Braille Lite M20, Braille Lite M40 and Type Lite
Firmware Revision 4.5
Update Documentation
Thank you for downloading this firmware update for your Millennium notetakers.
This update incorporates a number of new features and improvements based on
your feedback. Thank you for your continued support of our notetakers.
Your input makes these products more powerful and reliable.
This update program will function only if you already
have firmware revision 4.1 installed in your unit. If you are using an older
firmware level, the update will fail to complete. To install this update, copy
the appropriate .bns file into your notetaker and run it as you would run any external program.
Refer to your Product Manual for more information on updating your unit.
Note: You must run this update from bank A. However, we
encourage you to update both banks with revision 4.5. If you wish to keep a
copy of revision 4.1, retain it only in bank B.
What's New In Millennium 4.5?
New in Speech:
Unnecessary pauses in speech, especially on M20 units,
have been reduced. Speech is now much more smooth and responsive.
Two new speech parameter settings have been added:
1.
There is now a new key echo setting for
"characters and words." You can toggle between available key echo
settings with the SPACEBAR.
2.
You can also change speech articulation (that
is, the clarity of pronouncing sounds with speech). Press DOT 4 CHORD to
decrease articulation, and DOT 1 CHORD to increase it. On the Type Lite, the commands are ALT+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW and
ALT+SHIFT+UP ARROW.
When speech rate, volume, pitch or articulation
are modified, the unit will announce and display the new parameter
values.
New in Compact Flash support:
Files stored on a Compact Flash card can be opened
directly from the card. Press O-CHORD (or ENTER on the Type Lite)
when pointing at the file you would like to read, and the notetaker
will open it for viewing.
Files can now be moved between a Compact Flash card and
the notetaker. To move a single file, press DOTS
1-3-4-8 while pointing to a file. If the file is in RAM or Flash, it will be
moved to the folder last accessed on your CF card. If the file is on Compact
Flash, it will be moved to RAM or Flash, depending on where you were when you
accessed Compact Flash. Standard file marking techniques can be used to move
multiple files.
This build introduces a new format for system backup. The
unit can read backups produced with earlier firmware versions, but the new
format is not backward compatible. Earlier firmware revisions cannot read the
new backup format.
File position and file numbers are now preserved in a
backup.
Long file names are now preserved when you copy files to
Compact Flash. This also applies to backup and restore operations. In the past,
file names were truncated to 8.3 format.
Files on the CF card with names longer than 20 characters
will have their names truncated as you view them on your notetaker.
The first 19 characters of the file name will be shown: character 20 is the
"Greater Than" sign. This alerts you to the fact that the name could
not be displayed in full. To see the complete file name, press I-CHORD as you
point at the file.
When navigating the file structure on your CF card, you
can now determine the name of the current folder. To do so, press DOTS 2-3-5-6
CHORD.
New in Email:
New versions of Email.bns and Mailer.bns are included with this update.
You can now temporarily shell out from almost anywhere in
Email.bns to perform other tasks with the unit. A single
keystroke will return you to the e-mail program.
Press S-CHORD to Shell Out. The unit says: "Entering
shell, press Z-CHORD to return". At this point, you have access to most
standard functions of your unit. You can access files, use the calculator,
retrieve time and date, etc. You cannot run an external program while shelled
out. To return to Email, press Z-CHORD. You must return from shell and close
the Email program before powering off the unit.
You can now use the clipboard to copy and paste data
between the e-mail program and other functions within the unit. Commands to
copy or append, and paste data, are available in Email. As you read a message,
you can copy any portion of it to the clipboard as if you were copying text in
any other file. Then, shell out to another function within the unit and paste
that information. You can also copy data to the clipboard from any file in the
unit, and then paste it into an e-mail message, the Address Book, etc.
Because we are now using S-CHORD as the keystroke to
shell out, the command to filter messages has been changed to T-CHORD.
A spell checker is now available in the message editor.
To spell check a message you are composing, press O-CHORD to open the context
menu. Spell check is the first item on the menu, so you can press E-CHORD to
open it. All standard spell checker commands are available. The spell checker
functions from the current cursor position to the end of file. To spell check
the entire message, you must position the cursor at the beginning of the
message.
There is a new menu-driven Configuration Editor in Email.bns. To access it, press O-CHORD while in the message
List, then DOTS
You can now configure the e-mail program so that Insert
will be the default mode for all messages, including replies and forwards. In
the past, Append was the default mode, causing the message being replied to or
forwarded to be placed above new text.
When replying or forwarding, the header fields in the
original message are now included.
You can now limit the number of messages to be downloaded
from the server.
