Edgar is a DOS program written by and distributed without cost by Duxbury Systems. Duxbury produces Braille transcription software for Windows and Apple systems. They also provide a free package called Perky Duck that emulates a Perkins Brailler on Windows and Apple systems. This may be desireable for Macintosh users or newer Windows systems that do not support DOS. Since Perky Duck is a Windows program, it uses the Windows printer drivers and supports more printers than Edgar.
Edgar is an MS-DOS program and must be installed and run from an MS-DOS window.
Insert a diskette containing the Edgar installation file in your floppy (drive A). Open an MS-DOS prompt window (from the Windows Start button) and enter a:\install
Hit the Enter key to start the installation process.
You will see the following screen.
Use the down arrow key to highlight the Proceed to Install option and hit Enter.
This takes you to this screen.
Highlight the option to Manually specify drives and hit Enter.
On this screen you add the letter designating your hard drive. This is almost always C.
Type C (not shown above) and hit Enter
On this screen you are selecting the drive containing the Edgar installation software. This will be the A drive, so hit Enter.
On this screen you are selecting the drive where Edgar is to be installed. This should match your entry when you selected Manually specify drives, and will be the first in the list. Hit Enter to continue the installation.
You are installing to a hard drive so hit Enter to continue the installation.
You should use the Duxbury defaults for program location so again, hit Enter to continue the installation.
Here we are specifying a brailler or embosser. Since most of us do not have embossers, use the down arrow key to scroll down, highlighting the U (None Specified) selection and hit Enter.
This screen is for printer selection. If you have exactly one of the
printers listed, select it. Otherwise, scroll down to the F PostScript
selection. You will need a PostScript printer in order to print with this
option.
NOTE: apparently not all HP deskjet printers are the same and the Edgar
drivers do not work with all of the later printers from HP.
You should select the default (A LPT1) and hit
Enter.
NOTE: your Windows printer driver must be configured for printing
from DOS applications for any printing to work.
Most printers today automatically feed paper and you should select the default option on this screen by hitting Enter.
Again, you should select the default. If you have selected a non-PostScript printer you may be able to print braille using normal printer characters. This has not been tested at this point.
At this point the installation will copy the Edgar files to your hard drive. Once this is complete you will see the following screen.
In order to use Edgar, certain files on your system must be updated. These files are on your boot drive. You should accept the default by hitting Enter at this point.
Unless you want to modify the system startup files yourself, accept the default by hitting Enter. The installation program will modify your installation files, but the changes will not take effect until the next time you restart your system.
You're done!
