[BRLTTY] 6.9 has been released.

Tue Feb 17 13:48:40 UTC 2026

BRLTTY-6.9 has been released. You can download it from:

   https://brltty.app/

Click on Download, and then on Current Release.

A new feature worthy of special mention is the addition of the Tmux screen driver. It can be used with the tmux terminal multiplexer in the same way as the Screen screen driver can be used with the screen terminal multiplexer except that tmux doesn't need to be patched. It's way more efficient. Its default is to attach to the current tmux session but has parameters to attach to another session by either its name or its socket's path. It supports full (RGB) color so it's a good screen driver to use if you're using or developing a full color console app.

A summary of all of the user-facing changes in this release is as follows:

General changes:
   Cursor routing no longer spawns an additional process or thread.
   Soft cursor detection (for applications that use a visual cursor) has been added
   (must be enabled within the Navigation Options submenu).
   Multi-line cursor routing has been fixed.
   A screen driver can now provide full (RGB) color for each character.
   The DESCCHAR command now shows actual color names if RGB is provided.
   Time selectors within the Preferences Menu now adjust by 0.05 (rather than 0.1) seconds.
   Timestamps within the Log Messages submenu now contain their milliseconds component.
   Command line and configuration file parsing errors are now written to the log file.
   Failure to connect to a Bluetooth device no longer spams the log.
   Failure to open a HID device no longer spams the log.
New braille navigation commands:
   COLOR: Show just the VGA or RGB color of the selected character.
   It's been bound to a long press of a routing key.
   Use this command, rather than DESCCHAR, if you just want to know the color.
New speech navigation commands:
   SPEAK_CURR_PWRD: Say the current partial word.
   SPEAK_PREV_PWRD: Move to and say the previous partial word.
   SPEAK_NEXT_PWRD: Move to and say the next partial word.
   SPELL_CURR_PWRD: Spell the current partial word.
   SPELL_CURR_LINE: Spell the current line.
   See the laptop and keypad keyboard tables for related binding changes
   (more specifically, see the kp_speak and kp_say keyboard subtables).
EuroBraille braille driver changes:
   The b.note and b.book models are now supported.
   Missing dependency rules for building the eutp command have been added.
HandyTech braille driver changes:
   The Android-specific key bindings now work.
HIMS braille driver:
   The BrailleSense 6 is now detected properly when using Bluetooth.
HumanWare braille driver changes:
   All of the models that support Bluetooth HID are now recognized by Udev.
Virtual braille driver:
   This driver has been removed.
AtSpi2 screen driver changes:
   Helpful text is now shown for widgets that don't have a text interface.
Linux screen driver changes:
   Disabling wide character padding now actually works when using a newer kernel.
Tmux screen driver:
   This is a new screen driver.
   Its two-letter code is tx.
   It supports full (RGB) color.
   The scrollback buffer, choose-tree, and display-menu features aren't supported.
   The brltty-tmux command has been added.
Speech changes:
   Navigating by partial words has been restored to the original bindings.
   Navigating by full words has been retained with different bindings.
   A command to spell the current line has been added.
   Spelling a word or line now speaks all of the punctuation symbols.
   Autorepeat for navigating by character, word, and line has bee slowed down so it can be heard.
   These selectors have been added to the Speech Options submenu:
      Character Autorepeat Interval: defaults to 0.25 seconds
      Word Autorepeat Interval:      defaults to 0.4 seconds
      Line Autorepeat Interval:      defaults to 0.6 seconds
BrlAPI changes:
   The version is now 0.8.8 (it was 0.8.7).
   Pending braille output is now flushed whenever a client leaves a tty.
   A problem when determining the tty number for a client session has been resolved.
Text table changes:
   The no-break space - U+00A0 - has been added to en-nabcc as dots 7,8.
Contraction table changes:
   de-1998 is now deprecated and has been removed.
   de-2015 is now folded into de-g2 and has been removed.
   de-g2 has been updated.
Linux changes:
   Missing special devices are now created within an isolated file system.
Windows changes:
   64-bit builds using Msys2 are now supported.
   The speech drivers for the Alva, BrailleLite, and CombiBraille are now included.
Android changes:
   The targeted API level has been increased to 36 (Android 16).
   The minimum API level has been increased to 27 (Android 8.1).
   The NDK (native development kit) now being used is r27b.
   The new 16-kilobyte page size requirement is now supported.
   The top-level build is now configured for arm 64-bit (rather than for arm 32-bit).
   The edge-to-edge screen rendering model is now supported.
   The DESCCHAR command now includes the character's name.
   The Canute braille driver is now included.
brltty-pty changes:
   The screen, screen-256color, tmux, and tmux-256color terminal types are now supported.
   The RGB escape sequence - 38;2 - is now supported.
   The bright color escape sequences - 90-97 and 100-107 - are now supported.
Build Changes:
   Scripts now use the screen's width (rather than assume 72) for help (-h) output.
   The brltty-lscmds command has been renamed to brltty-cmdref.
   brltty-ctb's --reformat-text [-r] option has been fixed and is now documented.
   The brltty-tmux command has been added.
   The cmdtest command has been added.
   The colortest command has been added.
   The all action of the msgtest command has been renamed to list.
   Cross-compiling the Java bindings is now supported.
   The Lua bindings are no longer installed in a local directory unless there's no other alternative.

-- 
I believe the Bible to be the very Word of God: http://Mielke.cc/bible/
Dave Mielke            | 2213 Fox Crescent | WebHome: http://Mielke.cc/
EMail: Dave at Mielke.cc  | Ottawa, Ontario   | Twitter: @Dave_Mielke
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