MAILER.BNS has been designed so that it will disconnect
from your Internet provider immediately after your mail has been retrieved.
Note that in the previous builds the disconnect process took a few seconds.
Other New Features
Global Replace is now available in the Spell Checker.
When the Spell Checker encounters a word it does not know, you will receive the
usual options. If you choose to "Enter the correct word in document",
or if you pick a suggestion, you will hear another question: "Replace all
occurrences? Y/N?" If you answer "Yes",
the word will be replaced globally in the document. Otherwise, the replacement
will occur only once.
When you are asked to enter information such as file
names, you can now use the same navigation commands used in Phone Book and Datebook.
·
line movement commands
·
I-CHORD toggles between Append, Insert and
Overwrite modes
·
Cursor routers
·
Press DOT 7 to BACKSPACE
·
DOT 8 is the Enter key. In menus, DOT 8 is the
same as pressing E-CHORD.
If you attempt to execute a macro that has not been
defined, the unit will announce “Macro doesn’t exist”.
In earlier versions, a compatibility problem existed
between the notetakers and OpenBook
6.X. OpenBook could not transfer files at higher
speeds, while the notetakers would set baud rate
automatically to 115200 in WinDisk mode. To help you
in these instances, you can now turn off Auto Max Baud. This is done in the
Status Menu, and the quick key for this option is M-CHORD. By default, Auto Max
Baud is on. If you experience compatibility problems, you can turn this feature
off, and set the baud rate manually. Your baud rate setting will then apply to WinDisk. If you are using OpenBook
7.0, you should leave Auto Max Baud turned on.
A large Help file is built into the firmware. As usual,
you can access it by pressing DOTS 1-4-5-6 CHORD.
What’s fixed in Millennium 4.5?
·
The code has been optimized to improve
performance. For example, you will notice that the unit now starts up almost
instantly.
·
We have updated the keyboard driver to fix the
Whiz Wheels bounce-back problem. The new driver will be installed right after
the unit does a Warm Reset at the end of the update process.
·
For consistency with the Classic notetakers, we have changed the command that immediately
advances the display during autoscroll from DOT 7 to SpaceBar.
·
If you leave your notetaker
in WinDisk mode, you will now receive the
"Hello!" message every five minutes, to alert you that the notetaker is still on. In the past, this message was not
spoken when the unit was in WinDisk mode.
·
Calculator memory values are now retained after
a Warm Reset.
·
Compact Flash messages for restore, backup and
formatting have been made more user-friendly.
·
When Total Punctuation is selected in Speech
Parameters, the units will no longer announce extra spaces that are not in the
file.
·
The voice settings are now saved and restored
after a Braille-only startup. Previously, if you started the unit in Braille
only, and then re-enabled speech, the voice would return to the default
settings.
·
If you press a routing key or a Whiz Wheel while
in Speech Parameters, the action will be ignored.
·
You can now search for Braille contractions for
"ou" and "ow"
in Grade II files, even if they were entered as uppercase characters. This is
especially helpful in Braille files downloaded from the National Library
Service WebBraille site and the Bookshare
site.
·
DOTS
·
DOTS
·
Problems with reporting and moving to absolute
page have been fixed.
·
You can now navigate to the first line in a file
even if the line has only one character and "Skip Blank Lines" is
off.
·
The Word Count command now works as expected.
·
Control characters are now displayed correctly
in the Find dialog. You can search for control characters and see them on the
display.
·
Several issues with password-protecting files
have been resolved.
·
A number of issues related to speech in macros
have been corrected. As the result, macro speech is now much more reliable, and
macro execution is faster, especially if speech is silenced from within the macro.
·
The CountDown timer
will now beep for only a few seconds when it times out. This is consistent with
the performance of the Classic units.
·
You can now backspace when entering minutes or
seconds in the countdown timer.
·
If you press O-CHORD B, then answer “No” to an
incremental backup and “No” to deleting existing backup, the unit will now
display the message “Transfer cancelled.”
·
The problem of omitting the first Flash file in
file navigation has been fixed.
·
Deleting a file in Flash will now place you on
the next Flash file, and not at the top of the file list.
·
The names for upper ASCII characters are now
spoken correctly.
·
Under rare circumstances, the folder system
could have become corrupted. This would result in "garbage" folder names,
as well as in failures with WinDisk and with Compact
Flash access. Now, if your folder names are corrupted, the unit will
automatically rename them to Folder1, Folder2, etc., allowing both WinDisk and Compact Flash to work properly. The files in
your folders will all be intact. Should you ever encounter such automatically
generated folder names, rename the folders to their original names.