[BRLTTY] Re: Debian-Installer with BRLTTY (USB) test report

[Mario Lang]

Simon Bienlein, le Mon 12 Feb 2007 12:06:22 +0100, a écrit :
>> The shortcut for the preference menu is correct. Can one find this
>> information in the online documentation for BRLTTY as well? If so, one
>> could refer to this before using BRLTTY.
>> 
>> It would be great if one could find the help integrated into BRLTTY on
>> the website as well. After all,
>> how is a beginner supposed to read the help when he does not know the
>> shortcut for accessing his Braille display?

Samuel Thibault <samuel.thibault at ens-lyon.org> writes:
> I would like to highlight that point too :)
>
> I've installed a linux on a friend's computer, and wasn't able to
> explain him how he was supposed to use the braille device (a pm-el_40s),
> since I didn't even know how to activate the help menu or learn mode.

The main problem here is that BRLTTY solely depends on the
keys provided by the display, and since display design
varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, key combinations
vary from driver to driver.  I see some ways to improve the
current situation:

* Provide driver specific help files on mielke.cc/brltty.
  We could write some makefile targets to export .hlp files
  to a HTML representation.  However, the currentl .hlp
  data is pretty terse and plain ASCII.  Some files assume
  some prior knowledge by the user, i.e. key labeling
  conventions usually provided in user manuals.
* If we get keyboard input support in the core, we
  could bind some basic commands to persistant shortcuts.
  This would make these initial configurations a bit
  more standard.

> Setting braille preferences (6 points for instance) was hence tricky: I
> had to run brltty with the XWindow driver, set preferences there, save,
> and copy the file to brltty-pm.prefs.  Not particularly handy :)

Well, you could also have read the .hlp files
in the BRLTTY Papenmeier source directory.  However, this
sort of demonstrates why binary config files are problematic.
If we were very pedantic for instance, I'd have to say
brltty currently violates Debian Policy since binary
data is forbidden in /etc.  One solution could be
to move preference data to /var/cache/brltty, where it actually
belongs IMHO according to the filesystem hirarchy standard.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario