[BRLTTY] Braille tables versus contraction tables.

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Dave Mielke wrote:

> [quoted lines by Nicolas Pitre on 2008/04/23 at 22:27 -0400]
> 
> >What is there to gain by doing so?
> 
> I suspect that their inherent limitation of one braille cell per 
> character will eventually become frustrating. My guess, and that's all 
> it is, is that users will eventually want single-cell representations 
> for their own language's characters plus special ones like box 
> boundaries, but that they'll also probably want multi-cell characters 
> for reading those foreign languages that they also use.

Well, to me the "one character, one braille cell" is really important.  
I almost never use the contracted mode because spatial placement of 
things is primordial in my work.

> A basic contraction table full of only "always" statements is just as simple 
> and obvious.

Then, if it can be made to work with no functional difference I won't 
mind.  I would propose the "set" keyword for this though, which would 
look more natural than a bunch of "always" statements, and that could 
also disambiguate the space representation, such that:

	set     \x20     0

could mean that, when in effect, each space is actually producing a 
corresponding non-collapsed empty dot pattern.

> >especially if contracted braille can be configured out to slim down the 
> >BRLTTY binary.
> 
> Yes, but how necessary is that these days. We're no longer into trying to force 
> brltty onto an already crammed floppy with next to no run-time libraries.

Possibly, indeed.


Nicolas