Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a great help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm asking something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for line length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement, is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end at arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more flexibly so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
  Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
  arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
  had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
  problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
  boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
  long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
  are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
  of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
  difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
  it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
  at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
  Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
  used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards,   Martin.

I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall NVDA setting that would define line length.
If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my SentenceNav add-on.
HTH
--Tony
On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a great help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm asking something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for line length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement, is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end at arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more flexibly so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
  Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
  arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
  had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
  problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
  boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
  long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
  are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
  of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
  difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
  it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
  at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
  Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
  used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards,   Martin.

.

In browse mode, you can set the line length. The default is one-hundred carachters. I suppose it would be possible to have a read by sentence option but I don’t know if there is any .demand for that. And it would conflict with sentences in which there are links and you have NVDA set to read every link on its own line.
Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2021 7:43 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode
I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall NVDA
setting that would define line length.
If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my SentenceNav
add-on.
HTH
--Tony
On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a great
help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm asking
something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and
the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for line
length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement,
is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a
sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that
quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found
any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end at
arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more flexibly
so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also
if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and
have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons
applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards, Martin.

As Gene noted, the line length in NVDA is a simple number - and it doesn't
look to see if it can "just add the last word of a sentence". I can see
that it might be advantageous though, I would suggest the best thing to do
is create an issue on our tracker at:
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues requesting the feature.
Kind regards
Quentin.
On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 1:20 PM Gene <gsasner@...> wrote:

In browse mode, you can set the line length. The default is one-hundred
carachters. I suppose it would be possible to have a read by sentence
option but I don’t know if there is any .demand for that. And it would
conflict with sentences in which there are links and you have NVDA set to
read every link on its own line.

Gene
-----Original Message-----
*From:* Tony Malykh <anton.malykh@...>
*Sent:* Saturday, November 20, 2021 7:43 PM
*To:* nvda@nvda.groups.io
*Subject:* Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall NVDA
setting that would define line length.

If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my SentenceNav
add-on.

HTH

--Tony

On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a great
help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm asking
something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and
the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for line
length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement,
is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a
sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that
quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found
any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end at
arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more flexibly
so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also
if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and
have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons
applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards, Martin.

In browse mode, you can set the line length. The default is one-hundred carachters. I suppose it would be possible to have a read by sentence option but I don’t know if there is any .demand for that. And it would conflict with sentences in which there are links and you have NVDA set to read every link on its own line.

Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2021 7:43 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall
NVDA setting that would define line length.

If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my SentenceNav
add-on.

HTH

--Tony

On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a
great help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm
asking something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and
the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for
line length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement,
is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a
sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that
quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found
any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end
at arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more
flexibly so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also
if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and
have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons
applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards, Martin.

I don't quite get why we need a line length mode anyway.

It would be good if NVDA could honour the lines on the screen, even in the virtual buffer.

I like the screen layout support, where links appear where they should, so why not make this work for formatting as well?

All the best

Steve

--
To subscribe to our News and Special Offers list, go to https://www.comproom.co.uk/subscribe

Computer Room Services
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Stevenage
Hertfordshire
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T: +44(0)1438-742286
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F: +44(0)1438-759589
E: steve@...
W: https://www.comproom.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Martin J. Dürst
Sent: 24 November 2021 08:25
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

Hello Gene,

Many thanks for your mail. We want to try and find out whether there is a difference between various ways of reading text (fixed one-hundred characters or somewhat more flexible). Of course, if there's a link, and NVDA is set to read that separately, I guess we will read that separately.

Regards, Martin.

On 2021-11-21 11:20, Gene via groups.io wrote:

In browse mode, you can set the line length. The default is one-hundred carachters. I suppose it would be possible to have a read by sentence option but I don’t know if there is any .demand for that. And it would conflict with sentences in which there are links and you have NVDA set to read every link on its own line.

Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2021 7:43 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall
NVDA setting that would define line length.

If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my SentenceNav
add-on.

HTH

--Tony

On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a
great help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if I'm
asking something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and
the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for
line length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for improvement,
is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the end of a
sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I suspect that
quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I haven't found
any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end
at arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more
flexibly so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers. Also
if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and
have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons
applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards, Martin.

