March 2025 BT Speak Anniversary Update Release Notes

Introduction

This March marks a significant milestone as we celebrate the first anniversary of BT Speak. Over the past year, we have introduced many features and improvements that have greatly enhanced the product. To commemorate this occasion, we have released a major update packed with exciting new features. Notably, we have made significant enhancements to the editor, particularly appealing to former Braille ’n Speak users. New additions include an append mode, a cursor tracking toggle for the editor, hourly time announcements, and options to read the current character phonetically or to spell the current word. We’ve also improved the performance of the find command, including find and replace), among many other updates. Keep reading to learn more about what our anniversary software update has to offer.

These release notes are full of new features and information, so a copy of these notes named release-notes.txt can also be found in your home directory. If you wish, you can open them in the editor for closer review.

Because so many enhancements have been made to the editor in this release, we have also placed a copy of the editor help file named BTSpeak-editor.txt in your home directory for easy review in the editor.

Both of these files can be navigated by section headings from within the editor.

Quick Instructions for Updating Your BT Speak

Ensure that your BT Speak is connected to a Wi-Fi network and that your battery level is at 40% or higher.
Type O-Chord for the Options menu.
Type O for Operating System.
Type S for System Administration.
Type U for Upgrade the System.
Your BT Speak should tell you that a new update is available and ask if you’d like to install it. Press the letter Y, followed by enter (dot 8.)
The update will be downloaded and installed, and your BT Speak will then restart.

Append Mode

The BT Speak’s editor, like other modern word processors, typically inserts text you write at the cursor’s position. However, with this new update, you now have the option to add text that you type to the bottom or end of your file, no matter where the reading cursor is located. This feature might remind some customers of the Braille 'n Speak, which appended text to the end of a file, regardless of the cursor position.

While this feature is no longer common in modern text editors, there have been requests to implement this behavior in the BT Speak.

To turn append mode on or off, press A-7-Chord (the letter A with the space key and dot 7) while inside the editor. BT Speak will say "append mode" when append mode is turned on, or "insert mode." when it is turned off. When insert mode is active, typing text in the editor will insert characters at the cursor position, wherever you are in the document, just as it always has. In append mode, text that you type will always be added or appended to the end of the file.

You can also activate or deactivate append mode from the editor menu by typing E-Chord, followed by the letter A for the shortcut.

Note that append mode is a temporary setting, meaning that it will revert back to insert mode the next time the BT Speak is restarted. However, you may permanently change the append mode setting by doing the following:

1. Open the file browser with O-Chord, F.

2. Verify you are in your home directory (/home/pi).

3. Press C to create a file, and name it .nanorc, which stands for Nano Resource. Make sure to begin the name with a period.

4. Press Enter to accept the name.

5. Enter the following line in the file:

set appendmode

followed by Enter

6. Type E-Chord, C to save and close the file.

You can also set many other editor defaults in the .nanorc file. For details, review the Nano documentation at nano-editor.org

When append mode is active, pressing Backspace will delete from the end of the open file instead of where your reading cursor happens to be. Every other editing command continues to apply to the reading cursor.

Cursor Tracking

Cursor tracking has been added to the editor. When append mode is on, cursor tracking specifies whether your reading position changes as you write text. When cursor tracking is enabled (which it is by default) the reading cursor always follows the writing cursor. When cursor tracking is turned off, your reading position remains unchanged, but text that you type will continue to be added to the end of the document. This is useful if, for example, you are interviewing somebody and have a list of questions in your document and don’t wish to lose your reading position while you write his or her responses.

Cursor tracking can be toggled on or off by typing T-7-Chord. You can also toggle cursor tracking via the Editor menu. Type E-Chord to enter the editor menu, and select cursor tracking, with the letter U being the shortcut.

Like append mode, this is a temporary setting. To make it permanent, create a file in your home directory called .nanorc.

If you want cursor tracking to always be enabled, type the following line in the .nanorc file.

set cursortracking

To always have cursor tracking disabled, type the following line in the .nanorc file.

unset cursortracking

Note: the cursor tracking setting has no effect while insert mode is active.

Open Files by Entering a Number

You can now open any number of files in the editor and move freely between them with efficient commands via J-Chord or from equivalent options in the navigation menu.

