Kurzweil 1000 Version 8 -
Patches and Updates

Please click on the below links to view and download a patch:

Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.02

Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.01

1) Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.02

Download Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.02 (1.65MB )

August 26th, 2004

Note that this is not a cumulative patch - it does not include some important enhancements and bug fixes that were available in Patch 8.01. As a consequence, this patch should only be installed in a system that already has been patched to Kurzweil 1000 V8.01.

Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.02 covers the following:

1. IBM ViaVoice
   We have found a number of character combinations which, if spoken, will cause IBM ViaVoice (now known as IBM TTS) to fail. We have worked around all of those known combinations.
   
   
2. JAWS and Kurzweil 1000
   If you run Kurzweil 1000 with JAWS active, or with JAWS in sleep mode, Kurzweil 1000 would occasionally fail if you had a long page in the Kurzweil 1000 Editor. We'd like to thank Freedom Scientific for their help in diagnosing this problem. In the end, it was a bug in Microsoft's implementation of Active Accessibility. We have worked around the issue.
   
   
3. Tables and the Kurzweil 1000 Editor
   There were several ways in which a badly formed table could cause Kurzweil 1000 to fail. These have been fixed.
   
   
4. RTF Pagination
   Badly formed RTF could cause Kurzweil 1000 to insert a number of extra pages in a document when the file was opened. This has been fixed.
   
   
5. NLS Web Braille
   The URL and interface for NLS Web Braille has changed. This patch updates our information for that, so that online books can once again access that repository.
6. Scanner Support
   As usual, a number of changes were introduced to support scanners, each with an interface that seems to interpret the standards in various eccentric ways. Recent changes included some fixes for document feeders with the HP 5590C, as well as support for the way brightness is handled in the Epson Perfection 4180.
   
   

2) Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.01

Download Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.01 (1.84 MB)

Kurzweil 1000 Version 8.01

Version 8.01 of Kurzweil 1000 is now available, free of charge, to customers who have Version 8. If you have Internet access, you can use the Online Update feature of Kurzweil 1000 or download the patch from the Kurzweil Educational Systems website. Please note that you will need to have installed Version 8 prior to installing 8.01.

If you have Internet access on the computer which contains Version 8, you can retrieve and install this update using the Online Update mechanism in Kurzweil 1000. Just do the following:

1. Select the Update menu item in the Online menu (Alt, then N, then U will do it).



2. The Online Status dialog will indicate that a search is in progress. When it completes, you should press the space bar to select Patch 8.01 for download, and then press enter.



3. You can do other things in Kurzweil 1000 while waiting for the download to complete. The update contains about 1.84 megabytes of data. When it completes, you will hear a message indicating that the update has been successfully downloaded, and that you should exit from Kurzweil 1000 to install it. When it is convenient to do so, exit from Kurzweil 1000.



4. At that point, the update will be automatically installed. The next time you run Kurzweil 1000, you should hear that you are using Version 8.01.
   
   

If you have more than one computer running Kurzweil 1000, and if it is more convenient for you to download the update on only one computer, you can always copy the update executable to your other machines and manually run that program. After you have downloaded and installed the update, you can find its executable in the "Download\Completed Patches" folder under your Kurzweil 1000 document home. The name of the executable is k1000patch801.exe.

Please note: If they you are running on a system that protects portions of the file system, you should make sure that you have permission to modify files within your "\Program Files" folder first (i.e., administrator access to their computer if you are running Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP).

If you wish to download this patch directly, click:

Download Kurzweil 1000 Patch 8.01 (1.84 MB)

If you do not have Internet access, we will be happy to send you the update on CD. Give us a call at 800.894.5374 x 607. For more information about this release, please contact technical support at 888.995.9905, or send an email to k1000support@kurzweiledu.com.

What follows are the release notes for this update. Once you have installed the update, you can find another copy of this in your General folder. The file name is Patch801.txt.

Changes introduced by Patch 8.01 into Kurzweil 1000 - November 20, 2003:

Enhancements

1. Statistics View and Standard View for the Calculator
   

   The Calculator now has a Statistics View and a Standard View, besides the Scientific View.

