. 2. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to select one site. 3. Press ENTER to start the download. Kurzweil 1000 tells you the progress of building the bookshelf. To hear this message again, press ALT+A to go to the Status box. When Kurzweil 1000 is done building the list of files available for download, it reads the first item in the list. Each item has a checkbox. 4. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to go through the list, or press a letter key to go to the items beginning with that letter. Use the Spacebar to select a particular item for download, or to deselect an item that has already been selected. Use F7 for more information. You can also search the list by pressing CONTROL+F. In the Find dialog that opens, type in a word or partial word, then press ENTER to search the list. Kurzweil 1000 reads the first item it finds. Press F3 to hear the next matching item, and SHIFT+F3 to hear a previous match. Note: The list is initially sorted by title, and the text for each item contains the title, and then the author. If you prefer to sort the list by Author, press CONTROL+S. The list resorts. The text for each item changes to author followed by the title. Any item you have checked remains checked, and the item that is currently selected remains selected. The CONTROL+S shortcut toggles between sort by Title and Author. 5. When you are done, press ENTER to download the selected file or files. Searching for and Downloading Magazines To search for magazines: 1. Open the Online menu and choose Search for Magazines or press the mnemonics ALT+N+M. This opens the Online Search for Magazines dialog which contains seven components, along with the OK and Cancel commands. 2. In the Title Contains combo box (ALT+C), type part or all of a title. The box also contains a list of up to ten words from prior searches. Use the UP/DOWN arrows to retrieve a word or phrase from the list. 3. In the From list (ALT+F), select the starting month for the searches. 4. TAB to the next box in which you type the starting date’s year. 5. In the To list (ALT+O), select the ending month for the search. 6. TAB to the next box in which you type the ending date’s year. 7. When you finish specifying your search parameters, they appear in the Query text box (ALT+Q) and you’ll hear the contents. 8. In the Sites list box (ALT+T) find the available Web sites for your search. Each item has an associated check box. By default, all sites are checked. To check or uncheck an item, use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to go to the desired one, then press SPACEBAR. Pressing CONTROL+Y lets you hear whether or not an item is checked. 9. When you are ready to download, press ENTER. To cancel, press ESCAPE. Kurzweil 1000 returns a list of available magazines. Use the space bar to select the files you want to download. You can also search the list of magazines by pressing CONTROL+F. In the Find dialog that opens, type in a word or partial word, then press ENTER to search the list. Kurzweil 1000 reads the first item it finds. Press F3 to hear the next matching item, and SHIFT+F3 to hear the previous matching item. Searching the Classic Literature CD The Classic Literature CD Version 4 contains a collection of electronic texts including literary classics, historical documents and religious texts. You can search for a specific book or author from this CD in much the same way as searching for books from Web sites. The dialog you use is nearly identical to the Search for Books dialog, except that the Web site list and combination searches are not available. To search for books on the CD: 1. Place the CD in your PC’s CD drive. 2. Open the Online menu and choose Search the Classic Literature CD (ALT+N+C). The Search the Classic Literature CD dialog opens with the cursor in the Search list box. 3. Use the UP or DOWN ARROW key to specify search by Title or Author. To go back to the Search list box, use ALT+S. 4. In the Contains combo box (ALT+C), type the author’s name or title in whole or in part. Your query appears in the Query text box. If you want to type a query or edit one, press ALT +Q to go to the Query text box. Depending on what you chose in the Search list box (Author or Title), the box also contains a list of up to either your last ten Author or Title searches. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to retrieve a name or title from the list. 5. When you’re done, press ENTER. Kurzweil 1000 returns a list of available books. As in searching for books from Web sites, use the space bar to select the files you want to download. You can also search the list of books by pressing CONTROL+F. In the Find dialog that opens, type in a word or partial word, then press ENTER to search the list. Kurzweil 1000 reads the first item it finds. Press F3 to hear the next item, and SHIFT+F3 to hear a previous item. Automatic concatenation occurs when there is more than one chapter or section in a book, or when a file is especially long, and the chapters or sections have been placed in separate files on the CD. Kurzweil 1000 links these files together in sequential order, allowing you to read them in correct order through the chapters or sections when you open them. Notes: • When searching for books on the CD, Kurzweil 1000 looks for the CD in the first CD drive on your system. If it is unable to locate the CD there, it asks if you want to specify a different location. If you know the exact location, press Y for Yes to open the File dialog; here you can navigate and select the location. If you press N for No, the system prompts you to insert the CD and try again. • It’s possible to copy the contents of the CD to your hard drive, making it easy for Kurzweil 1000 to find every time. • You can save the location in a settings file, eliminating the need to tell Kurzweil 1000 where to find the CD; the system will automatically know where to look. Obtaining News from KESI News from KESI is a convenient way to read company announcements and articles of interest to the Kurzweil 1000 user community, among other information. To download news from KESI: 1. Open the Online menu and select News from KESI or press ALT+N+N. The Online Status dialog opens. 2. Select from the list of available news items, then press ENTER to download. 3. If no news is available, you can opt to read older items by exiting the dialog and pressing ENTER. The Online Status box opens again with a list of older items, sorted by date with the most recent article at the top of the list. Select from this list. Obtaining Kurzweil Product Updates From time to time, Kurzweil Educational Systems provides eligible customers with product updates and patches. From the Online menu, it’s possible to automatically apply a product patch that you select and download directly from the company Web site. To download product updates from Kurzweil: 1. Open the Online menu and select Updates or press ALT+N+U. The Online Status dialog opens. In the Items available for download checkbox list, you’ll find product patches and information applicable to the version of Kurzweil 1000 you are running. 2. Select from the list, then press ENTER to download. 3. Once the download completes, exit the Kurzweil 1000 program at your convenience to automatically apply the patch.