Topic by nikosdemetriou 2019-04-05 11:39:48

  • From: Cyprus
  • Registered: 2006-02-18
  • Posts: 69
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Hi.
This is a new area for me.
I am trying to help people at first but in the future I might be able to benefit as well from this.

As the subject says, I am looking for a software which will enable me to export documents in brf format, so people can transfer the files in to their orbit reader 20 and read it without having to use a smartphone or a computer.

I tried several pieces of software.
The most promising is something called odt2braille.
It is an extension for open office or libre office software which gives us the ability to export or embos documents in braille.

But I am willing to try something else.
For now I think it is better if it is a free solution, since I don't have the ability to test the files I will try to produce with it.

I will work mainly with Greek text.
I am looking for something which will allow me if possible to change some things in the braille table.

For example, in Greek braille, accented letters have got the dot 5 in front of the letter, but most of the time we avoid the dot 5 completely.

So for example, if the modern Greek table of odt2braille includes the dot 5 in the output result, can i fix it and how do I do this?

I hope somebody can help me with this because I want to use such tools to help other people who like to read in braille.
Thanks
Nikos

Visit www.freesound.org/people/NikosDemetriou/sounds/ to hear some of my recordings.

nikosdemetriou's Website

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Reply by cartertemm 2019-04-05 16:02:09 (edited by cartertemm 2019-04-05 16:13:33)

  • From: Missouri
  • Registered: 2015-07-04
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I've always used this although would be interested in hearing of other solutions. It works decently, you can type both in braille utilizing the home row (sdf=123, jkl=456) as well as with qwerty. Also last time I checked it was possible to open a document from another program which seems like it would be a rather obvious feature, but as described below I'm using a trimmed-down version of some pretty pricey software that's really overkill for my occasional need.


https://www.duxburysystems.com/perky.asp

edit: If your interested in doing a bit of fooling around with code, you can probably make your own. the braille ready format is little more than braille being expressed in it's literal form. Letters stay the same, but everything else is represented in computer braille. If you've messed around with basically any braille notetaker on the market you'll know what I mean.
Hello.
Would be represented as
,HELLO4
,=dot 6
hello=hello. Imagine that.
4=., or the nemeth number 4

Feel free to
check me out on github
or
follow me on twitter

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Reply by swigjr23 2019-04-05 18:21:31

  • Registered: 2015-12-31
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This might work: https://brailleblaster.org/

i use it for saving files in the .brf format. It has a lot of features that i don't use, but it is free.

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Reply by UltraLeetJ 2019-04-05 23:17:25

  • From: Colombia
  • Registered: 2013-06-09
  • Posts: 2,013
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oh this .. this one... is a fight I just gave up on. If it is not a ridiculously expensive program none of the free choices are worth it because they just get English working and that's it, so, Boring!
I also tried sao may braille, but its implementation is flaky at best. RoboBraille... mmm, not much luck, either. And unless someone can step up for the liblouis formatter program and make it work again in windows, nothing else will happen. And it looks like this pesimistic conclusion will be here to stay, because no one has done absolutely anything for the past 4 years to come  forward with something half decent.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

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Reply by devinprater 2019-04-06 01:07:24

  • From: Alabama, US
  • Registered: 2011-06-29
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BrailleBlaster is good, for English. You may ask the folks on the brailleblaster list about the Greek table. Ii wish they'd just expose the whole LibLouis table set, and just tell us that others aren't tested. If you just plan to braille out something, instead of pasting in something, it has a way to braille into the file and just export the BRF as you've made it.

Devin Prater
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Reply by Thatguy 2019-04-06 19:13:23

  • From: Kentucky
  • Registered: 2018-12-23
  • Posts: 267
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Hey guys, I know this sort of off topic. But speaking of opening, editing, and saving in braille, is there any program that can handle .kwb or .kwt files from the humanware line of notetakers? I have several from an apex I used to have, but I ain't got it anymore so I can't do anything with these files.

-
That Guy. Serving those people since that time. To contact, use that info.

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Reply by SLJ 2019-04-07 13:25:49

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Hello @nikosdemetriou.
Regarding .brl and .brf files in generel: You need to find the system which supports the Braille table in your language, otherwise, it won't work as expected. This is not an issue in English, because everything is compatible with the English Braille. This is especially important when it comes to contracted Braille.
When writing this post, I briefly checked up on the Greek letters and the Greek Braille table. The Greek letters are not the same as the English letters, print letters I mean. But some of the Greek letters in Braille are the same as the English Braille letters. But because of the different letters in print, you can not read .brl and .brf files, unless you find a tool which works with the Greek letters and Greek Braille table. You can not use the English conversion tools. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Regarding the Orbit Reader:
My company is the distributor of Orbit Reader here in Denmark. Therefore, I know how to localize the product in none English speaking countries. It doesn't seems like there are any official authorised distributor in Grease yet. Therefore, the Greek Braille table has not been made to the Orbit Reader.  I will highly recommend a distributor in Grease, who can localize the product and help you with the .brl and .brf files.
Feel free to contact me privately, by email, if you need more information.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
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Reply by nikosdemetriou 2019-04-16 10:11:19

  • From: Cyprus
  • Registered: 2006-02-18
  • Posts: 69
  • User Karma: 4

Hi all.
Thanks for all your replies.

I found a free software from Italy which seams to work for my needs.
It is called biblos.
http://www.digrande.it/biblos/default.asp

It contains all the tables from liblouis.
The good thing about it is the fact that we can edit any braille table and make it how we want it.
With the help of a friend, we were able to remove the dot 5 in front of the accented letters and make it easier to read.
Thanks again
Nikos

Visit www.freesound.org/people/NikosDemetriou/sounds/ to hear some of my recordings.

nikosdemetriou's Website

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Reply by SLJ 2019-04-17 08:07:16

  • SLJ
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Interesting. I'm glad you got it working.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

SLJ's Website

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Reply by UltraLeetJ 2019-12-26 05:29:17

  • From: Colombia
  • Registered: 2013-06-09
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sorry to bring this old thread up, but
I love biblos now! and just could not think of any other, better place than this for posting this and keeping the discussion going.
its really easy to produce brf content and braille in general with it, and has a lot of options. So much so that I have made a Spanish grade 2 table for it as well, as I had done with liblouis. I will correct and maintain both tables, because the format for these tables is totally different from program to program. You could share your table with the biblos facebook group so that the author can include it in future versions.

When producing braille for the orbit, its better to stick to the english default language and just save the brf in whatever language you use.. curious, but when you change the language or localization for orbit, you get just errors all around with biblos. I asked them about this and they just said:

Hello

Encoding of .lan file specifically for Spanish is Unicode-16LE. We have received similar feedback from other customers also. The real problem here is when you translate any Spanish file to the BRF file using Biblos – it uses its own braille translation table. Now, when you read this BRF file in Orbit Reader 20 it uses braille translation (table loaded from .lan file) again for reading BRF. So, it creates errors. It is recommended that you switch to English mode while reading the BRF file on Orbit Reader 20. In English mode, it does not use any translation table and you do not find any braille translation problem.


so the whole.. you have to prepare files from your computer... part of the manual is just.. missleading, or there is a common encoding that biblos does not have. I remember having terrible problems producing brf to read in orbit from liblouis, as well.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

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