[duxhelp] Re: Bolding, underlining, italics etc

  • From: "Jack Maartman" <jmaartman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <duxhelp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:22:50 -0700

Hi Dave:

You have touched on some interesting issues here.  Firstly, one has only to
compare the differences between BAUK and Bana countries with respect to what
they consider relevant.  When is bolding needed and when isn't it. I should
comb the Bana Formats book to see when something isn't relevant.  A good
example is what has happened in music braille.  There are two kinds,
facsimile and plain. In Facsimile transcriptions, there are directives that
have no relevance for the blind musician, but are absolutely necessary for
the teacher. I have heard from the European community that North American
braille contains far too much information.  The codebooks for Bauk Math and
Science are slim volumes, and for France, yet slimmer.  Yet I think there
are few of us who would whole-heartedly abandon  the elegance of the Nemeth
Code.  Yet we are in a quandry.  If you are brailling for fifth or sixth
graders, you would'nt want to clutter up the text with too many composition
signs.  If you were brailling for me, having once been an avid optacon user,
I'd want to know about every font change, how many columns to the page, etc,
etc, and by god I'd be willing to pay for such information, and it would be
very very custom braille.  I produce a lot of books for my own use, for a
braille lite m40, and the braille is appalling, but suits my purposes fine,
but I wouldn't dream of selling it.  In sum, braille with an inventory of
only 64 invariable signs, considering that it can conceivably represent "any
mark ever made by man," is a downright miracle. And I agree with you
absolutely, that the skilled use of a braille translator, which is as much
an art as cabinet making will make all the difference, even if some portions
of the text still have to be keyed in.

Cheers
Jack

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Durber" <dadurber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <duxhelp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 7:49 AM
Subject: [duxhelp] Re: Bolding, underlining, italics etc


> I agree with you to a certain extent.
>
> However, what happens when you get headings that might have bold,
> italics and underline applied to them in order to make those headings
> stand out for the sighted reader but which are not essential to a
> braille reader.
>
> How about headings that might have various combinations of these types
> of enhancements.  Because not all emphasized text is bolded.  You
> might have text that is italicized as well as underlined.  There
> again, you might have text that is bolded and italicized or, bolded
> and underlined.
>
> As I have said on many occasions before and I will probably say it
> again, "if you want a job done well, then do it right and if you are a
> person who likes doing a job well, then you will go that extra mile or
> kilometer in order to achieve the result that you want.
>
> For a cabinet maker to produce a good finished product, he/she has to
> use the right tools, in the right way and using some elbow grease, in
> order to produce a smooth satin finish, that is pleasant to the touch
> and appealing to the eye.
>
> Unfortunately, a large number of people who claim to be able to
> transcribe braille materials, do not take the time or make any real
> effort to learn programs such as MegaDots and DBT well enough and with
> no degree of competence even to be able to demonstrate that they can
> produce anything like what I would call "quality braille output".  In
> fact I would go as far as to say, that these individuals should be
> ashamed of themselves actually not only producing poor quality braille
> output but, they actually have the gall and the nerve to receive money
> from customers in exchange for badly produced products.  Shame on
> them!  On the other hand, it could be said that those people who paid
> good money and received a bad product and didn't complain about that
> product to the person who produced it, (1) got what they paid for, and
> (2) deserved what they got.
>
> In all good conscience and without any hesitation, I know that my
> standard of braille production is of an extremely high standard
> because I have made it my business to ensure that it is so.  Because I
> believe that if you are selling a product, then you should make it as
> well as possible.  I also believe, that if you want to produce high
> quality braille, you should always be open to constructive criticism
> and to good quality suggestions.  In both of these respects, I have
> been fortunate in both areas.
>
> Like a cabinet maker, how good or bad a transcriber is could be summed
> up in the following saying, "the proof of the pudding is in the
> eating".  So, in the end, it depends on what an individual considers
> to be "good quality braille" or "bad quality braille".
>
> Sincerely:
>
> Dave Durber
>
> On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:46:28 -0400, you wrote:
>
> >Hi Dave,
> >
> >II think that much could be done to make this situation easier.  MegaDots
> >has some ways of handling these things that might be a possibility.  It
> >allows these kinds of codes to be suppressed, as well as allowing other
to
> >be displayed.  These thing are user-definable.
> >
> >In most cases, I don't want to see boldface.  I want the ability to
> >automatically suppress it in those situations in which it is used for
fonts
> >or for titles.  I hate it when I get documents in which every paragraph
is
> >bolded, and I have to do a search and replace to remove all  occurrences.
> >Could DBT be set to have a way of separating bolding from a boldface font
in
> >Word?
> >
> >Second, could some ofsome configuribility be built into the Word
importer?
> >How about show bold, unnderlining, and italics, etc. or not with
checkboxes
> >beside each one?
> >
> >Another possibility would be to also have radio buttons to show each
> >different kinds emphasis for each punctuation.
> >
> >I realize these possibilities may go beyond the scope of the current
beta.
> >
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