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The Automatic Dialling Directory Last updated: 13/09/2008 13:19:03 GMT |
 
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The Automatic Dialling Directory Last updated: 13/09/2008 13:19:03 GMT |
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The automatic dialling directory, from the point of view of simply making text-to-text 'phonecalls, is simply a list of 'phone numbers from which you can choose a number to dial for a call. This directory in fact can be used to choose e-mail and web addresses for messaging and surfing, and for many more purposes as described elsewhere in this documentation, see the Windows Launchpad sections. It is generally referred to as just the directory, the fundamental component of the WintextCom Personal Information Manager(tm) user interface.
When you start WintextCom for the first time after installation, the directory shows a welcome line at the top. Use the computer keyboard cursor up and down arrow keys to move up and down the directory entries. The cursor keys are used to position a highlight on each item in turn, and when a telephone numbers is highlighted, you can press the ENTER key to dial it, or if you are using a Braille display, press one of your display's cursor rooting buttons corresponding to one of the characters of the line containing the number to perform a left MOUSE click. You can click with the left MOUSE button on any directory entry to dial it even if it is not highlighted first, but when it does have the highlight, it is the entry shown on the Braille display in normal circumstances and pressing ENTER will activate it.
When an entry is highlighted, it is often referred to as "selected", indicating that it contains the number that will be dialled if ENTER is pressed. Selecting an entry may also refer to the actual process of executing it, depending on the context.
A dialling entry in the directory consists of a name to identify the entry, usually the name of the person or organisation to whom the number belongs. This is followed by the abbreviation "tel.", for telephone number, after a comma, followed by a colon and the number itself, which may contain hyphens and spaces and a few other special characters, but otherwise only the digits 0 through 9. The "tel." part of the entry is added automatically by WintextCom when you store a number, and is called the item type (or entry type). You can specify a different type description or none at all, but if you do not touch this part of the entry, WintextCom sets it according to what it thinks you are entering, in this case, a telephone number.
Below the welcome line in the original directory, you will find a line beginning with a colon, followed by our company name (S.W.H.-Wintextware). A colon at the beginning of the line means that it is a paragraph heading, and we have entered our main contact information in our company paragraph. Because WintextCom has been developed in the United Kingdom, it is preconfigured to work with the UK's telephone relay service for the deaf, Typetalk, and we include some useful information pertaining to Typetalk and British telecom in the shipped directory. This information is provided for convenience only, without warranty of any kind that these details are up-to-date or still operative.
Paragraphs can be used to group contact information together and you can learn about them elsewhere in this documentation, but at the outset we recommend you start adding your own 'phone numbers above the S.W.H.-Wintextware paragraph. Move the highlight to our paragraph heading (by pressing Down Arrow when the directory first opens, for example), then press Control+I to start storing a number, or click the insert directory entry button on the toolbar.
When you start storing a new number, the store item dialogue box opens and the cursor is in the name edit box. Type in a name for the 'phone number, which can include spaces and most other characters, but not a colon (":"). Typically, you would use the name of the person or organisation the number is for, but it is entirely up to you, you could use a nickname. You can actually enter both a real name and a nickname, putting the latter in brackets or separated from the real name with an underscore symbol ("_"), for example; then you can search for the number using characters from the real name, nickname, or number itself.
When you have entered the name, press Tab to move to the information edit box (or click the box). This is where you enter the telephone number itself. You can enter groups of digits separated by a hyphen or space, and you can include a coma at any point to produce a half-second pause in the dialling sequence (used when you need to dial a prefix then wait for an outside line, for example). It is also permitted to enclose part of the number in parentheses ("()"), for example, if you want to indicate a prefix that may not be required when dialling from certain places. The "#" symbol, often used to introduce numbers, is also permitted, but generally you must only use numeric digits in a 'phone number for WTC to be able to recognise and dial it. When you have entered the number, press ENTER or click the Insert button, and the new directory entry is complete.
Notice that "tel.", has been inserted before the colon separating the name from the number (if something else has been inserted instead of "tel.", there is an error in the number and it will not dial, use Control+M to re-open the dialogue and correct it). If you want to specify the item type yourself, Tab to the item type field before pressing ENTER and type in the required description, or use a colon to not have a description at all; in this case, of course, the item type cannot indicate an error in the number because you typed it yourself rather than letting WTC determine it based on what was typed in the information box.
When you complete a new entry, it is automatically saved to disk immediately, there is no need to explicitly save the directory. You can decide not to save the information by pressing escape or clicking the cancel button in the dialogue box.
