[BRLTTY] My experience with Humanware Monarch

[Aura Kelloniemi]

Hi,

On 2025-05-30 at 17:43 -0400, <kperry at blinksoft.com> wrote:
 > I should mention I sent your feedback on to our developers. I work at APH.

Oh, thank you. In that case I should have commented something about the
internal software:

Monarch runs Android. I suppose the software is proprietary. That makes me
inherently uninterested in it.

Monarch contains a BRF editor, text, editor, web browser, image viewer, chess
game and a e-book reader. The programs worked, but had minimal feature sets.
There were very few configurable settings. At the moment it does not seem to
be possible to run one's own software on the display even though it would be
very useful for advanced users. In my opinion Linux kernel is best combined
with GNU userland and Android should be left for those enthusiastic about JVM.

Monarch was able to show Unicode braille. All other displays that I have used
(which have an internal editor) only support BRF or other 8-bit codecs. But for
some reason Monarch does not allow typing in Unicode braille. If one tries to
input a character not present in the BRF text table, the software signals an
error. I did not find a way to add my own braille table to the device.

I would consider Monarch to be a good e-book reader. Reading tables and
polyphonic music notation is a pleasure with it. Editing or scrolling past
documents is not.

I wish we can run PostmarketOS on Monarch one day. Then Monarch would be an
excellent e-book reader for blind hackers.

I also wonder, could APH/Humanware sell the display without the included
software bundle. I guess the software makes the device a lot pricier than it
would be otherwise. (Of course some firmware should be present for controlling
the different interfaces, like audio, braille, keys, bluetooth, wifi,
charging, USB, etc.).

-- 
Aura