File Numbering

Each open file in the editor has a file number alongside its name, based on its order in the list of open files. Whenever you open a new file or move between files, the file name will be spoken followed by its file number and the total number of open files. As an example, a file called Journal might be announced as “Journal, file 4 of 12.”

You can also press WH-Chord twice to hear the current file number, the total number of open files, as well as the full path of your current file.

Typing J-Chord to Jump to a Specific File

From any file, typing J-Chord will cause BT Speak to announce “file number?”. The Jump to Open File command is also available from the Navigation menu with J being the shortcut.

The jump to file command accepts several types of responses:

Entering a number from 1 through 10 in Computer Braille jumps to file 1 through file 10.
Typing a letter from a through z jumps to file 1 through file 26.
Typing backspace or computer Braille minus (dots 3-6) moves you to the previous file.
Typing the Space key or computer Braille plus (dots 3-4-6) moves to the next file.
computer Braille dollar sign (dots 1-2-4-6) moves to the last file in the list.

The file numbering is based on the editor's rules and works as follows:

If you close the current file, you are placed in the next file in the list. The new current file and files to the right are automatically renumbered.

For example, if there are four files and you are in file 2 and close it, you are placed in the next file to the right, and that file becomes file 2 in the list.

If you create or open a new file, that file is inserted to the right of the current file, and you are moved to the newly opened file. For example, if there are four open files and you are in file 2, opening or creating a new file will result in the new file becoming file 3, and you will be placed in that newly created file.

Your Open Files Permanently Stay Open

Any file that you open in the editor will now stay permanently open unless you close it yourself. The Deep Escape (Z-7-Chord) and a device restart now return you to the same place in the same file, and all your other open files are just where you left them. Their file numbers are retained, so you can continue working exactly where you left off.

Closing the Welcome Screen

If you no longer want to see the welcome screen, it is now possible to close it. Ensure that you have at least one other file open in the editor and close the welcome screen with E-Chord, Q. It will no longer automatically reopen unless you close every other open file.

You can reopen the welcome screen at any time by pressing W from the editor menu.

Remembering Your Position in Files

We have addressed several issues where your cursor position was not always retained following a deep escape or restart. This should also work for protected files and files you don't modify. If you perform a deep escape or restart, your cursor position will remain right where you left off. If you encounter any circumstances which cause your cursor position to be lost, please let us know, explaining the steps leading up to not being returned to the right location in your file.

Spell Word, Spell Word Phonetically and Say Character Phonetically Now Available in the Editor

Two presses of say Word (dots 2-5-Chord) now spells the word under the cursor. Capital letters and all caps are reported, and numbers are spoken as digits.

A third press of the Say Word command spells the word phonetically.

BT Speak will also phonetically say the character under the cursor when Say Character (3-6-Chord)is pressed a second time. .

Both Say Word and Say Character now support Unicode including foreign letters and emojis. This relies on the text-to-speech voice being used to understand the emote being sent. This means you can now move left or right by character and have most characters automatically voiced as you move.

Improvements to the Find Command, Including Find and Replace

BT Speak has always had the ability to find or replace text. This update greatly enhanced the capability of these commands.

Finding Text

To find text in your document, type F-Chord. BT Speak says, “enter text to find.” Type the text that you’d like to find, followed by enter. BT Speak places your cursor on the next instance of the search term that you entered and reads the entire line containing the text.

If you are in a Braille file, your search text must also be entered in Braille, so your text matches the document.

To find the next instance of your search term, press f-Chord along with dot 8. If the text is found, your cursor is immediately moved to the beginning of the text and the newly focused line is spoken. Pressing f-Chord with dot 7 finds the previous occurrence of your search term when you last pressed f-Chord.

Find and Replace

To find text and then replace it with something else, press f-Chord with dots 7 and 8. BT Speak will say, “enter text to find and replace.” If you previously performed a search, pressing enter will search for that text. To start over with a new search term, just type what you would like to find, followed by the enter key.

Next, BT Speak will say, “replace with?”

Type your replacement text, followed by the enter key.

You will then be presented with the following choices:

“Enter R to replace, A to replace all, S to Skip This Instance or Z-Chord to exit.”

