[BRLTTY] Would BRLTTY be of use on Android?

[mattias]

whonder if it will be cable or only bluetooth
all blind peoples not own a bluetooth display
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patricia Fraser" <pfraser at harpo.com.pl>
To: "Informal discussion between users and developers of BRLTTY." 
<brltty at mielke.cc>
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: [BRLTTY] Would BRLTTY be of use on Android?


> Hi,
>
> The Google Accessibility Project people are already looking at adding 
> brltty to at least the Android accessibility project; their developer 
> Peter Lundblad in Geneva has been working with a BraillePen 12 on an 
> Android system of some sort, using brltty.
>
> It's probably worth contacting that team to see what they're doing, at 
> least alongside any other projects that get started...
>
> Contacts I have are Clara Rivera Rodriguez, rivera at google.com and Naomi 
> Black, naomib at google.com - they'll be able to put you in touch with 
> whoever.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Patricia.
>
> On 17/11/2011 17:16, Nolan Darilek wrote:
>> Hi folks. Some of you may know me from my work on Android. In
>> particular, I've written the Spiel screen reader
>> (http://spielproject.info) and a few other Android apps.
>>
>> During the early part of this year, I worked with National Braille Press
>> on their Android notetaker project. Work died down in June but seems to
>> be picking up again, and we seem to be focusing on Braille on the
>> Android platform.
>>
>> There is currently no Android Braille API, but I think we're considering
>> creating one, at least until Android supports it natively. I'm wondering
>> if BRLTTY might be a good candidate for supporting this?
>>
>> I've read enough of the list archives to know that there isn't a port to
>> Android. The bottleneck here seems to be that no one on the team has an
>> Android device with which to work. If you did have an Android device,
>> would someone have cycles to look into a port?
>>
>> I'm also wondering if BRLTTY would fit some of the higher level
>> requirements of such an API? No one wants to edit config files or start
>> daemons on their phones. Until Braille display support gets baked in
>> natively, I'm envisioning users having to pair a bluetooth display as
>> they would a regular device, then firing up some GUI that probes all
>> connected bluetooth devices, determines which are Braille displays and
>> makes them available in a list for the user to choose. Does BRLTTY have
>> any sort of device scanning mechanism that can ping a wildcard list of
>> devices and return which are Braille displays plus any relevant stats?
>>
>> Also, does BRLTTY/BRLAPI do its own grade 2 translation, or do I need a
>> separate library for that?
>>
>> My intention is to ship a low-level Braille API and associated service
>> that communicates between higher-level apps and Braille displays. I
>> think that if we can cross-compile BRLTTY for Android, then ship the
>> binary as a resource within the service, then the Android app can run a
>> BRLTTY instance and handle communication. My understanding is that
>> BRLAPI communicates with a running BRLTTY daemon. It might be easier if
>> this daemon could communicate over STDIN/STDOUT rather than a port on
>> localhost.
>>
>> Anyhow, if this seems like a promising project then I might be able to
>> secure Android hardware for anyone who feels confident that they can
>> attempt a port. Given that the use case is phones and tablets, we're
>> probably limited to bluetooth displays, which may or may not be an issue.
>>
>> Thanks for reading.
>> _______________________________________________
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>> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
>> For general information, go to: http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty
>
> -- 
> Patricia Fraser                       pfraser at harpo.com.pl
> International Sales and Support    Tel: +48 (0)61 853 1425
> Harpo Sp. z o. o.                  Fax: +48 (0)61 853 1419
>           ul. 27 Grudnia 7, 61-737 Poznań, Poland
> www.mountbattenbrailler.com             www.braillepen.com
> www.piaf-tactile.com                   www.auto-lektor.com
> _______________________________________________
> This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list.
> To post a message, send an e-mail to: BRLTTY at mielke.cc
> For general information, go to: http://mielke.cc/mailman/listinfo/brltty