Re: [docbook] Braille

[Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk>]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 09:28 +0200, Sean Wheller wrote:
> I have doing some research into Braille and found many resources on the 
> Internet that have been most helpful in giving me some insight into the scale 
> of the problem and technical challenges posed.
> 
> While doing my research I encountered this gem, XML TO BRAILLE, from Computers 
> to Help People, Inc. (CHPI) [http://www.chpi.org/]. It is free and open 
> source, a tarball is available from http://www.chpi.org/xml2brl-0.2.tar.gz. 

Comment (with i18N hat on).

Yes, xml to braille does a job. For those in the USA.
It would really tee off a braille reader the UK, or Europe or 
elsewhere.

Reason. Braille, unlike XML, is locale specific.
My braille ain't your braille.

There is an effort to universali.... make a braille understandable by
the world, but politics got in the way. And is likely to for some time.

If I can link this to the 'simpler XHTML' thread, my suggestion would be
to take very simple docbook output (with a few additions) and feed that
to a locale aware braille engine. 

*if* the braille contractions could be done inside the 'simple' XHTML,
then a tiny tiny subset of any good xsl-fo engine could do the layout.

The generic block level Braille styling is restricted to 
  pages (n lines by m cells|characters)
  +/- a header/footer (restrict to one line and you won't tee off 
  too many people)
  blocks:
   properties: 1st line indent(n cells, n < 6)
               rest indent(n cells, n<7)
  Inlines, varied, more later.

If a well marked up source file is the input, I feel sure good
braille could be generated.

regards DaveP