--
Prof. Dr.sc. Martin J. Dürst
Department of Intelligent Information Technology College of Science and Engineering Aoyama Gakuin University Fuchinobe 5-1-10, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara
252-5258 Japan

I don't quite get why we need a line length mode anyway.

It would be good if NVDA could honour the lines on the screen, even in the virtual buffer.

I like the screen layout support, where links appear where they should, so why not make this work for formatting as well?

All the best

Steve

--
To subscribe to our News and Special Offers list, go to
https://www.comproom.co.uk/subscribe

Computer Room Services
77 Exeter Close
Stevenage
Hertfordshire
SG1 4PW
T: +44(0)1438-742286
M: +44(0)7956-334938
F: +44(0)1438-759589
E: steve@...
W: https://www.comproom.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: nvda@nvda.groups.io <nvda@nvda.groups.io> On Behalf Of Martin J.
Dürst
Sent: 24 November 2021 08:25
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

Hello Gene,

Many thanks for your mail. We want to try and find out whether there is a difference between various ways of reading text (fixed one-hundred characters or somewhat more flexible). Of course, if there's a link, and NVDA is set to read that separately, I guess we will read that separately.

Regards, Martin.

On 2021-11-21 11:20, Gene via groups.io wrote:

In browse mode, you can set the line length. The default is one-hundred carachters. I suppose it would be possible to have a read by sentence option but I don’t know if there is any .demand for that. And it would conflict with sentences in which there are links and you have NVDA set to read every link on its own line.

Gene
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Malykh
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2021 7:43 PM
To: nvda@nvda.groups.io
Subject: Re: [nvda] More flexible line length in browsing mode

I believe in browse mode lines are defined visually, I don't recall
NVDA setting that would define line length.

If you would like to read by sentences, you can install my
SentenceNav add-on.

HTH

--Tony

On 11/18/2021 11:07 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:

Hello everybody,

I have been using NVDA on and off for a few weeks. It's really a
great help. I'm new to this mailing list, so please forgive me if
I'm asking something old.

When reading text from a Web page, the text is read in "lines", and
the user presses arrow-down for each line. NVDA has a setting for
line length, which is at 100 characters originally. So well, so good.

What I find somewhat confusing, and possibly a place for
improvement, is that often a "line" ends a word or two before the
end of a sentence, or includes a word or two of a new sentence. I
suspect that quit a bit of thought must have gone into this, but I
haven't found any details yet.

I would really appreciate if somebody could explain why "lines" end
at arbitrary positions in sentences, and are not done a bit more
flexibly so that they more often end at the end of a sentence.

If this has been discussed already, I would appreciate pointers.
Also if there's some scientific paper about the issue.

I have tried to think about why things are as described above, and
have come up with various possible reasons. If any of these reasons
applies, please just tell me.

- There is already a setting/add-on for this, just use it.

- Having more variable line lengths would make it more difficult to read
Web pages (e.g. because the intervals between the presses of the down
arrow would be more irregular). If that's the case, then I haven't yet
had enough practice to notice it.

- Finding better positions to split text into lines is a much harder
problem than it looks. It is difficult to find actual sentence
boundaries in text (not all periods are sentence endings), and
long sentences without punctuation are also difficult to split.

- Finding better positions to split is possible, but good algorithms
are too slow. Text-to-speech conversion already uses quite a bit
of processing power.

- Finding sentence boundaries is quit language dependent, and therefore
difficult to implement in a general way.

- The overall architecture of NVDA (and other screen readers) makes
it too difficult to implement such a feature.

- Some other screen readers already do a better job at this, but we
at NVDA just have not had time to get around to do something here.
Help is appreciated. (I might want to help.)

- That's how screen readers always have done it, and everybody is
used to it, and so changing it isn't a good idea.

If there are any other actual or potential reasons, please tell me.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

With kind regards, Martin.

--
Prof. Dr.sc. Martin J. Dürst
Department of Intelligent Information Technology College of Science
and Engineering Aoyama Gakuin University Fuchinobe 5-1-10, Chuo-ku,
Sagamihara
252-5258 Japan