Some new features in WinCALIS 2.3: WinCALIS and WinCALIS Author: 1) Enhancements to Help menu virtual (on-screen) keyboard: -while typing, pressing Shift or Ctrl shows the shifted state of the virtual keyboard or the state with Ctrl key pressed -characters can be inserted in text directly from virtual keyboard with left mouse click -the effect of overstrike accents on other (accented) characters is shown with a right mouse click, and the displayed accented characters can then be inserted into the text with a left mouse click -clearer keycap characters -more legible placement on keycaps of stacked characters such as in Thai 2) Both programs now each support passing forward and backward from task to task with either Ctrl+N and Ctrl+P or Gray + and Gray - 3) Unicode Browser in WinCALIS Options menu and Unicode Input in Author Edit menu have been completely updated to Unicode 2.0 and beyond, including placement for draft proposals for language/scripts already approved by the Unicode Technical Committee 4) On-line dictionary search preferences are saved in WinCALIS Author or UniEdit in wincalis.ini as part of the "desktop" (Window menu, Desktop Settings, Save). Both WinCALIS and WinCALIS Author/UniEdit/Composition Editor will use the settings saved in wincalis.ini upon startup. The settings in wincalis.ini [Initial] section can also be edited with any plain text editor. 5) WinCALIS and WinCALIS Author/UniEdit/Composition Editor will first look for a copy of the initialization file "wincalis.ini" in the user's Windows directory, and if it is not found there, the program will use the copy in the WinCALIS program directory. This flexibility has several advantages: WinCALIS and WinCALIS Author/UniEdit/Composition Editor can now be run off a CD-ROM in a CD-ROM drive with any drive letter, specified in the wincalis.ini file in the user's Windows directory; also, individual users can in theory run a shared copy of UniEdit with customized individual settings for user dictionaries, Chinese input preferences, startup language keyboard and other folder locations specified in the wincalis.ini file. In order to take advantage of this feature, copy your wincalis.ini file from your program directory to your Windows directory and edit it as needed. 6) Several new languages, scripts, and keyboards have been included. For example, one is Cherokee, included in the new "American scripts" submenu in the Language menu. WinCALIS: 1) Options menu now has a "Previous Answer" option, to remind user of "doskey" functionality of Up Arrow key 2) System administrator can hide WinCALIS title bar and menus with following line in [WinCALIS] section of wincalis.ini file: Menus=No (default is "Menus=Yes") 3) System administrator can set WinCALIS to run in a "lowest-common-denominator" 640x480 VGA window with following line in [WinCALIS] section of wincalis.ini file: LessonWindow=VGA (which is the default) or run maximized with line Window=MAX 4) Enhanced default score report to user, with weighted scoring for 1st try, 2nd try, and 3rd try 5) Enhancements to formatting of score results with command 6) Audio recording by the user now supports recording at 11025, 22050, or 44100 samples per second and 8 or 16 bits per sample. Recording rate is set with the following lines in the [WinCALIS] section of the wincalis.ini file: WaveSamplesPerSec=11025 WaveBitsPerSample=8 Using the higher settings, WinCALIS has been successfully used as a tool for automated audio data collection. 7) System administrator can disable the menu items "Save [window contents] As" (Lesson menu) and "Copy Window Contents to Clipboard" (Tools menu) by adding following line in [WinCALIS] section of wincalis.ini file: SaveAs=Disabled (default is "SaveAs=Enabled") 8) The folder in which student responses are saved with the option can be set by specifying the path to the folder in the following line in [WinCALIS] section of wincalis.ini file: CaptureFolder=[path]. 9) Several new bug fixes, including: -Composition Editor and the WinCALIS Dictionary Module now are launched with the correct reduced window size; -a filename bug in the capture file for the option has been fixed, replacing spaces entered as part of the student's name with underscores. WinCALIS Author: 1) Format menu enhancements, including insertion of various formatting commands by clicking on menu items 2) Semi-automated marking of "hotspot" hypertext from Format menu "Insert Mark" item 3) Menu-driven insertion of CALIScript commands, special responses, options, variables, etc. in Tools Menu and Short Answer dialog box 4) Edit menu on-the-fly code conversions with "Paste As..." 5) More code conversion options 6) Improved user message warnings on exiting without saving 7) Automatic on-line dictionary indexing for Japanese is improved so that now all 2-kana combinations are indexed, as well as all kanji and all 3-letter alphabet combinations. "v2_3new.txt" Rev. 8/13/98