Pressing the say line command (dots 1-4-Chord) speaks the target line containing the match and then repeats the options.

Pressing WH-Chord reports the line and column number where this replace would occur, and repeats the options.

Further Notes on Find and Replace

After entering Find or Find and replace, you can make your search case sensitive by pressing Meta C. By default, it is not case sensitive. This is a toggle. The meta key is dot 8, meaning that you would type dot 8 along with the letter C.
After entering Find or Find and replace, you can reverse the direction of the search to find backwards, by pressing Meta B.
If you want to search using regular expressions, you can press Meta R. Regular expressions are very powerful wildcards. This is also a toggle.
In addition to being able to enter text to find, you can press dot 1-Chord and dot 4-Chord to move through the history of previous search terms. You can press enter on any previous term to search for it again. You are also free to edit the search term, such as changing the word “cat” to the word “dog” and you can then press enter to search for the newly edited word.
You can erase your search history by pressing a deep escape (z-Chord with dot 7.) Restarting your device also deletes your search history.

Jump to Line in the Editor

You can jump to a specific line (and optionally a column number) in the editor by pressing Meta G. After entering the line or column details and pressing enter, the BT Speak announces your cursor’s new location.

Here are some examples of using the jump to line command:

Enter the line number using computer Braille;
Enter the line number, a comma and the column number;
Enter a comma and the column number;
Enter a dash and a number. For example -4, to go to the fourth last line of the file.
Note: If the entered line or column entry is greater than the number of lines or columns, you will be moved to the last line or column.

Miscellaneous Editor Changes

Many more editor status messages now speak automatically. These include "word count on Meta d", toggling line numbering with the number sign chord, "file saved", and others. Dot 8 is used for entering the meta key.
When you save a file from the Editor menu, you now hear BT Speak say, “file saved.” Even though the BT Speak announces "file saved", the status line is still updated with the number of lines written to the file, as this is useful in some situations.
When pressing wh-Chord in the editor, we fixed the reporting of the column position. It was always reporting one less than the actual position.
The editor status line is now cleared of stale messages when you move to a different file.
It is now possible to execute the “Run Host Command” from the Editor menu when in a read-only file (such as the welcome-screen), without getting the “File is write protected” message. This means you can now perform a request to ask-ai from any file.

• All open files are automatically saved when you press O-Chord to open the Options menu, including the position of the cursor.

• The help files for BT Speak’s Editor and Navigation Menu have been updated.

• We have eliminated various errors regarding protected files being un-writable.

• An error which occurred when closing read-only files (such as the welcome screen) from the editor menu has been fixed.

• We have removed the chords to execute anchor commands as they have been replaced by heading navigation features. Anchor commands are still available from Control key and Meta key editor bindings.

Return to the last file in File Browser

When you enter the file browser, your position in the list now starts at your currently active file. As an example, if you are working in a file called Notes, entering the file browser will instantly point you to the Notes file. This means that you can immediately perform actions on the file, such as rename, protect, delete, etc. The exception to this rule is the Welcome screen. In that

instance, you will be placed in the directory last accessed in the File Browser.

Additionally, you can now use WH-Chord anywhere in the file browser or file management menu to hear the name of your currently open directory.

Note: At the moment, changes you make to files in the file browser are not automatically reflected in the editor. For example, if you delete or protect a file in the file browser, and that file is already open in the editor, you will need to manually close it in the editor, and if protected, re-open it.

Selecting Multiple Files for Deletion

It is now possible to delete multiple files by first selecting each file that you want to delete. This is very similar to the way you first select files that you want to move or copy from one directory to another.

To use this feature, press O-Chord, F to open the file browser.

Navigate to a file that you want to delete and press the letter X to select or mark that file.

Repeat this process for other files that you wish to delete.

When you’re ready to delete the files that you have marked or selected, press D for delete.

BT Speak checks to see if any files are marked when issuing the delete command. If any files are marked, you are asked whether you wish to proceed, and if so, the items are removed.

If no files are marked, the selected file in the list is presumed to be the target for deletion.

One-Handed Mode

One-handed mode has been added! We have received many requests for this extremely important capability and we are happy that we can finally accommodate customers who have use of just one hand.

To enable one-handed mode, press and hold dot 6 while the BT Speak powers on. It is not necessary to press the dot 6 key during all of the vibrations. You can press dot 6 any time after the initial vibration pulses start. Release the dot 6 key once the vibration pulses stop. You will then hear “One handed mode, BT Speak ready.”

While one-handed mode is on, you can press as many keys as you like to form the dots for a character. Once you have entered each dot, tell the BT Speak you are ready for it to accept the character by pressing the space key. For example, to type the letter h, you would press any combination of dots 1, 2, and 5, followed by the space key.

Chords work nearly the same, except you press the spacebar first, then the dots to form the character. For example, O-Chord is typed by pressing space, dots 1, 3, 5, and then the space key again. T-8-Chord is typed by pressing the Space key, any combination of Dots 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8, followed by the Space key again. Braille ’n Speak users of old should feel right at home.

One-handed mode can also be enabled in the Settings section of the Options menu.

Pleasekeep the following in mind:

You have to press the spacebar to end any kind of input. Exceptions are for backspacing with dot 7 and pressing enter with dot 8. Just double-press dot 7 to perform a Backspace or double-press dot 8 to type Enter.
One-handed mode currently makes external keyboards nonfunctional in traditional mode.

A Newly Rewritten Calculator

This release includes a major update to the calculator, which addresses some reported issues and includes the following enhancements:

In the old calculator, you could change between literary and computer Braille, but your temporary change would be lost as soon as you finished typing your expression. Now, your setting is remembered for as long as the program is open.
It is now possible to review all of your previous calculations from the current session. For example, if you write three expressions in a row such as

2+10

20*84

pi/2

You can revisit any of them by moving back through the history with Dot 1 Chord, and forward with Dot 4 Chord. You may either review the expressions as you like with C-Chord, or modify them immediately and make a new expression.

While you use Dot 1-Chord and dot 4-Chord, anything you may have begun typing before navigating back through the history remains available as your last item. This means that you can begin typing an expression, move back to review something else and then return to your work without losing it.

It is now possible to set the scale, or amount of decimal precision, used by the calculator by modifying the "scale" variable. For instance, if you are working on calculations involving

money, you probably want to work with 2 significant figures or decimal places. To do this, type

scale=2

followed by Enter. BT Speak will say, "Precision set to 2 decimal places." From this point on, the calculator will show only two significant figures when it displays its output, even when you exit and return to the calculator at a later time.

The bug where pressing Dot 1-Chord while a result was shown causing the calculator to unexpectedly close has been fixed.
There were some issues where you might see surprising results or syntax errors when entering your first expression. We believe this issue has been resolved.
The command to clear the line, CTRL+U, was unreliable. For now, it has been removed until we settle on a global command set between the editor and other input prompts.

Changing Status Alerts From Vibrations to Tones

When performing certain tasks, the BT Speak provides haptic feedback or vibrations while the task is being performed. Examples include powering on your BT Speak or installing a software update. We have added an option to replace those vibration pulses with tones for customers who would prefer this type of feedback.

To change this setting, open the Settings menu by pressing O-Chord, S. The last item in the Settings menu is “Status Indicator.” Pressing enter on this item provides you with two choices, Vibrate and Sound.

A Note Regarding the Use of QWERTY Keyboards

If you connect or pair a QWERTY keyboard to your BT Speak, you will be able to make full use of it in Desktop mode. In Traditional mode, you can use a QWERTY keyboard for text entry, but some chord commands such as O-Chord and S-Chord will not be available via the keyboard. This is a minor change, to ensure reliable text entry in Traditional mode applications.

As already mentioned, having a QWERTY keyboard connected and using one-hand mode may lead to unexpected results.

More Complete Announcements When Speaking the Date

Instead of speaking the date in your locale's default numeric form, e.g. 01/24/25,

BT Speak now responds with the full date, such as "Sunday, November 23, 2025." In addition to hearing the day of the week, switching to words also makes date announcements consistent across text to speech engines. The date announcement respects your locale, meaning that BT Speak users in Europe or Australia will hear the date in their region’s preferred order.

