[BRLTTY] Returning to BRLTTY - and asking for help with Windows/FS Focus Blue setup

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by Nikhil Nair on 2019/07/27 at 15:00 +0100]

>I take it, from the silence, that my assumption was wrong, and no one (or
>at least, no one who regularly reads this list) has experience with Freedom
>Scientific displays under the Windows version of BRLTTY.

Freedom Scientific braille devices have indeed been successfully used on
windows. The more likely situation is that trying to figure out what your
problem is isn't that easy so noone ventured to give it a try.

I didn't answer right away because I'm rather illiterate when it comes to
Windows - I'm a Linux and an Android person. I was hoping that someone much
more familiar with Windows would respond, but, since that hasn't happened, I'll
give it a try.

How did you install brltty on your Windows system, and how did you configure
it? For example, did you unpack the .zip archive or did you run the .exe
installer? Also, how are you starting brltty (including which options are being
specified). Perhaps you could also post your brltty.conf (as an attachment will
do).

The usual behaviour of Windows is to direct a specific USB device to a specific
driver. Put simply, you can't (easily) have your braille device directed to
both the JAWS driver and the LibUSB driver. Since you need JAWS to continue to
be able to communicate with your braille device, its driver must be left in
control.

You could try using the same serial device. If, say, the JAWS driver is using
COM6 then you'd set your braille device to serial:com6. You don't need to
separately test each existing serial device. Look through the Windows serial
device list to find the one that's attached to the JAWS driver for your braille
device.

If you'd like to use USB directly then, as described above, you won't be able
to use the standard LibUSB driver. You need to use the other LibUSB driver -
the one that uses a filter. The LibUSB filter gets installed at the Windows
kernel level and intercepts all USB operations. Whenever it sees a USB
operation that LibUSB is looking for then, if no other application has that USB
device open, that USB operation is directed to LibUSB.

To keep it simple, it might be best to try the serial approach first.

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