[BRLTTY] Braille in CLDR

[Erkki Kolehmainen]

In response to Steven's questions, I'd like to state as my opinion:

> Therefore, as regards braille, should CLDR (or, something in CLDR  format) attempt to provide a repository of transforms between Unicode  non-braille text and Unicode dot patterns,  or should CLDR attempt to  encode the actual braille dot patterns?

I'd envisage that as the first step we should provide a repository of 
transforms between Unicode Braille dot patterns and Unicode non-Braille 
text for each defined/definable cultural environment.

> In the case of encoding the dot-patterns, CLDR would be able to  provide a repository of information - including abbreviations - for  things such as language/region translations, dates, times, timezones,  calendars, measurement systems, etc etc.  
This could well be an important future work item.


We are now trying to find out what is needed to meet user requirements, 
and how to make that happen. Even tentative specifications don't exist yet.

Regards, Erkki I. Kolehmainen

Steven R. Loomis wrote:

> Right, different languages in CLDR would almost certainly want to use  
> different braille codes.  One question that comes up is whether such  
> data should be collected in encoded form or not. For example, for US  
> english, I could imagine defining two sets of data, with locales  named  
> en_Brai_US_GRADE1 and en_Brai_US_GRADE2  (if one wanted to  encode grade 
> 1 and grade 2). However, packages such as brltty don't  require 
> applications to have braille-formatted output, in fact they  contain 
> transformation tables.   CLDR has Unicode-based  transforms.     I've 
> looked at the English Braille American Edition,  for example, it seems 
> to be fairly well defined, although there is  some context required for 
> special symbols.
> 
> Therefore, as regards braille, should CLDR (or, something in CLDR  
> format) attempt to provide a repository of transforms between Unicode  
> non-braille text and Unicode dot patterns,  or should CLDR attempt to  
> encode the actual braille dot patterns?
> 
> In the case of encoding the dot-patterns, CLDR would be able to  provide 
> a repository of information - including abbreviations - for  things such 
> as language/region translations, dates, times, timezones,  calendars, 
> measurement systems, etc etc.   This could be useful for  things such as 
> braille PDAs.   I could imagine that encoding the dot- patterns makes 
> sense in situations where you want to optimize the  braille output, such 
> as on a limited-cell PDA.    CLDR could have a  very short pattern for 
> displaying the date and time in various forms,  timezones, etc etc.
> 
> libbraille has a list of some other alphabets also: http:// 
> libbraille.org/alphabet.php
> 
> I'd love to set up a refreshable display and work with it, however  
> their prices keep that out of my range for experimentation.  I do  enjoy 
> experimenting with my pocket slates, unfortunately my fingers  are still 
> not sensitive enough to read very well.
> 
> -s
> 
> On May 24, 2006, at 9:00 AM, brltty-request at mielke.cc wrote:
> 
>> From: Jason White <jasonw at ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au>
>> Date: May 24, 2006 3:31:05 AM PDT
>>
>> On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 09:59:05AM +0300, Erkki Kolehmainen wrote:
>>
>>> The identification of the meaning of the Braille symbols in the  various
>>> cultural (language-country) environments is now tentatively  planned for
>>> implementation in CLDR 1.5 (the Common Locale Data Repository  
>>> maintained by the
>>> Unicode Consortium).
>>
>> Have they defined with greater precision what information they want to
>> collect? For some language/country combinations there are both  
>> contracted and
>> uncontracted braille codes. Furthermore, there are so-called  computer 
>> braille
>> codes which define braille representations of the printable ASCII  
>> character
>> set (possibly including other characters as required by the  
>> language). I'm not
>> sure whether these are always standardized - I suspect not; and  they 
>> often
>> differ from the corresponding uncontracted (Grade I) code to a  
>> significant
>> extent.
>>
>> There is an old book, available in print only, called World Braille  
>> Usage,
>> which resulted apparently from a survey by Unesco. It includes the  basic
>> alphabet for each alphabetic language and a reference to the  braille 
>> standards
>> in use in the particular country. I can't remember what else it  
>> contains, but
>> it was published by the Library of Congress in Washington, as I  
>> remember.
>>
>> Before they start collecting information, I think they should work  
>> out which
>> braille codes they wish to obtain for each language.
> 
> 
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