TAMC is free, but it isn't currently open source and probably won't be for a while unless enough people express an interest in working on it with me.
The JAR files are obfuscated. I'm sure that with enough effort someone could decompile them if they wanted to, but that's the price of delivering Java or .Net applications to the desktop. Considering that the app is free and I'm willing to help just about anybody who asks - within reason - I wonder whether it's worth the effort to decompile the code :)
I'm open to making some sort of arrangement to provide TAMC's data conversion libraries and other features available under a license that would be compatible with BrailleBlaster (or, for that matter, any other project that is interested). If you really want source, contact me off-list.
For info about the OPF, I highly recommend reading through the DAISY and/or EPUB specifications - you'd get much more and better info there than I could put into an email.
Cheers Chris On Jun 7, 2011, at 9:25 AM, John J. Boyer wrote:
Thanks for the info. Do you plan to make TAMC available as Open Source.If you make it available only as jar files, people can still decompile it to some extent. It sounds interesting for BrailleBlaster, but if it isn't Open Source that might be a problem. What is the opf file? Thanks, John On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 07:58:01AM -0700, Chris von See wrote:The TechAdapt Accessible Media Center (TAMC) is a free product I builtback in 2006, when the NIMAS standard was first being rolled out. It is used by many state and local education agencies in the US to convert NIMAS and DAISY file sets into DAISY, HTML and RTF files. Most clients use it to convert Bookshare DAISY files and NIMAS filesfrom the NIMAC into HTML and RTF - the HTML has features to facilitateuse of the material by students who are blind or low vision, and theRTF files are used by braille transcribers to import content into DBT,Braille 2000 or other braille translation programs. Aside from ongoing maintenance TAMC has not been actively developed because I've been occupied with other parts of our business that make money :) but I've recently performed a complete rewrite of the application and am planning to actively develop new conversions from more source and target formats. In addition to the complete rewrite, the new version is completely accessible and adds support for Microsoft Word input files; future versions will add support for audio output, braille output, and other features. You can find more info about TAMC at http://www.accessiblemediacenter.com A NIMAS file set is essentially the same thing as a text-only DAISYfile set. It has the same XML and almost the same OPF but it does notcontain SMIL or NCX files. Cheers Chris On Jun 6, 2011, at 10:13 PM, John J. Boyer wrote:A couple of questions. What is TAMC? How does NiMAS differ from DAISY?I've never seen a NIMAS file. they seem to be under wraps for only students. You are lucky to have survived the combinatorial explosion of trying to convert various file formats to various others. Converting them first to a canonical form makes a lot more sense. Thanks, John On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 09:25:30PM -0700, Chris von See wrote:Yes, I'm very familiar with XSLT, XPath and related XML technologies. I co-authored a book on XSLT with a friend of mine back in 2002, andhave been working with XML in various ways ever since. For what it's worth: The early versions of TAMC converted DAISY and NIMAS into various other formats without converting first to acanonical format, and it was admittedly kind of a mess. The new fileimport libraries I've written as part of the foundation for the newversion of TAMC convert to a canonical format first and then performsall operations on that standardized model - much, much cleaner. Cheers Chris On Jun 6, 2011, at 8:39 PM, John J. Boyer wrote:I have considered leaving all Daisy and html files as is and using semantic-action files as liblouisutdml does. However, i think this would be inadequate for what BrailleBlaster is to do. liblouisutdml doesn['t manipulate the files, except for adding utdml when requested. BrailleBlaster will have the capability to manipulate files. The semantic-action-file approach is probably inadequate. Manipulation will be much easier if all files are converted to a common format. This isprobably not hard to do, if we have someone who really knows xslt. Iwouldn't be surprised if Chris does. The flavor of the xml or html document can be detected while it is being read in as soon as xom getsthe root element. The flavor can also be specified by other means ifthe root element is ambiguous. John B. On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 06:49:11PM -0700, John Gardner wrote:I agree, but should we convert them all to a common format? My understanding of UTDML is that it is not necessary. If so then maybe we should just leave all DAISY flavors as is. The idea of UTDML is that theDAISY file is still there but with lots of other content included.In fact, maybe we should leave all standard HTML and XML imports "as is". John B, is this a stupid idea? John G John G -----Original Message----- From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John J. Boyer Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 6:43 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Importing Files So what flavor of DAISY will BrailleBlaster use as its native format? Isuppose the latest. Earlier versions can be converted easily, so weshould import all of them. John B. On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 06:04:16PM -0700, John Gardner wrote:Chris, I understand the new DAISY format, at least to some extent. Wemustcertainly be able to import EPUB 3 into BrailleBlaster. That's not a big problem, since it is, after all, HTML. But HTML5 does include MathML and SVG, which we already intend to use. No problem there I trust. It is not quite so clear that we should also import DAISY 4. However if DAISY 4 will be used to author DAISY with braille information, then we should support it. It is my understanding that it will be used for that purpose, but I not 100% certain I am right. John G -----Original Message----- From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris von See Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 3:50 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Importing Files The link that Susan references is for the Authoring and Interchange format. The next version of DAISY uses ePub 3.0 (aka DAISY 4.0 Part B) as its distribution format, which is what most end users will end up with. There's a brief blurb about this in the DAISY Consortium 2010 Annual Report: "The convergence of the DAISY 4 distribution format with EPUB 3 will open up great opportunities for readers with print disabilities. It isour responsibility to continue our involvement in and influence ontheimplementation of fully accessible EPUB 3 in commercial e- books as well as in non-commercial information such as public information, information necessary for political decision making, and disasterpreparedness information. The DAISY Consortium's endorsement of accessible EPUB 3 content will require an even greater effort by the Consortium in collaboration with print disability communities around the world, to influence the accessibility of mainstream e-book publications."http://data.daisy.org/publications/docs//ann_report_2010/AnnualReport2010.html?q=publications/docs/ann_report_2010/AnnualReport2010.html On Jun 6, 2011, at 2:59 PM, Susan Jolly wrote:With a growing number of apps adding "Save as DAISY" options, I'dfocus first on getting BrailleBlaster to work with DAISY files. IfBrailleBlaster provides unique features that users need and can'teasily obtain elsewhere then that should motivate them to find some method to convert any non-DAISY files to DAISY so they can use BrailleBlaster. Another important consideration is that the next-generation DAISY XML format known as ZedAI has already been developed and is currently under review. So this is not a good time to be investing a lot of resources in the old DAISY format. You can read more here: http://www.daisy.org/zw/ZedAI_UserDocumentation SusanJ-- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities-- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities-- My websites: GodTouches Digital Ministry, Inc. http://www.godtouches.org Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com BrailleBlaster http://www.brailleblaster.org Location: Madison, WI, USA-- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities