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From: Lloyd.Rasmussen@f432.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Lloyd Rasmussen)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Bns
Message-ID: <19188@bunker.isc-br.com>
Date: 6 May 91 16:22:37 GMT
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[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

Diana:  I upload stuff which my wife writes on the BNS all the time.
For print output:  Set "Append linefeeds on" so your carriage returns
(4-6 chord) will be sent with linefeeds after them.  Set your line
length to something compatible with your word processor default
margins (I use left margin 0, right margin 78).  I set page length 0
and no top or bottom margin.
    Now write the file in grade 2, with double returns wherever you
want paragraphs (you could use single returns and some spaces of
indentation, since every space in the braille file is reproduced in
the back translated file).
    Now to read all this stuff:  There is a Windows command, W-chord.
It asks "windows, lines or sentences".  By default, it reads lines,
which is the best thing when dealing with the help file.  For some
purposes, sentence mode is good (reading BBS messages from a
downloaded file is one example).  For editing your own work, use the
Windows choice.  You will be reading through your document by windows,
which is a group of characters of user-defined length.  To set the
window length, use the status menu (st chord), or type p-chord w, and
answer with a number between 20 and 80.  This number is the number of
characters in a window, and I haven't settled on the best value for
it.
    About the only things you can't do with this setup is center the
line, right justify it, or add print enhancements.  Actually, I use
PC-Write for my word processor, and the ASCII control codes for bold-
facing, underlining, etc. are not hard to enter from a BNS.
    Hope this information helps.  My wife Judy really doesn't like
typing stuff much, and has had bad experiences with me teaching her
how to run the computer with Vocal-Eyes.  But she is a braille person,
and the BNS command structure was logical enough that she's really
going to town on it these days, writing grant proposals, meeting
minutes, etc.  She even lets me use it sometimes.

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