[BRLTTY] converting unicode to 8-dot brf

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by peter.julien.rayner at gmail.com on 2025/11/27 at 09:11 +1100]

>Dave recently pointed out the brltty-trtxt command for converting
>among braille display codes. I have a unicode file I need to convert
>to 8-dot brf. I attach here as "input".

>I tried running brltty-trtxt -o brf input > output
>and got the attached output

>I think anything with dots 7 and 8 is being replaced by "replacement
>character" which makes me suspect the conversion is using a 6-dot brf
>file. 

Yes, you're correct. You may wish to try en-nabcc (rather than brf) to see how well it works. Though BRF doesn't formally define any characters that use dot 8, as well as many that use dot 7, definitions for them are included within brltty's en-nabcc text table. There's only one exception - the no-breaking space - which we could easily add.

I do need to ask you what you're trying to do because such tables may actually be not what you want. Why is it that Unicode braille patterns aren't adequate? Are you, perhaps, wanting to write to some particular braille printer?

There are issues that need to be considered. For example, such tables don't treat a newline as a newline. Also, for writing to a braille printer, what you actually would need is a table that precisely matches what the device itself is expecting.

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