[BRLTTY] Can Brltty output results to a text file in BRF format

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Kevin Fjelsted on 2015/02/24 at 20:12 -0600]

>Actually what I want is a pass through of what is showing on the display to a 
>text file that I can then load into the Braille dispay. 

That wouldn't work very well because what shows up on the braille display is 
simply the part of the screen that you're "looking" at at the moment. As you 
move left and right, up and down, etc, this changes. You probably wouldn't want 
to carefully move through an entire document in order to create the kind of 
file you're loking for as that'd be very tedious and error prone.

>FOr example LatexAccess suports outputting to BRLTTY, however although this is 
>great when one is on-line and reading the Braille with the display directly 
>connected, I can't keep an archiaval of the output. So I want to take the xame 
>output that was coming to the Braille display and store it in a text file.

I understand. What you really want to do, though, is to recreate that output in 
a simple and error free way. That's exactly what the brltty-ctb command, that 
comes with brltty, does for you.

The brltty-ctb command has a -h (help) option that'll show you all the details. 
Basically, you point its standard input at the file you'd like to translate, 
and the translation will be written to its standard output. The two options 
you'll be particularly interested in are -c (contraction table) and -t (text 
table). The contraction table, just like with brltty, in your case would be 
latex-access. The text table should be the same text table that you use in 
brltty.

For a simple example: I speak English, and am in Canada where we use US Grade 2 
for contracted braille. To translate a document (e.g. the Bible) into US grade 
2 contracted braille, I'd do something like this:

   brltty-ctb <bible.txt >bible.brf -c en-us-g2 -t en_CA

You need to specify the text table so that brltty-ctb will know which 
characters to write in order for you to get the correct braille dot 
combinations. If the text table isn't specified then brltty-ctb will write out 
the contracted braille using Unicode braille characters. If you have the 
ability to view the output as Unicode braille characters then you needn't 
specify the text table.

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Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | The Bible is the very Word of God.
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