The Phone Book Feature

Many Blazie Engineering customers have used there notetakers to store names, addresses, and phone numbers.  With the 1998 software update, we are pleased to announce that your machine now has a built-in phone book system that will allow you to update a phone book very easily without ever leaving the file you are in.

To use the new phone book feature simply type o chord (or f9 on a Type 'N Speak) followed by the letter p.  If you haven't used this feature before a phone book file will automatically be created for you.  This file will be called "phone.brl" on a Braille 'N Speak or Braille Lite or "phone" on a Type 'N Speak.

You will hear the message "phone book  enter name,"  You may enter a person's name.  Press an e-chord (enter on a TNS) when you are finished writing the name and you will hear "title?".  This is intended to hold information such as a person's job title, or anything else you might want to say.  Type the information you desire and press e chord.  You will hear the next prompt.  You may skip any field you do not wish to enter data into by simply pressing an e chord without entering any text.  If you do not enter any information for the name you will hear the message "abort" and you will be returned to the file you were editing.  There is a way for you to tell the system that you are done entering data.  You may leave anything except the "name" field blank.  If you have entered all of the information a particular entry that you desire, you can press an f-chord (alt-f on a TNS) to tell the system that you are "finished" entering information.  This will skip most of the rest of the prompts for more information and take you directly to the last prompt which is a "comments" prompt; as always, if you would like to bypass this prompt as well, simply press an e-chord (enter on a TNS). You may also press p chord, or alt p on a TNS, to skip directly to the first phone field, or press m chord, alt m on a TNS, to jump directly to the e-mail prompt.  This skips over the fields til you get to the phone or e-mail prompt. You will notice that any chords other than b chord and c chord will perform the same action as e chord.  You may use b chord to backspace, backspace on the TNS, and you may use c chord, shift up arrow on the TNS.  Otherwise, any other commands you issue to navigate will do the same as an e-chord.

Once you have entered all information you will hear "ok".  At this point the information you typed is now saved in your phone book file. The default phone book file is "phone" on a TNS and "phone.brl" on all other machines.  New information will be added in alphabetical order based on the "name" field.  Note that the name isn't checked for a first and a last name; thus "Bill Travis" would come after "Adam Billings".  To avoid this problem you should enter names like this: "Travis, Bill". Additionally, in order for alphabetization to work correctly, you must consistently either always use capitalized names or lower case names.  If you capitalize some names but not others, the alphabetization will not be dependable. The phone book feature is quite powerful, but like all things that allow you to do a lot, it may not work exactly as every person would like.  We have added a way for you to customize some of the ways in which this feature works.  To configure phone book options, press an o chord or alt-o on a TNS when the "name?" prompt appears.  You will hear a short message indicating that you have activated the configuration menu, and then you will hear "setup field names".  At this point you are in a menu of configuration options that will allow you to customize the behavior of the phone book system.  You can use the dots 1 and 4 chords (up and down arrows on a TNS) to move up and down through the menu.  Pressing an  e-chord (enter on a TNS) will select the item you are pointing at.  When you  every finished with the configuration menu, simply press a z-chord (escape on the TNS) and you will be back at the "enter name" prompt.  Below is a brief discussion of each item in this menu.

The first option in the configuration is called "setup field names". There are a fairly large number of fields for entering information. Most people will not need or want to be prompted every time they wish to add an entry to the phone book for all of these fields.  When you select this option you are taken to a list of all of the possible fields you could be asked about with the exception of the "name" field.  After you hear each field name spoken, you will hear either "on" or "off".  To move from field to field, use the dots 1 and 4 chords (arrow keys on the TNS).  If a field is "off" you will not be prompted for it when you add an entry to the phone book file. To change the status of a particular field just press the space bar when you are pointing to it.  Pressing the letter p will automatically setup the fields for a personal phone book and pressing b will setup for a business style phone book; you can still change individual fields after pressing p or b.  If you press the letter z all fields will be turned on.  When you are finished selecting the fields you would like to hear, you can return to the main configuration menu by pressing a z-chord or escape on a TNS.

The second option in the configuration menu is "select phone file". Many users might wish to maintain more than one phone list at a time; either one for personal use and one for business, or perhaps lists of people who are with different organizations.  This feature allows you to select which file subsequent entries are placed into.  When you select this option you will be shown a list of all of the files in your unit whose names begin with the word "phone".  You can move through this list with the dots 1 and 4 chords (up and down arrows on the TNS).  When you have found the file you wish, simply press an e-chord (enter on a TNS) and that file will be the one where new entries are placed until you change it again.  If you wish to use a file whose name does not begin with the word "phone" simply press the letter n; you will be prompted to enter a file name; this name can be any valid file name.

Many people will wish to use the phone file they already have in their unit with this new feature.  If your phone file has a name other than phone or phone.brl, you will just use the above mentioned option to select your file as the default file.  If your current file begins with the letters phone, you will be able to find it in the list and choose it.  If your current phone file does not appear in the list, just press the letter n, type in your phone file name and e chord.

The final option in the configuration menu is "reinitialize phone book".  Selecting this option will undo any changes you have made to the phone book settings.  After selecting this option, all fields will be displayed when you create a new phone book entry, and the current phone book file will be set back to the default name for your unit.

We have tried to add a wide range of fields so that as many people's needs would be covered as possible.  It is unfortunately true though that every person's requirements are different, so we have added one final feature that adds even more flexibility to this feature for those who need it.  If you find that the field names we have given you do not meet your needs, it is possible to create a list of your own field names that will be used along with the names that already exist.  To do this you must create a file called "phone.fld".  This file should contain the field names you would like to use; there must be one name per line, and each line must end with a carriage return.  The field names can contain almost any characters and can be up too 40 characters in length.  The only two special things you need to be aware of are that if any line in this file contains the text "nodefaultfields" written as one word then you will not be shown any of the built-in field names except for the name field; you will only be shown the name field and then any field names you have created.

By default, any field names add will be shown in your phone book file; thus if you added a field called "guide dog" and you then added a person to your phone book with a guide dog named "Joe" you would see "guide dog Joe" when you went to look at your phone book file.  If you do not want the name of a field you create to appear in your phone book file, make the last character in the name a dash character (dots 3-6).  For example, if you did not wish "guide dog" to appear in your phone book file you would put the line "guide dog-" into your phone.fld file; if you then entered information about a person with a guide dog named "Joe" the line in your phone book file where the dog's name appeared would be just the word "Joe".

There is only one more command to discuss for this feature.  Once you have added some entries into your phone book file, you will probably want to look up information in that file from time to time.  If you want to quickly go to your phone book file, you can press an o-chord (f9 on a TNS) followed by a p-chord (alt-p on a TNS) and you will be instantly placed into your current phone book file.

Finally, you will notice that if your phone book file is a grade two file, then when you type information into the fields in grade 2, it will be spoken as though the translator is off.  We understand this is a big nuisance, and we are working hard to fix this for the next update.  However, remember that if you press c chord to re-read the line you just typed, it will speak it correctly.
