[BRLTTY] Choosing a suitable braille display

[Michael Whapples]

On Wed, 2008-02-20 at 16:11 +1100, Jason White wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 12:43:15PM +0000, Michael Whapples wrote:
> > I probably will look at these as well, I find it quite good having the
> > buttons on the front of the ALVA which could be operated from nearly any
> > position on the display. I wonder how this type of system compares to
> > the buttons at the end like on the braillient (as I have only used the
> > front buttons type display in the past). 
> 
> It very much depends on your work habits, in particular on how you prefer to
> use the device in carrying out daily tasks. I find the keys of the
> Brailliant/Supervario convenient to press after reaching the end of a line,
> which is by far the most common circumstance. In many other cases, my next
> action after pressing a key combination is to start reading a line from the
> beginning, and in this situation having the keys just to the left/right of the
> display doesn't create any difficulties. In addition, it enables 63 possible
> commands to be issued from the six display keys.
> I am seeing if this type of working is as good/better/worse than the front navigation, I got the pacmate display working. Your comment about the combinations of key presses on the braillient is a valid one, a feature the pacmate display lacks as it uses wheels.
> The old DOS driver for the Baum INKa allowed the user to assign functions to
> groups of ten optical sensors; the optical sensors were used primarily for the
> same purpose as routing buttons, but it was also possible to assign arbitrary
> commands to each adjacent group of ten sensors. As a result, it was quite
> convenient to associate the previous window and next window commands with the
> first and the last ten sensors, respectively, on the line, which could be
> activated without moving one's hand from the display area. BRLTTY doesn't
> allow this degree of flexibility, and most recently manufactured displays
> don't have optical sensors however. I still value my INKA, which is a very
> well designed piece of hardware.
I hadn't heard of this sort of stuff before, but is it like the modular
evolution display (the atc feature)? Also from what I gather, you are
saying some of these advanced features aren't available in brltty, is
this correct?
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