[BRLTTY] BrlAPI server-side bindings

[Samuel Thibault]

Sebastian Humenda, le mar. 16 sept. 2025 20:50:49 +0200, a ecrit:
> Samuel Thibault schrieb am 16.09.2025, 16:22 +0200:
> >Sebastian Humenda, le mar. 16 sept. 2025 16:14:36 +0200, a ecrit:
> >> We have a student project in which we connect to BRLTTY to drive a braille
> >> display. To allow automated testing, we would like to replace BRLTTY,
> >> depending on the scenario, by a custom server that speaks BrlAPI, which feeds
> >> test braille data. AFAIU, bindings like python-brlapi are for the client-side
> >> only. Are there server-side bindings ready-to-use in a library?
> >
> >There is only Programs/brlapi_common.h which provides packet helpers.
> >
> >We indeed had plans to separate out pieces of the server, to be reused
> >e.g. for a proxy for Spice, etc. but that's still on the todo-list.
> 
> Ok, thanks for letting me know. I've fiddled around ~2 hours to set up a
> custom server, but I cannot even get the authentication to work reliably.

Just to make sure: have you had a look at the brlapi protocol
documentation, to make sure to understand how it works?

https://brltty.app/doc/Manual-BrlAPI/English/BrlAPI-7.html

> `brlapi_server` is quite complex.

The main structure for the protocol is not that much complex: there are
threads that listen for incoming connections, and a main thread that
selects on the connected clients, and on each incoming packet, it calls
the appropriate function. The authentication is a bit particular, but
you can as well go with no authentication first to make it simpler.

The plumbing with brltty is more complex, because brltty itself brings
the notions of braille driver and text update principles.

Samuel