[BRLTTY] Typing/reading braille combinations

[Samuel Thibault]

Hi,

Answering to myself:

Samuel Thibault, le Sat 11 Mar 2006 02:39:23 +0100, a écrit :
> Sometimes, one needs to type a braille character "as is", i.e. so that
> it is recorded as a braille combination only, and not interpreted as a
> letter (unicode utf-8 encoding permits that). This would be useful for
> writing braille tables for instance. Another instance is a mail that we
> got some time ago:
> 
> « Why my "e acute" letters are displayed this way: "é" ? »
> 
> This shows that he missed the way to type a "raw" braille combination :)
> 
> I guess the way "raw" braille combinations should be typed would depend
> on the braille device: a "prefix" key combination for instance. Maybe
> brltty driver authors should think about this?

Some support for this was added to linux kernel 2.6.17-rc1. Fonts and
keymaps should get added to distributions. For now, some are available
on http://brl.thefreecat.org/linux-brl-console.tgz .

The idea is hold the alt and altgr keys pressed, and then use the
keyboard's asdfjkl; keys for entering braille patterns just like on
a usual braille device.

Note: unfortunately, brltty is yet unable to read those dot patterns
from the linux console...

> The dual issue is then how to read them: people need to be able to
> distinguish between the "A" letter and the corresponding braille
> combination ("⠁"). A common solution to all devices might be found
> here.

And this issue remains too.

Regards,
Samuel