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Is the NVDA Commands Quick Reference available in some searchable document format? (e.g. PDF, docx)
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I really don't know the answer to that question
I realize that I can open it in the browser and search there, but I often like to save this sort of thing as a PDF that I can search whenever I wish. However, when I do that either using the PDF Creator virtual printer or Google's Print as PDF option, I cannot OCR process the resulting file such that it's searchable. This is most peculiar, given that the entire thing is mostly text. I even tried on an old copy I'd saved from 2018.1 and that didn't work. I'd just like to have this documentation in some sort of format besides HTML that I can search in for specific text. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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Gene
Is saving it as a text file wile the document is opened in a browser
unsatisfactory?
Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Vogel
Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2021 3:10 PM
Subject: [nvda] Is the NVDA Commands Quick Reference available in
some searchable document format? (e.g. PDF, docx) I
really don't know the answer to that question I realize that I can open it in the browser and search there, but I often like to save this sort of thing as a PDF that I can search whenever I wish. However, when I do that either using the PDF Creator virtual printer or Google's Print as PDF option, I cannot OCR process the resulting file such that it's searchable. This is most peculiar, given that the entire thing is mostly text. I even tried on an old copy I'd saved from 2018.1 and that didn't work. I'd just like to have this documentation in some sort of format besides HTML that I can search in for specific text. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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Tyler Spivey
There are a couple things you can try.
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1. Just open the quick reference in word. The address bar of your browser will tell you where it is. Word should then import the file, and let you re-save it as .docx. 2. Select all in your browser and copy it. Don't use NVDA's selection, you want the browser selection. Paste that in Word. Either of these should give you what you want.
On 7/17/2021 1:10 PM, Brian Vogel wrote:
I really don't know the answer to that question
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Thank you gentlemen. Both of those are useful workarounds.
I do have to say I'd like to keep the formatting, though. I'll try opening one of the PDFs using word, and saving out the resulting docx to see what happens. The above being said, I can't imagine that it would be difficult to "pack and ship" a searchable document format of this reference with NVDA itself, but I may be the very odd bird who likes to have these references available separate from the screen reader even when I am using the screen reader. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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Jackie
& if you *really* want a pdf, printing using the Microsoft print to
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pdf utility also works.
On 7/17/21, Brian Vogel <britechguy@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you gentlemen. Both of those are useful workarounds. --
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On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 05:27 PM, Jackie wrote:
printing using the Microsoft print to- I'll also try that, but what I'm trying to say is that none of these print to PDF options is generating a searchable PDF, and even if I manually run OCR on those files in PDF-XChange Viewer, and save the result, I get nada as far as searchability. It's the strangest thing I've ever encountered. I would have thought, given that the source HTML file is almost purely text based, that any resulting PDF generated via any virtual printer method would have defaulted to being a searchable PDF with no need to do OCR processing on it to begin with. But the OCR just not working is just bizarre. I've done OCR on source material many times that were image scanned PDFs with "sketchy quality" source material or scanning or both, where the OCR results are perfect or close to it. Strange . . . -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 05:27 PM, Jackie wrote:
Microsoft print to pdf utility also works.- By the way, I just tried this method to create the PDF, and although the initial result is not searchable, the OCR processing on that file by PDF-XChange Viewer does work, so I can save the text layer as part of the processed file and have it be searchable when I next open it. This is the first and only time that I've ever hit any PDF file created by one virtual printer versus another be able to be successfully OCR processed for only one of those virtual printer files. But, as I frequently say, we all need to have backup/workaround methods in our back pockets when our preferred method doesn't want to cooperate! -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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Jackie
Brian, using Firefox & Microsoft print to pdf, I was able to use
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ctrl+NVDA+f to search text in Acrobat, using the 32-bit version. The reading is terrible, because, for some reason, spaces in acrobat reader aren't being recognized anymore, so just about every Acrobat document reads crappy now. But it works. What also worked for me is to do a quick ctrl+a, ctrl+c & paste it in either Wordpad, Notepad, or Word. I know you know these methods, I'm certainly not trying to be condescending, so I'm wondering precisely what versions of browser & Acrobat you're using?
