[BRLTTY] brltty-autolocale Was:Re: braille doesn't work at all under Ubuntu 8.04.1

[Labrador]

Hi Sam / Dave / all,

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 01:42:59PM +0200, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Labrador, le Thu 04 Sep 2008 12:46:11 +0200, a écrit :
> > - at the North (flemish part) of Belgium where I live, we use the de table,
> > while the Brussels people and the South (FR-language part) uses fr_FR;
> > and ..... a locale is always defined as mm_NN, so the idea should be :
> > if locale = nl_BE then default table for brailel should be de, if locale =
> > fr_BE or fr_FR then default braille table should be fr_FR.
> 
> I'd think that brltty could handle these cases.
> 
> > I ignore how the current installer does, but if he can select us, then there
> > must be a way to match the way the installer itself do when you coose for a
> > country and Keyboard at the boot (live) or install time ?
> > Once again, this is more a distro (or Ubuntu-Accessibility) issue, maybe we
> > have to continue this discussion at that list ?
> 
> As you have shown above, it's far from simple, there are a lot of
> special cases like nl_BE.  The installer team will most probably not
> have the knowledge to achieve this, brltty should probably provide
> something to do it so that the knowledge can be maintained within
> brltty.

Yes, how longer I think about it, how much I find the idea of a
brltty-autolocale or brltty-i18n much more interesting; why:
- there are more lang than braille text-tables
- so the goal of such a brltty-autolocale is to have its own list of
matches; in the case you indicate, for example nl_BE, the default table is
de, idem for de_DE or nl_BE
- but NOT for fr_BE: in this case fr_BE must match with the fr_FR table of
brltty.
- The advantage of making it in a separate package is that it may be
implemented separately, dpending on informations and the requests or users
themself.
- But of course brltty-autolocate should base its search on the default
locale (cf. system-wide config file, not user file; maybe later...)

It will probably not resolve all problems, but it will work in many cases,
especially in Europe.

Note: it is not necessary to see the keyboard type, but basing this on the
locale is a good "point de repère"/"reference-point" if this is correct...

Finally, we must build such a list of matchings, by wiki or so?... or by
providing to the right person the right information:
I've just called the Belgian Papenmeier (ex Alva) reseller:
he confirmed me that by the past, de was for example the default table even
for Alva or Tieman used in Flanders (= North Belgium, matches with nl_BE),
the Netherlands (nl_NL), GErmany and other Germanic countries (de_DE, or
de_CH, or de_AT).
Currentloy, thes tables are no longer depending on the braille display
itself but from the table Jaws or such Windows screen reader provide.

How much text-tables are currently provided with the latest brltty ?

To make them match with something correct, the knowhow must come from the
local users themselve: I know how to fix the problem for dutch or French,
not for Vietnamese or Swedish, Norsk etc.

Aldo.