bugs and needs in zoomer

davox!malcom@uunet.UU.NET (Malcom Strandberg 289)
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Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 13:48 PST
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From: davox!malcom@uunet.UU.NET (Malcom Strandberg 289)
To: Multiple recipients of list <zoomer-list@grot.starconn.com>
Subject: bugs and needs in zoomer
Status: ORS


After my first 2 weeks of use, I am enthusiastic about how well
the zoomer does perform. However I ran into a number of BUGS
and definite NEEDS that may be well known but I thought I'd
convey to find out when they will be addressed.

Please reply to malcom@davox.com  or zoomer-list@grot.starconn.com

------BUGS------
CLIPBOARD..palm/geos..
	Edit copy and paste not availble in most cases.
	Things like a phone number rcvd in aol or notepad
	cannot be pasted into the address book field.

CLIPBOARD..palm/aol.. 
	a copy done in palms notepad cannot be pasted into aol, 
	(however an aol copy, does paste into palm)

CHAR RECOGNITION ..palm...
	Usually cannot convert ink to text after the fact,
	the only place that allows for this is date, address fields
	where no clip board exists.

CONTROL PAD ..palm/aol/geos.. 
	Many applications ignore the control pad for
	scrolling the window up and down.
	Few use the A and B buttons for anything.
	I recommend the A and B keys be definable, defaulting
	to Enter and Tab. This would help in entering text.
	And AOL navigation.

PRINT to FILE..palm/geos.. 
	Palm needs text export capability, (with the lack
	of CLIPBOARD), how else can I email Notes to someone.
	This could be provided in print to textprinter to file.
	however when I try this on Palm Connect, it says the
	driver is not available or not enough memory.

TEXT SNAP..aol..
	Not sure how to work this yet, but I selected it
	many times during by aol session, however only
	one article got captured. You need some indicator
	to let the user know if anything is being captured.
	Maybe a byte count.

OPEN FILE..aol..
	Once I've got a file downloaded, it looks like
	I can't open it for viewing if it is over 8kb.
	It says "file too big to edit". Is there another
	tool for viewing?

SKETCH ..palm/geos.. 
	sketch with mixed ink and text, as given as examples in
	the manuals, are very difficult to place the text.
	You need to enter numerous spaces and returns
	to position the text.
	Recommend add Space, Enter, Tab to the top icon line
	(where you already have backspace).

	Also sketch/text overlay Palmconnect bug should be fixed
	so that the overlay is same on the PC as on the zoomer.
	The maps and drawings with mixed text,
	make no sense when uploaded to the PC.

LOGIN...aol...
	What is the support email address for aol?
	After my first access, I never could get back
	in (invalid password is the reply). The voice
	800 number is always busy.

	aol lets you enter password with char recog,
	but doesn't echo back the interpreted text.
	So you have to use the keybd.


------NEEDS------

CHAR RECOGNITION ..palm/geos...
	A general tool should be provided to convert ink to text,
	for after the fact. It should look up each word in the
	dictionary and if not found, display the word
	in ink and provide
	box to ok or correct the text. (See standard PC OCR tools).

	Maybe we should add user options to the recognition algorithm
	to improve accuracy, such as Caps only option, Lower case only
	option, and spell check option.


SYMBOL KEYBOARD..geos/palm.. 
	hand recognition recognizes only the following
	3 symbols ? . -
	I have need to access the symbols from the qwerty
	keyboard, to do so, you need to hit the shift key
	each time to access ($ ! > =). The Symbols or Math keybds do not
	have  ($ !) and other qwerty symbols, so are of no use to me.
	Recommend: User customizable Symbol keybd.

SEARCH..geos.....
	search/grep needs to be supported in more applications.
	In the on line reference docs, language trans,
	the current method, which is to select
	a range or sort and scroll through the whole file is awkward
	and wasteful, when translating the word "amount" or
	finding area code "508" or City "Odessa" you don't want to have
	to scroll through everything. (try these examples to see
	what I mean).

UNDO..geos/palm..
	Undo needs to be supported off edit menu where possible

FAX ..geos..
	FAX support is needed, expecially fax output, this could
	be just another printer type.

AUDIO/DIAL..casio/palm..
	Speaker needs to be able to be louder.
	A dtmf dial option should be provided to dial numbers
	in the address book out the speaker.

CALCULATOR..geos..
	calculator needs option to paste (it can copy), a scientific
	calculator option would be nice.

FILE SPACE...
	Is there a way of only keeping one program in memory,
	to increase the amount of file storage?
	With 1mb of ram I thought I'd see more than 120k of
	file space.

FILEMANAGER/LAUNCH..geos/casio..
	The filemanager should be one of the fixed icons.
	(** How to change the calc fixed icon to the filemanager
		has been posted, and is much appreciated!)
     ...
   .:'  `.
   :.[o]o]
   @    > 
  :}\_ ~/
 {:
 :} malcom