[BRLTTY] brltty "keyboard braille device" support (and a few more things)

[Klaus Knopper]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:32:07PM +0100, Mario Lang wrote:
> Dave Mielke <dave at mielke.cc> writes:
> 
> >>What is the "system clipboard" ? Didn't know such a thing exists under
> >>Unix. 
> >
> > I don't know what it's official name is, but, unless I'm overinterpreting the
> > requirement, I think what's being asked for is the ability to cut with brltty
> > and paste with gpm, etc. Linux has a shared cut buffer for this.
> 
> I think this is a misunderstanding.  I think Klaus really
> ment "paste between consoles".

Yes! Sorry about the confusion.

And your summary below is exactly what I was trying to say. :-)

Regards
-Klaus

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:32:07PM +0100, Mario Lang also wrote:
> Regarding the whole keyboard-only issue, to me, it would make
> much sense to add this to BRLTTY for the following reasons:
> 
> * It would be neat to be able to use a laptop for instance temporarily
>   without a braille display connected.  Currently, on linux, thats
>   only possible by using a completely different screen reader like
>   yasr or screader.  This is not exactly comfortable, since
>   the user would need to know how two screen readers work, just
>   for this temporary case...  I can think of some concret situations
>   that match this, like:
>   * Your display battery ran out, and you forgot to carry the charger
>     with you.  Some displays (like the HandyTech Braille Star)
>     can not be charged via USB.  If you are using a mobile setup,
>     it is desireable to be able to continue working, instead of being stuck.
>   * A 80 cell display owner might want to use the display with their laptop
>     while at home, and only use speech while being mobile.
> * It would also add a safety net for exceptional situations
>   where you for instance loose your display for some time.  Either
>   because it is being repaired, or you misconfigured something
>   and you are now trying to fix it.  If brltty had a speech-only
>   mode, upon failure to init the display, the user would not
>   be left in a complete void, but could still do something based
>   on speech feedback.
> 
> To summarize, for this item, I think we need:
> * A keyboard input module, using the input layer and uinput.
>   I remember we need this anyway for some type of display that does
>   not have keys.
>   Since I've already looked at uinput for the
>   HandyTech external keyboard thingy, I would volunteer to start 
>   implementing this.
> * Some kind of binding config file to configure what keys on the keyboard
>   to bind to what BRL_ command.
>   I think if we use keyboard input, we really need to make
>   this user configurable from the beginning on.
> * A "soft"-cursor, that can be manipulated from the keyboard, and
>   which is used to determine what should be spoken.  This is more or
>   less the same as we have with display window position right now, just
>   think of a 1x1 display.  Move up/down/left/right.  Either speak
>   the line, or char, or word.  Thats basically what other
>   speech based screen readers do.  We'd need commands like
>   reading cursor up/down,
>   left/right one char
>   left/right one word
>   speak: line at pos, word at pos, char at pos, spell word at pos.
> 
>   Since we already have some rudimentary gpm support, we could
>   even try to make the gpm cursor follow this "soft"-cursor, so that
>   shighted users could see what the blind user is "looking" at.
> * Bindings for marking cut areas that are based on this "soft"-cursor
>   position.  I.e. begin/end rect/linear cut at pos...
> 
> To me, this would be nice addition.  Talking to users on
> the Karlsruhe meeting definitely showed this is a *wanted* feature.
> This is one of the main reasons why some people are using
> sbl instead of brltty.  Since sbl doesn't have BrlAPI,
> for the sake of compatibility, it would be highly desireable
> to be able to atracted braille display users
> towards brltty, so that they can benefit from the shared device
> IO feature provided by using BrlAPI and graphical screen readers.
> 
> -- 
> CYa,
>   Mario
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