----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 5:13 PM
Subject: [The vOICe] Version 1.61 of The vOICe available






Hi All,

Happy New Year!

Version 1.61 of The vOICe Learning Edition is available.

One of the refinements is in the area of image subsampling.
Occasionally, the subsampling of 144 horizontal lines to
64 tones would lead to dropped line details. The new
version provides better guarantees for preserving image
information in spite of the downsampling. Especially with
line drawings and schematics this can give a noticeable
improvement. With environmental views like those from a
camera, the differences are usually negligible.

Apart from the above downsampling to 64 horizontal lines,
the initial image subsampling as needed to arrive at the
default 176 x 144 pixel view has also been refined to
limit the loss of information with imported image files
and with active window and full screen sonification. I'd
like to thank David and Pranav for making me aware of the
need for improvements in the image subsampling for proper
results with some rather special cases.

Other improvements concern the software support for
remote control of The vOICe by other applications, such
as for eye-tracking control of The vOICe view. There
were stability and performance problems with the software
interface that have now been fixed. Thanks go to Simon
(not a list member) for making me aware of some issues
and for his help in testing and validating improvements.

Sighted users of The vOICe can now use their mouse to drag
and drop image files on The vOICe window as an alternative
for using the file requester via Control O.

As usual, the updated version 1.61 can be downloaded
from one of the following three direct download URLs
(executable file size is less than 500 K):

   http://home.tiscali.nl/meijerpb/voice.exe
   http://home.hccnet.nl/peter.meyer/voice.exe
   http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voice.exe

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail to [log in to unmask]
with "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the subject line. To subscribe
again, send a blank e-mail to [log in to unmask] with
"subscribe" in the subject line, and next reply to the confirmation message.


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html