Hourly Time Announcement

We have added the ability to have BT Speak provide an hourly time announcement. You can access and change these settings by going to Options > Settings > Clock Settings > Hourly Announcements > Mode. The hourly announcement mode can be set to off, chime, voice, or chime and voice. Your BT Speak will also produce a short vibration at the start of the Announcement.

Quiet Hours

You can set quiet hours for when you don’t want BT Speak to provide hourly chimes or announcements. You can turn quiet hours on and off and set the start and end hours via separate menu options. The clock is smart enough to recognize ranges that

fall in the same date or which occur near the end of one day and spill over to the next. For example, if you set the start to 1:00 PM and end at 5:00 PM, the clock will be silent beginning at 1:00 PM and will resume announcing the time at 5:00 PM.

On the other hand, if you set the start at 10:00 PM and end at 7:00 AM, the clock will be quiet starting at 10:00 PM on one evening and will remain so until 7:00 AM the following morning.

You can find the settings for Quiet Hours under Options > Settings > Clock Settings > Hourly Announcements.

Quiet Hours: Q.The choices for this option are either Off or On.
Quiet Hours Start: SChoose the time in this menu to choose when quiet hours will begin.
Quiet Hours End: EChoose the time from this menu when quiet hours end.

View the Amount of Remaining Free Space in Your Device

There are two places where you can now view how much free space is available in your BT Speak. The first is inside the "about file" screen, which lists the available space in

the current directory. From the file browser, press the letter A. The third line of this screen begins with “containing directory free space” followed by the amount of remaining available space in your current directory.

The second method for finding out how much free space is remaining is by opening the "about this device" screen which shows the amount of space used in each of your BT Speak's disk partitions as well as for any removable media connected at the time.

Press O-Chord for Options, O for Operating System and D for About This Device.

Changing settings has been made much friendlier. All of the messages, e.g. "setting changed to X," "setting not changed," and "setting change cancelled" are all gone, as is the need to press Enter to dismiss any of these alerts. Instead, if you modify a setting, BT Speak will simply respond with, “OK.” If you cancel a change, BT Speak now says nothing. In both events, BT Speak then returns you to your previous location.

Enhancements to the Stopwatch

We have redesigned the stopwatch and countdown timer application. In addition to streamlined announcements, the program can now run in the background. This means you can set either the stopwatch or countdown timer, leave the application and check back on either one whenever you like. If the countdown timer is running, you will hear its announcements as you work in other applications.

Enhancements to YouTube Stream

The YouTube Stream app has a new option to unsubscribe from a channel.

Note: when using this new app for the first time, you will need to sign into your Google account.

Enhancements to the Search the Web Application in Traditional Mode

When opening the Search the Web application, you can now open a Web site from the search results into your default Web browser in desktop mode for easier reading and navigation.

To use Search the Web, go to Options > Applications > Web > Search the Web.

After opening the Search the Web application, BT Speak says “search query.”

Enter your search text, followed by enter.

Next, navigate through the search results by pressing dot 4-Chord to move to the next result or dot 1-Chord to move to the previous result.

When you hear a result that you’d like to explore further, press enter.

You will be placed in a menu containing two choices. The first choice is Open Web Page and the second choice is Summary.

Pressing enter on Open Web Page will open the page using your default Web browser in desktop mode.

Choosing the Summary option provides a short snippet from the Web page containing your search terms. This summary text is not loaded in a Web browser.

Major Overhaul to Bluetooth Connectivity

Building on our work on enhanced Bluetooth pairing and connection success in the last update, we have re-developed the BT Speak’s Bluetooth administration module to greatly reduce unstable Bluetooth situations.

Our prime objective in this Bluetooth administration re-write was to ensure Bluetooth is stable and robust, supporting a variety of audio and non-audio devices. We have come a long way in this endeavor, but Bluetooth is a complex protocol and we can’t guarantee perfect operation for all devices.

If you have a Bluetooth audio device connected, when you use the menu to pair, connect, disconnect or forget another device, we will first disconnect your current audio device, perform the request and then reconnect your device. This avoids cross-device interference.

From our testing, the Meta smart glasses are the most problematic in this regard, but we know that other glasses and wearables will start employing the same Snapdragon wearables chip-set and we want to future-proof where we can.