   To get into the Statistics view, launch the Calculator, go into the View menu, and select Statistics. You may enter a set of numbers in a data list, and calculate their count, sum, mean, median, minimum, maximum, range, variance, and standard deviation. There is a display for the current value, a data list box , and an Ignore Zero check box. The rest of the controls are buttons for numbers and functions. Press F1 for help on each control for further information. Each control also has a hot key, and you can press F3 to get a complete list of the hot keys. The calculator display shows the current number entered. You may use Control plus V at any time to speak the current value. When the display is in focus, you may use Control plus C to copy the current value into a clipboard.

   The data list can be entered with Control plus D, or by tabbing to its location. You can then use the up or down arrow keys to move through the data. Functions of the data list provide the ability to modify the data set. To add a number to the data list, enter the number first, and then use the add button. To remove a number from the data list, select the number first, and then use the remove button. To clear all the numbers in the list, use the Clear button. To get the statistical results of the current data set, use the Run button.

   You may choose to ignore datapoints of zero by checking the Ignore Zero Checkbox.

   You may also import data from a text file. To do so, go to the File menu and select Import Data List. A file dialog opens and lets you select a text file. Note that the file should contain numbers only, and the numbers should be separated by carriage-returns.

   To get into the Standard view, go into the View menu, and select Standard. It contains basic arithmetic functions and memory functions. Users who have no need for scientific functions can use this view.

   You may switch between the views using their hotkeys.

2. Favorites List
   

   Multiple files can now be selected in the favorites list. When you do so, and then press enter, all of the selected files are opened.

3. BookShare Searches
   

   If you are not logged into BookShare, searches are constrained to books which are considered to not contain adult language. Now if you initiate a search of BookShare and are not already logged in, you will be asked for your user name and password. You can cancel this dialog if you wish to continue the search without first logging in.

4. More Command Line Arguments

   Kurzweil 1000 has always responded to the presence of a command line argument by presuming it was a file name, and opening that file if it could. Now it has some other arguments. These are:
   -in: filename

   This allows you to specify the incoming file name. If that name contains space characters, it should be enclosed in quotation marks. This isn't terribly different from specifying the file name without the switch "-in:", but there is more to come.
   -out: filename

   This allows you to specify an output file name. It only makes sense if you also specify an input file name. Specifying both causes the Kurzweil 1000 to open a file, and save it, doing a conversion if necessary, into the output file. Existing files may be overwritten. The extension must specify a format that is known to the Kurzweil 1000, such as "txt", "rtf", "brl", "brf", or "bfm".
   -d

   If this switch is specified, the input file name will be deleted after it is opened (and perhaps written into the output file).
   -set: filename

   This allows you to specify the name of a settings file other than "default", which is the one usually loaded at startup time. Unlike the other file names that you can specify in command lines, you should not specify the complete path or the extension.
   -x

   If this switch is specified, Kurzweil 000 will exit automatically after doing whatever else was specified by other switches.

5. Default Selection Changed
   

   When you attempt to save partial settings, the default settings file was the first one in the alphabetically ordered list. Now the default is the settings file you last used.

6. Verbosity and Page Numbers
   

   If you choose to use a message when turning a page or going to a page, it can now include two sets of wildcard characters (doubled percent signs). The first is the current page number, while the second is the total number of pages (if you do not have user page numbers for the document), or the page number for the last page in the file (if you do).

7. Currency Recognition and the New twenties
   

   The new Twenty dollar bill is now recognized.

8. Spelling Selected Text
   

   A new hot key has been added to spell selected text in a document. It is Control+Shift+Y.

Bug Fixes

1. Shutting Down the Operating System
   

   The Keypad technique for shutting down Windows did not work when the operating system was Windows '95, '98, or Windows ME. It does now.

2. Recognition Done Event
   

   The Recognition Done event was being triggered only once if you had two page mode enabled. Although this isn't necessarily wrong, it was a change from previous behavior. We've gone back to triggering that event twice - once when each page is completed.

3. Debug Log
   

   A file named "Debug.txt" was being written into the Temporary folder whenever Scan Optimization was used. That was a feature used when testing, which should not have made it into the released product. Its been removed.

4. Inappropriate Blank Page
   

   In rare circumstances, apparently connected to certain editing changes made in a page when line endings are respected, caused the page to not be written properly into the KES file. The result would be an inappropriate blank page when that file was reopened. This has been fixed.

