Pages and voice dream writer

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯, 29 June, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello all! I have some questions about Voice Dream Writer and Pages.

A couple of days ago, I took the plunge and spent six dollars on voice dream writer after listening to the podcast on it. And I am now fully invested in voice dream. I have their scanner, reader, and now they’re writing app. I have a couple questions about the writing app and pages. I have a document that is pretty big, it’s a list of CDs that I would like to get. And it’s going to be constantly changing. But right now I’m just going to do some superficial editing on it. And one of my questions is, can I import that document from Pages into Voice Dream writer? And then can I export it out again? I don’t know if I want to do the exporting back out to pages. That depends. Because this document is going to be sent to someone to print off in an email. And I’m just not sure in general if I want to do the export it back out. I’m leaving that option on the table.

With this document, this list of albums, is probably 15 or 16 pages long. And as albums are purchased, either the actual album, or off of the iTunes Store, or as new albums get released, I’ll be updating this particular document. But voice dream writer seems like a good app to use to make things at least wordprocessing related tasks like the one that I’m trying to do now, much much easier for VoiceOver users. I just want to know if it’s going to be possible to import that pages document into this app, and then if it’s going to be easy to edit it. Like for example correct a few little errors here and there from when I either dictated album names, or when I typed them out, and auto correct but it in. As it tends to do. LOL and also is it going to be easier to edit this document, say to add new albums to an artists section. Or to remove an album that has been purchased. I might have more questions as I go about this. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance! And I hope you all have a lovely and fun holiday weekend.

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Comments

By Tangela on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Short answer is that yes, you can. Longer answer is that I actually don't recommend exporting back to pages for a few reasons. Both pages and voice dream support word docs format which are supported on both iOS and windows devices so it will be more accessible on all devices to just stick to that standard format.

Additionally, Voice Dream writer will make a task like the one you describe a lot easier to edit and move around because writer supports native markdown. So you could put a hashtag, # before your genres or artists, or format it as follows

# genre
## artist1
## artist 2
## artist 3

and then in the outlines view, you can have the lowest level be headings, in case you want to quickly jump around the document to insert new entries.

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Wow! I’ve heard of markdown, but I’ve never used it before. Is it easy to use? Also, can you copy the document to a flash drive? Because I’m thinking of either doing that, or putting it on a cloud storage service, or both. So that I have a back up of it in case something happens to it.
Thank you! From what you described, I don’t think I’ll be exporting it back out pages. I might just leave that document there so that I can easily make changes to it as need be.

By Justin Philips on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

There are plenty of guides on the net to learn markdown.

By Devin Prater on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Markdown is very easy to use, and makes a good deal of sense for blind writers. Applevis even supports writing posts in Markdown.

Markdown is a plain text way to make many different types of documents. You can write simple notes with it, but people have published books from it and have many different uses for it. Many blog engines even use it for simple, quick writing. markdown lets you focus on writing, not fiddling with stupid formatting toolbars and trying to figure out if you italicized that one word or not without needing to go word by word.

Basic text

Paragraphs are basic text. Just separate each paragraph with a blank line. That is, have a blank line between each paragraph.

Example

This is a whole paragraph.

This is another paragraph.

Content blocks

Every type of content, paragraphs, headings, lists, and so on can be thought of as content "blocks", like blocks of text in the old braille note-takers. Each block should be separated by a new line. So, at the end of each block, make two new lines, to keep a blank line between each block. You don't need to do this at the beginning of the file.

Headings

Headings are made using number signs, hash marks, pound signs, whatever you want to call them. On the keyboard, it is Shift + 3. In UEB Braille, it's dots 4-5-6, then 1-4-5-6. One hash makes a heading at level one, the highest, most important level. On a book, that might be its title page. Two hashes makes a heading at level two. These may be parts in a book. Three hashes make headings at level three. These could be chapters in a book. There can be up to six levels of headings. After a heading, make two new lines, so leave a blank line before you write the next content.

Example

# Heading at level one.

## Heading at level two.

### Heading at level three.

Bullet points

Stars make bullet points. Make one new line for each bullet point. So, there should not be a blank space between each bullet point.

Example

* This is a bullet
* This is another bullet
* This is a third bullet
  * You can indent bullets to make a sub-list by putting two or more spaces before the star at the beginning of a line
* And back to the regular list.