You can now pair as many audio devices as you wish without instability, and switch between them by selecting connect from the Bluetooth Administration menu and choosing your desired device. If a device is connected, but not working as expected, you can now connect it a second time without having to first disconnect it.
One of the key changes in this update is that only one audio device is ever connected at a time, making audio connectivity more stable.
The pairing process is significantly faster and should hopefully be more reliable. The first scan for devices takes about ten seconds, but if you look for new devices again within a minute, the BT Speak extends the scan time to 30 seconds.
Fussy or sensitive devices such as the Meta glasses should now pair and stay stable, even after a reboot.
All Error messages have been re-written and are more meaningful. Logs are now kept and therefore can be sent for review on request.
We have consolidated all of the main Bluetooth functions in to a single menu and added the audio settings command to switch connected audio devices, making everything easy to find.
We have removed some functions, as they seemed unnecessary or would compromise stability.
Pressing H-Chord when in the Bluetooth menu now brings up a detailed help file. This guide is written in Markdown - in anticipation of our desire to allow help to be navigated by headings in a future update.
You can now connect Apple AirPods, but you may occasionally find their audio is mono only and it may be a bit crackly. Many users find benefit in having a dedicated set of Bluetooth earphones for their BT Speak leaving their AirPods free for seamless operation with their Apple devices.
The log files contain extensive information on the Bluetooth operations, so if you experience any problems, please send us the log files.
We welcome your feedback on these Bluetooth updates. We have done extensive testing but we can't guarantee we have solved every situation.

More Literary Braille Tables Have Been Added

This update expands the selection of literary Braille tables available for your BT Speak. Combined with what we already have, the Braille tables you can select are uncontracted and contracted UEB, EBAE (which we refer to as English, United States), French Unified, German Uncontracted, German Contracted, Italian, Portuguese Uncontracted, Portuguese Contracted, Russian, Spanish Uncontracted and Spanish Contracted.

New System Languages

Preliminary support for Italian and Brazilian Portuguese has been added. TO use these languages, you will need to rebuild your locale definitions.

To do this, go to Options > Operating System > System Administration > Advanced System Administration > System Maintenance > Refresh Locale Definitions.

Note: the process of refreshing locale definitions could take a while to complete.

Changes to AI Chat

The newest version of AI Chat should operate without any obvious user-facing changes. We have updated the OpenAI model names it refers to from pre-release to stable versions, which have been updated by Open AI. Performance in the app should be faster.

When you start AI Chat for the first time, we recommend that you issue the FlipModel command two times. This will ensure you are set to the latest GPT-4o and GPt-4-turbo

models. This needs to be done only once.

As a reminder, GPT-4-o is faster, less expensive and sometimes cleverer than GPT-4-turbo, but its general knowledge seems to be more limited, which may cause more hallucinations.

• The ai-ask utility and associated help file have both been renamed to ask-ai. This name is more memorable and descriptive of the activity. Ai-ask can still be used for compatibility.

• We have updated the OpenAI-key help file with extra instructions on how to fund a key