5. Hyphen Removal
   

   When Fix Hyphens is enabled, hyphens can be removed even when the word ending in a hyphen also ends a paragraph. That removal sometimes caused the system to drop the first few characters of the second half of the word. This has been fixed.

6. Printing Message
   

   The message indicating that a print request has been queued wasn't spoken, since we now suppress most speech when a dialog box is dismissed. It is now spoken properly.

7. A Missing Space
   

   When FineReader was used, the last word of the first line in a paragraph was sometimes joined to the first word in the second line. This only occurred for certain styles of indented paragraphs. Its been fixed.

8. Spurious Error Log Message
   

   Your temporary file contains a log of diagnostic messages called "Error Log.txt". Some erroneous messages were being written into that file regarding unknown OCR languages and Devices. Those messages are now suppressed.

9. Long Position Messages
   

   If you press Shift+F1 once you will get a short message. If you press it twice, you will get a longer message with more information. However, the first time you pressed it at the top of a page, you would get the long message. Not a big problem, but fixed nonetheless.

10. Copy Operations in Text Boxes
    

    You can, of course, use the copy shortcut key in a text box, copying selected text to the clipboard. The system, however, was silent when you did that. It now says "Copy".

11. Reading Keypad Help
    

    If you pressed the help key in the numeric keypad, and then pressed and held down the Start and Stop Reading Key long enough to get the longer help message, pressing that key again would once again give you the long help message. This has been fixed.

12. Punctuation Announcements
    

    The word spoken when you crossed over an open or closed single quote was not audible, and people usually just heard "comma". These marks are now properly identified.

13. Calculator Short Cuts
    

    Shift+Tab was used as a short cut key for a function in the calculator. Obviously that would cause problems moving backwards through the keys, so that function has been given a different short cut key.

14. MP3 Encoding

    If you use ACM rather than the Lame encoder for MP3 output, and if you use a 16 kilohertz speech engine, the results were rather fuzzy. They are now quite a bit better.

15. Pasting of Multiple Pages
    

    When multiple pages were cut or copied from an open file in Kurzweil 1000 and then pasted back, they would contain one extra space at the bottom of each page. That's been fixed.

16. File Rename
    

    The Rename menu item in the file dialog's context menu for files would work on the first file if no file was selected. That's a bit dangerous, so it now will just beep if you haven't selected a file first.

17. File Position and Location Short Cut Keys
    

    If you were in an open file that contained no pages (hard to do, but it can be done), and then pressed either Shift+F1 or Control+F1, Kurzweil 1000 would crash. This has been fixed.

18. Help Message in Verbosity Settings
    

    The help message associated with the Browse button in the Verbosity Settings dialog was incorrect. It has been fixed.

19. The About Dialog and F3
    

    Pressing F3 while positioned in the list of legal notices in the About dialog would cause them to be printed using the first printer available. That was something of a surprise to the person who tried it, so that has been removed.

20. Layout Information ReportingLayout Information Reporting
    

    Shift+F1, when pressed twice, will report a considerable amount of information about a page. It was erroneously indicating that layout information was available sometimes. This has been fixed.

21. Duplicate Menu Items for Applications
    

    If you install Kurzweil 1000 someplace other than its default folder (which is "C:\Program Files\Kurzweil Educational Systems\Kurzweil 1000"), then you often ended up with duplicate menu items for the Kurzweil Applications in your File->Launch menu. This has been fixed.

22. File Properties Dialog
    

    If you attempt to get file properties for an unopened KES file which is read only, the dialog will not properly report the file description, and will incorrectly indicate that statistics are being calculated. This has been fixed.

23. Folder Attributes
    

    Changes made to folder Attributes in the folder properties dialog did not work. They do now.

24. Poorly Recognized Pages Dialog
    

    If no poorly recognized pages are found, but that dialog is brought up, F1 should have provided help for the first control. Instead, in that circumstance only, it was ignored.

25. Adding to a Selection
    

    If you are selecting text, each character added is spoken as you add it. If, however, you added a blank line to the selection, nothing was spoken. Adding a blank line now triggers the blank line verbosity event.