On 7/17/21, Brian Vogel <britechguy@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 05:27 PM, Jackie wrote:- --
Subscribe to a WordPress for Newbies Mailing List by sending a message to: wp4newbs-request@freelists.org with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by visiting the list page at http://www.freelists.org/list/wp4newbs & check out my sites at www.brightstarsweb.com & www.mysitesbeenhacked.com
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Jackie,
I don't use Adobe Acrobat DC, as I've not cared for Adobe's own readers for some years now, and they keep getting worse and worse as far as my personal taste goes. I've been using Tracker Software's PDF-XChange Viewer for years, even though they call it a "discontinued download" it's still available from their site and they've updated it many times since its deprecation to discontinued status. It is absolutely not a good general purpose reader for screen reader users, as it's not accessible in its entirety (or even close to it) and will never become so. That being said, I often recommend it to blind users who need to OCR process lots of old image-scanned PDFs and save the resulting text layer along with the original image content and never need to OCR it again (and to be able to give it to the source of the original file and ask them to use it instead so no one has to do this work again). It's OCR capabilities are remarkable, and free, and in addition to English, Spanish, German, and French that "come with" you can also get many additional language packs, either separately or all of them at once, for no cost. And the OCR function is entirely accessible, and proved to be invaluable for several of my former clients who were in graduate school at the time and got lots of ancient image scanned PDFs as part of their course reading material. I also had a private client at one point who found the ability to OCR Swedish language texts really, really helpful. I'm printing out of Brave and have used PDF Creator (my usual preferred virtual printing utility), Brave's own Print to PDF option, and Microsoft's Print to PDF virtual printer. The only one of those that's created a PDF that I can then apply OCR on successfully, for the NVDA 2021.1 Commands Quick Reference, is MS's. That's never happened to me in the past, and I could not begin to count how many PDFs I've generated via virtual printers, particularly PDF Creator, that did not have this issue. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 I do not understand why some seek to separate a person from their actions. The self is composed of an individual’s thoughts, actions, and expression, which are contained in and actuated by the body. What you do and say is the clearest indicator of who you are. ~ Brian Vogel
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Jackie
Weird. Thanks for the heads-up on the PDF-Xchange viewer. I've
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downloaded it now just because I often get requests from folks who need a free OCR solution.
On 7/17/21, Brian Vogel <britechguy@gmail.com> wrote:
Jackie, --
Subscribe to a WordPress for Newbies Mailing List by sending a message to: wp4newbs-request@freelists.org with 'subscribe' in the Subject field OR by visiting the list page at http://www.freelists.org/list/wp4newbs & check out my sites at www.brightstarsweb.com & www.mysitesbeenhacked.com
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Martin McCormick
I've been following this thread back from when it started out as
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the very intelligent question of "What is an Object?" This discussion is in English. The only other language that I speak any of at all is Spanish and what we appear to be talking about is nothing less than how the human brain processes concepts. We humans tend to try to simplify ideas to wrap our minds around a particular concept so we come up with an expression as a container for that whole idea such as fire or disease prevention, both concepts contain huge numbers of actions and smaller-scope ideas which, all together, constitute the big concept of disease prevention or fire prevention. Thanks to all who contributed to this thread or these threads because the concept of what classifies as an object is very important but difficult to simply answer other than to think of it as a container or box that could be of any size which holds anything from one instruction to a whole series of programs or modules. In the unix operating system, one of the strangest feelings I ever had was to learn that the unix kernel is one giant program or object without which nothing else works. The same is true with Windows or any other operating system that comes to mind. The world is an object so is a light switch but the scope of the light switch as a pair of contacts that make or break the circuit is easy to understand while the whole world will never totally be understood by any one person. When the contacts in the light switch corrode such that even though they appear to be touching, a small layer of oxide keeps them electrically apart, we have an unanticipated factor in this simple object that only a person familiar with how light switches die feels comfortable and others just scratch their heads. Another suggestion for making something searchable is to save it as ASCII text. It's a clunky old format but I wish more emails and manuals existed in ASCII text because, while operating systems, computers and the objects they use to process everything come and go, plain text is the one common denominator. Even there, nothing is fool-proof because one might know there is an expression such as "stochastic resonance" in the document one is searching but stochastic happens to be on one line and resonance is the first word of the next line so, if your search engine is too elementary, it will blow right by the object of your search and you'll miss it. I can't count the number of times I have looked for information in documents and not found it because of spelling errors on my part, spelling errors on the part of the person writing the document or formatting-related issues that appeared to obscure the expression when it was there in plain text all the time, just rearranged slightly . When we search for some expression, we may deal with regular expressions which are more objects that break text in to classifications such as numbers, letters and white space. Martin "Brian Vogel" <britechguy@gmail.com> writes:
Thank you gentlemen. Both of those are useful workarounds.
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On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:56 AM, Martin McCormick wrote:
It's [plain text] a clunky old format but I wish more emails and manuals existed in ASCII text because, while operating systems, computers and the objects they use to process everything come and go, plain text is the one common denominator.- The problem being that these texts are meant to be read by sighted humans, and plain text is just a horrible, horrible format for that purpose. These electronic formats that allowed the reproduction of what had been in use for hundreds of years in printed materials came into existence because the primary purpose is ease of reading, including all the information carried by formatting, for the vast majority of readers, who happen to be sighted. And the conventions used in print media came about because they allow a myriad of things to be communicated with ease using things such as table layouts, italics, different fonts and font sizes, and the list goes on and on and where the visual presentation itself is what aids this. And, though I'll possibly be excoriated for making this observation, if you are writing anything beyond quick notes or emails or similar you simply have to write for a sighted audience as far as knowing how formatting works, at least if you want to operate in the world at large. The sighted world is the primary target for written information. The very medium itself was invented as a visual medium (even though Louis Braille did a brilliant transcription into a tactile medium, but there is a loss of certain meta-content embedded in the visual version when doing so for certain things). These formats exist because they serve a very vital purpose. It may not be one that serves you, personally, as an individual, but they still serve a vital purpose for a simply massive audience. -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H1, Build 19043 Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. ~ Mark Twain
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