Miscellaneous Changes

When you power on your BT Speak, you will always first hear your device say, “BT Speak Ready.” In previous updates, this initial start-up message sometimes got suppressed but it should always be spoken now.
When setting your locale, you are no longer given cryptic names like en-us.utf-8. Instead, the language and country are displayed, such as English (United States) or Spanish (Spain).
Confirmation prompts have been made more efficient. For example, when choosing to restart your BT Speak, you are asked if you wish to continue. In previous updates, you would press Y for yes, N for no, followed by Enter to accept or Z-Chord to cancel. Now, simply pressing Y or N will act on your choice. Pressing enter will continue to choose the default behavior, and Z-Chord still cancels the process. Users of languages other than English can respond with the first letter of their “yes” and “no” equivalents. For example, if you are using BT Speak with the Spanish language, press S (for sí.)
The "system shutdown/restart cancelled" prompt has been removed.
In the file browser, the BT Speak no longer requires you to press Enter to dismiss the results of file operations (such as deleting files). The message is spoken as before, but you are then automatically returned to your list of files and directories.
A crash that could occur when issuing the continuous read command with ER-Chord while using DEC-Talk has been fixed.
When choosing to make an archive of the help files via Options > Operating System > Tools > Make Help Archive, the resulting documents are now given .txt extensions and Windows-style line endings.
BT Speak wasn't handling the way eSpeak exposed its available languages and voice names through Speech Dispatcher. Now it does.
The internal procedure to record voice notes has changed. If anyone was experiencing audio glitches during or after voice note recording, these issues should hopefully be fixed.
A bug in BT Learn lesson 5, where dots 4,5 contractions were reporting “incorrect” when the correct answer was given, has been fixed
If you opt to manually cancel a system update, BT Speak no longer says, “system update cancelled.” However, you will still be shown this message if the update failed for another reason, such as the lack of an internet connection.
The German and Spanish translations have been updated.
The default size of the public partition has been increased from 4 MB to 1 GB. TO create a new public partition or resize the one already in place, re-run the "make third partition" script under Options > Operating System > System Administration > Advanced System Administration > system maintenance. This does not affect the size of the home partition.
Converting Microsoft Word files to text or Braille has been improved, especially where translation of quotation marks and apostrophes is concerned.
In the radio tuner, we have added The NFB Radio Network to the blindness Community Stations category.

• We have improved continuous reading when using ER-Chord in the editor. Both dots 7-8 and Z-Chord now stop the speech and ensure line indexing works. This should resolve all known outstanding issues with this feature.

• We fixed a lock-up resulting in no speech in the editor when Control-T was typed from within a Braille file on a blank line

• We added Say line, say word and say character to editor prompts such as find, replace, read new file, save file, etc.

• Prompts now read out prompt input text in the correct grade, based on file type or context.

• When you are in a braille file, the prompt now indicates which type of Braille is expected. e.g. computer braille for file names or literary Braille for searching in Braille files. The input Braille prompt setting will be supported in a future update.

• You can now move to the start or end of prompt fields in the editor and move left and right by characters. You can also use previous and next word to navigate the editable text.

• When you are in either the file save or file open editor prompts, moving by words will jump between different parts of the file path and name. For example, if you had a file path and name such as “/home/pi/release-notes.txt”, moving by word would move from home, to pi, to release, to notes, and finally, to txt.

• We have made significant updates to the BT Speak-editor help file, including expanded details on find and replace commands and options.

• Z-Chord can now be used to cancel prompts in the editor. These include find, open new or existing file, save file with name, and jump to file.

• Using the Run Host command (control+T) from the editor now only quotes text strings if a program from BT Speak’s applications directory is called (such as ask-ai or calculator) and no longer incorrectly quotes arguments for other commands, so shell asterisk expansion works as expected.

• If a user manually names a quick note with a .txt or .brl extension, the duplicate extension will be removed.

• The default editor fill length for wrapping longer lines has been changed from 700 to 80 characters. This only applies if you enable hard wrapping in the editor, with meta L. When hard wrapping is enabled, a new line character will be inserted as your line nears 80 characters.

Dots 2-3-6-7-8-Chord continues to reset the master volume and output device back to the BT Speak’s internal speakers, but it now also restarts the audio service. This should improve USB audio device connectivity.
For Braille files, File names with .brl or .brf extensions written in uppercase characters are now properly honored by the Braille translator.
Uppercase ascii letters are no longer being incorrectly back-translated in Braille files.

Concluding Remarks

Customer feedback has always been the primary force behind all of our updates, and this latest update is no exception. So much of what we have added has been a direct result of our customers reaching out to us and telling us what they’d like to see in the BT Speak. We always appreciate your feedback. If you have an idea for a new feature or how we can make an existing one even better, please let us know. You can email your feedback to info@blazie.net or you can call us at (772) 214-1616.

If you’d like to join our support forum, you can do so by sending an email to BTSpeak+subscribe@groups.io

The group is monitored by all of us at Blazie Technologies and you’ll also be able to receive feedback and responses from other BT Speak customers.

Whether you’ve owned a BT Speak since we began shipping the product or you just bought one very recently, we thank you for being one of our customers and for celebrating this milestone anniversary with us! Enjoy your BT Speak!