26. Navigation by Paragraph
    

    If you changed pages while using Control plus Up Arrow, or Control plus Down Arrow, the first or last paragraph of a new page could be spoken twice. This has been fixed.

27. Bookmark Dialog
    

    If you deleted a bookmark and then changed the level number of another bookmark, Kurzweil 1000 could crash. This has been fixed.

28. Telephone Registration Dialog
    

    Extraneous dots were sometimes spoken in the telephone registration dialog. No longer.

29. An Errant File
    

    When you registered the Kurzweil 1000, a file called "test.xml" was written into the root folder of your hard drive. That file should have been deleted after registration was completed, since it contains all of your registration information. It now is.

30. Spell Checker Word List
    

    If you delete all of the entries from the table in the Edit Spell Checker Word List dialog, and then tab and backtab into that table, Kurzweil 1000 would crash. This has been fixed.

31. Dictionary Lookup
    

    If you attempted to look up a word that was preceded or followed by Open or Close Double Quotes, those quotation marks were not stripped from the words, and the dictionary lookup would fail. This has been fixed.

32. Dancing Cursors
    

    An attempt to speak the current unit using, for example, F7, wen positioned on a blank line would sometimes cause the cursor to be repositioned at some very different spot on the page. This has been fixed.

33. Going to a Bookmark
    

    Use of the Go to Bookmark dialog would sometimes cause Kurzweil 1000 to erroneously think that the document needed to be saved. This has been fixed.

34. Starting Page Number in the Print Dialog
    

    The control used to specify the starting page number in the print dialog spoke the wrong message when it got keyboard focus. This has been fixed.

35. Last Position Command
    

    Use of the Last Position menu item after a Control+End or Control+Home operation did not necessarily return you to your last position. It does now.

36. Bad Echo
    

    Pressing Control+Back Space, which normally deletes the previous word, would echo the next word rather than beep if you were positioned at the beginning of a page.

37. ViaVoice and the Backslash Character
    

    SAPI speech engines use the backslash character to begin a SAPI command. To speak a backslash, you normally double it. ViaVoice does not interpret doubled backslashes properly, so we now replace backslash characters with the name "back slash" when sending them to a speech engine.

38. Control Plus Left Arrow
    

    Use of Control plus the left arrow will back up the cursor by a word, and speak that word. That wasn't working though for a single character word at the beginning of a page. Its been fixed.

39. Constructing a Bookshelf
    

    If you enter the Online Bookshelves dialog, select a site, press enter, and then immediately press cancel Kurzweil 1000 would sometimes crash. This has been fixed.

40. Recovering from a Crash
    

    When Kurzweil 1000 crashed, pending user page number changes would be lost, even if the file was properly recovered the next time the Kurzweil 1000 was run. This has been fixed.

41. When the File System Sees Double
    

    In certain unusual circumstances, Windows can present a user with identical folder or file names. This caused a crash in the Kurzweil 1000 file dialog. Its been fixed.

42. Cancelling a Download
    

    Cancelling a download attempt from the Classic Literature CD could leave the system thinking that a download was still in progress. This has been fixed.

43. Moving a ZIP file
    

    If you used File Utilities to move a ZIP folder from one place to another, or if you used Cut and Paste to do the same in a file dialog, you would end up with a ZIP folder which contained another ZIP folder. That move is now done properly.

44. Suddenly Reading Continuously
    

    If you were not reading continuously, but were nonetheless reading a unit of text in the document (with, for example, F6, F7, or F8), and you then pressed F11 or F12 to increase or decrease the reading speed, reading would become continuous as though you had also pressed F5. This has been fixed.

45. The name of Punctuation Marks
    

    If you spelled a word mnemonically (using word spelling), and if that word contained certain unusual punctuation marks, they were not spoken properly. They are now.

46. A Surprising Paste
    

    Control+F7 was pasting text into open documents. It now does nothing.

47. An Erroneous Pause
    

    If you choose to pause at the end of paragraphs, an erroneous pause was introduced after the first word on a page, if that word was preceeded by a blank line. This has been fixed.

48. Breaking Thumbnails
    

    If you installed Kurzweil 1000 on a system also containing Kurzweil 3000, thumbnails in the latter product were not drawn properly. This has been fixed.