As mentioned above, WTC is preconfigured to work with Typetalk. This means that normally when you select a number for dialling by pressing ENTER when it is highlighted or using the left MOUSE button, it is dialled through the Typetalk exchange by prefixing the required number. You do not need to enter the prefix at the beginning of numbers you store in the directory, it is in WTC's configuration settings and is prefixed automatically. If for any reason you want to enter the prefix in the directory, however, or if you are importing a number from another source and the prefix is already there, WTC will detect it and not dial it twice. If you wish to dial the number direct, without using any prefix, store it with a fullstop at the end. Direct dialling is sometimes required rather than going through Typetalk. See the next section, Dialling and Conducting Telephone Calls, for more information on alternative dialling.
Once a number has been stored in your directory, you can edit it by highlighting the line and pressing Control+M, or clicking the modify button on the toolbar. The store dialogue opens with the edit boxes filled in from the highlighted entry. You can now freely edit these and press ENTER or click the modify button in the dialogue box to save the edited information. The directory is updated on disk. Press Escape or click the Cancel button to abandon your changes and return to the directory with the original entry unchanged.
When the store dialogue opens for modification, the information box, not the name box, is awaiting input. This is on the basis that you are more likely to need to change a person's 'phone number than their name. If you do wish to edit the name, simply click the name box or use Shift+Tab to move the cursor to it.
To delete an entry from your directory, highlight it and press the DEL key on the computer keyboard, or click the delete button on the toolbar.
A confirmation box appears on the screen, asking you to confirm that you wish to delete the entry. Once you confirm, the entry is permanently removed from your directory, which is updated on disk, the entry cannot be restored other than by manually reentering it through the store item dialogue. For this reason, the default button in the confirm box is "No", meaning that if you simply press the ENTER key, the box is closed and you are returned to the directory with the entry still intact, not deleted. Pressing the Delete key and then ENTER accidentally is a mistake quite easily made by keyboard users, and this setup helps to prevent unintentional deletion of directory items.
To confirm to delete, press letter "y" or click the Yes button. You are returned to the directory, the previously selected entry has been removed. Return to the directory without deleting the entry by clicking the "No" button, or you can just press ENTER or letter "n".
Once your directory contains a few numbers, searching up and down with the arrow keys becomes a lengthy process. It is much better to jump directly to the required entry.
The WTC directory supports a feature known as "speed search". All you have to do to find text is start typing it. Each time you type a character, the highlight is repositioned on the next directory entry containing the text typed so far, if it is found. If an entry containing the text is not found below the current position, the search wraps around to the top of the directory and proceeds back to where it started, if a matching entry is found first, it is highlighted. Hence it is possible for speed search to move the highlight up as well as down. This capability allows you to locate information even if you have passed it in the list of entries.
If the text you are looking for is contained in the currently selected entry, the highlight does not change. You can type text located anywhere in the entry you want to find, name, description, or number. Usually, you would type part of the name, but being able to type part of the number does have its uses. You can type frequently used numbers that you often need elsewhere as well,, instead of the names associated with them, to make sure they stay in your memory, or you can look for a number if you have traced a call but are not sure who it was.
Searching is not case sensitive, upper- or lowercase letters count towards a match.
Braille users will find that speed search jumps the Braille display directly to the required information, so that ENTER can then be pressed to dial.
To illustrate with an example, suppose you want to jump to the S.W.H.-Wintextware paragraph. start by typing a letter "s". If the current selection contains this letter, the highlight will not move, otherwise, it jumps down to the next entry that has an "s" in it, or up if necessary. This is probably not what you are looking for of course, it is most likely that you have entered other information in your directory containing an "s" somewhere. Now type a fullstop. The highlight may well jump to the intended item now, but if it does not, type "w", then ".", and so on until the highlight is on the required line.
The highlight does not move from the current selection if the text is not found anywhere in the directory. To stat a new search, you need to clear the current text. You can do this either by tapping one of the Control keys on your computer keyboard, or by pressing the Home key, which moves the highlight to the top of the directory (first entry). Pressing the End key moves the highlight to the bottom of the directory (last entry), but does not clear the search text.
Press the F3 key to search again for the current search text. This enables you to quickly move through multiple- occurrences of the text you are looking for until you find the right one. You can use the arrow keys to examine the lines in the immediate vicinity of a match without clearing the search text, so pressing F3 will jump to the next occurrence from your current location at any time. Backspace jumps to the first occurrence starting from the top of the directory.
The search text, if any, is always cleared when you close the directory, dial, or perform any other program function apart from simple directory navigation. This means that it is always ready for you to start typing new text to find whenever you display the directory, such as to make another 'phonecall.
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