Numbered lists

You can make a numbered list by just numbering the list items, with a period after the number.

Example

1. List item one.
2. List item two.
3. The third list item.
  4. You can indent these lists too.
5. The final list item.

Italics, bold, and underline, oh my!

You can italicize, bold, or underline text. If you've seen someone put stars around words on social media or emails or forum messages, this is ultimately what they meant. Of course, our smart phones aren't smart enough to actually tell us about formatting in books and on the web and in emails, so we often miss these useful writing utilities.

To italicize something, type an asterisk or star, then the word or words you want to italicize, then immediately afterwards, type another star. You do not space between the star and the word and the star after the word, but you do space before and after the stars, so leave a space before the star before

To bold something, type two stars, in the same way you italicized earlier. To underline, type an underscore, or underline, in the same formula of italicizing.

Examples

This is *italicized text*. This is **bold** text. This _text_ is underlined.

"Unite them" with links!

To make a link, you type a left bracket, not a brace or parenthesis, type what you want readers to read when finding the link, like "click here". Then, immediately after, type a right bracket. Then, type a left parenthesis, type the address you want to be linked, and a right parenthesis.

Example

This is a [link](https://applevis.com).

Block Quotes

If you need to quote a long passage of text, you can use block quotes. They look just like Email quote methods. To use it, just put a greater-than sign at the beginning of the line.

Example

> This is a quote. It is a very long quote. It ends, I believe, whenever the block ends, when I do two new lines.

Separate stuff with separators

If you want to do a horizontal line, for separating scenes in a book or any other use, just have a line with at least five dashes. This is a block all its own, so have a blank line before and after this.

Example

Before the split:

---------

After the split.

So, hopefully this helps someone.

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Thank you so much! I was looking at documentation from this, and I was still having a little trouble trying to get it! But now that I’ve seen your email, I think I’m going to save it and use it as documentation of my own. As a quick reference type of thing! You sure helped me!

By SeasonKing on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

So, can i save these markdown files as HTML or save them as something else?

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Can anyone please tell me how to import this document from Pages into a Voice Dream writer? I’ve tried every way that I could think of. And I can’t get it to import. Thank you in advance!

You can "export" Markdown to HTML in apps like Scrivener or IA Writer, but I believe Voice Dream Writer just does Microsoft Word files. I could be wrong on that though. Markdown is *not* a simplified HTML. It was written mainly with exporting to HTML is mind back in the early 2000's, but now it is used for making books, writing articles, writing forum posts, all that, so it's far from its early HTML-export beginnings. Usually, Markdown files are saved with the .md file extension, if that's what you meant. There are programs that can open these markdown files on your computer and such, but really you mainly write them and convert them for someone else, or keep them in Markdown, good plain text, for use across several Markdown apps and such for yourself.

By mendi on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

I think I need to save this somewhere so I can access it later. I've always wondered about markdown but never used it because to be quite honest, I've not wanted to go digging for directions. Thank you for sharing!

Regarding the original topic, I wish I knew why line spacing seems to behave oddly with voice dream writer. For example, I'll write something in voice dream and export it to dropbox. And then when I open it in notepad, I can see where line breaks are supposed to be, but they don't recognize. It says return, but the break really isn't there. It's a very strange issue.

By Devin Prater on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

I'm glad it helped. I know "look it up" isn't usually welcomed by most people, seeing how long it usually takes to sort through all the information. So I spent a good 30 minutes throwing all that together and making sure it came out as well as I could make it.

By Remy on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

Hi Devin,

Thanks for your information about Markdown. It works really well on Voicedream Writer. Do you know what formats can handle being imported into Voice Dream Writer which are already marked down? I am writing a book in Microsoft Word whose parts, chapters and even sub chapters are divided into Heading1, 2 and 3 respectively. I like using word on my PC because it allows me to feel organized and easily jump around from section to section. I'd like to be able to import a document from some format with markdown into Voice Dream Writer, work on it, keep the mark down and export it with the content structure of my headings intact. Do you or anyone know if this is possible? It's really my biggest roadblock for being a productive writer on my IOS device, and it's a problem I've had since 2013 when I got my first phone.

By Devin Prater on Friday, July 3, 2020 - 05:49

For importing Word files as Markdown, I believe you'll have to use a more advanced app, like Ulysses, Scrivener, or IA Writer for that.