49. Scanner Failures in Scan Optimization
    

    Scanner errors are handled (I hope) more gracefully in Scanner Optimization. Further, if you use AccuPage and attempt to optimize resolution, 400 DPI will no longer be attempted, since it won't work with AccuPage.

50. Copy and Cut
    

    If nothing is selected in a document, and you attempt to use Copy or Cut, you will now be told that nothing is selected.

51. Auxiliary Help for Rate Control
    

    Auxiliary context specific help (about the type of control, or about dialogs), was not available when you were positioned in the rate control in the voices dialog. It is now.

52. Browsing through the Verbosity Dialog
    

    Use of the Browse button in the verbosity dialog would cause Kurzweil 1000 to think that you were no longer in a dialog, so certain shortcut keys would effect the open document rather than the verbosity dialog. That has been fixed.

53. Change in Default Fonts
    

    When you create a summary of a document, the system font was used for that summary. Now we use Arial, which magnifies better.

54. Verbosity Dialog and F2, F3
    

    Odd things would happen if you pressed F2 or F3 in the message control of the Verbosity Settings dialog. That has been fixed.

55. Preliminary Pages and the Bookmark Dialog
    

    Preliminary Page Numbers were reported incorrectly when F7 was pressed in the Bookmark dialog. This has been fixed.

56. Discontinuous Speech
    

    If voice changes are used to indicate emphasized text, continuous speech would unexpectedly stop if a block of punctuation characters without words was marked as requiring emphasis. You could continue reading by pressing F5 or the Read Key twice, but it was annoying nonetheless. This has been fixed.

57. Old Settings Files and Online Books
    

    A crash could occur when an old settings file had been loaded and online book searches was used. This has been fixed.

58. Hot Keys and Help
    

    An attempt to get context specific help with F1 or F2 was not allowed for the two hot key controls in the configuration settings dialog. This has been fixed.

59. Really Deleting Settings Files
    

    Those of you who had versions of Kurzweil 1000 dating back to version 6 or before may have found that some settings files could not be deleted. Version 8 copies settings files from your old settings folder when it runs, but never deleted them. It does now.

60. Duplex Scanning and the Fujitsu fi 4220C
    

    Duplex scanning did not work with the Fujitsu fi4220C. We have added a new setting to the diagnostic ScanConf.exe to cover the anomalous situation presented by that scanner.

61. Brightness Optimization
    

    The maximum brightness setting to be used by scanner optimization was ignored. It is respected now.

62. Moving by Word and Blank Lines
    

    If you moved by word using Control+Left Arrow or Control+Right Arrow and moved to a blank line, the message "blank" would be spoken. It would be better if the appropriate verbosity event was triggered, letting you control the behavior here. That is how it is done now.

63. Recursive Look Ups and Punctuation
    

    You can use Control+D and Shift+F7 to get a definition or a synonym for a word while you are already looking at the definition or synonym of a word. In the past, that did not work properly if the word you wished to look up started or ended with punctuation characters. That has been fixed.

64. Explore Layout Dialog
    

    The Up button was associated with the wrong help message. That has been fixed. The Verbosity event that announces the type of a control did not work with the grid control in this dialog. That too has been fixed.

65. Bookmarks Dialog and Sort Order
    

    If you changed the bookmark sort order to sort by subject, and then you later used Control+R to bring up that dialog, you were not positioned on the next available bookmark in your document based on your cursor position, but more or less on a random bookmark. That has been fixed.

66. FineReader and MultiByte Characters
    

    FineReader uses multibyte characters to represent recognition results when it is asked to identify languages which do not have common character sets, such as Irish. The KURZWEIL 1000 was not able to display or preserve those characters properly. This has been fixed.

67. Hot Keys in a Control
    

    If no text is selected in a text box, or if no file is selected in a list of files, and you nonetheless press Control+C, Control+X, or Control+Y, you will now be told that nothing is selected.

68. Moving Backwards while Reading Continuously
    

    You can use F6 or the left shift key to move backwards by unit while reading continuously. It was discovered that you could not pass through a blank page while doing this. That has been fixed.

69. Select All followed by Speaking Selected Text
    

    If you pressed Control+A in a document to select all of the text in that document, and then pressed Control+Y, only text on the last page of that document would be read. Now you will be told that all text has been selected.