Thanks, Lissa. I really needed that, especially coming from NBP. I prepare
virtually all the braille for my own use, and have a nice collection, not
quite as good as "Jiffy Braille, but readable. The problem, is that the very
length of some of the works would make embossing impossible. I'd be
delighted to send NBP anything I have, if it would be helpful. I'd have to
change some formatting, as I have--E.G. the eighteen print volumes of the
Cambridge History of English and American literature, a work very much still
used, in a slightly proprietary mark-up for the braille Lite M40. allowing
one to move from level two heading to the next or previous with the touch of
a button. Project Gutenberg would very much like to provide all its
materials in braille on their site. I have even thought of doing my own site
to provide this material gratis, however I lack the resources, let alone the
band-width. I sent Dr. Nemeth the very large Encyclopedia of World History,
which he finds very useful.
The marvels of DBT's translation tables allows me to work with languages
other than English. I have done the declaration of Human Rights in all the
languages that DBT supports, as well as large portions of the bible. Just
another acolade for DBT..
An aditional factor in all this, is that web-braille proliferates in the
U.S.. The number of free magazines available, for instance would easily
satisfy my own reading needs without recourse for this kind of innovation.
Let me know, off list if appropriate, if NBP might find this sort of thing
useful.
Jack
----- Original Message -----
From: "Melissa Hirshson" <lissa@xxxxxxx>
To: <duxhelp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 1:18 PM
Subject: [duxhelp] Re: Fw: fossils:
Jack, believe it or not, NBP mostly uses the DOS version too--it's
faster to run the translator from the command line. You're not alone! :)
Lissa
Jack Maartman wrote:
I sent this to to David on Friday instead of the list. Let me know, if
as I imagine, modifications to translation tables are not on our
agenda. If I can import all the new translation and format/hyphenation
tables into the build for dos, so much the better The dos version is a
good adjunct to nfbtrans, especially for languages other than English,
where 286/386 or even xt machines are being used. Original follows.
.
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Jack Maartman <mailto:jmaartman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
*To:* David Holladay <mailto:david@xxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Friday, March 17, 2006 8:06 PM
*Subject:* fossils:
Hi all, especially Peter, and Joe should he monitor once and a while:
Joe was good enough to give me a version of DBT for MS-dos, as part of
my research license.
Nobody seems to pay attention to dos anymore, although, I suspect in the
developing world it might be used a bit more than where computer power
is for the taking.
DBT purports to work transparently across platforms. I, as one who
still loves and uses ms-dos, would like to use the dos version whenever
possible, to do any trouble-shooting, before running the final in
windows.
I am using a rapidly degrading version of win 98. My ISP sagely
suggested to me, that although I would probably never like windows, I
would eventually get used to it. I live in a very isolated rural
community, running Window-Eyes, which has never been as fully supported
as JFW, in spite of the good offices of Don Breda. I suspect this is
largely due to GWMicro's indifference. I am self-taught in windows,
which means that I am missing half the jargon. I learned enough jaws to
tutor Dr. Abraham Nemeth in some of the basics, and although JFW's mouse
simulation does not appear to be as intuitive as Wineyes' it still seems
to work.
As a DBT beta-tester , I am chiefly interested in portability
cross-platform, and above all to determine DBT's limitations when
importing .html and .xml files. There are a number of codes that appear
simply to be not supported, even though .dbt allows one to save in
.sgml. I am very fortunate in having a shell account on a linux system,
and I'd find an older build for linux useful. Another issue is how
easily one can tweak languages with translation tables, E.G. Arabic,
Hebrew, and those based on cyrrilic scripts into working, without having
to use MS-Word patches. The version of word I have is a pirate installed
from a corrupt CD, and it barely performs.
Most of my multilingual material comes directly from .html files found
on the web. If these are written in UTF-8 DBT seems to do a reasonable
import, although often full of asterisks from any translation table that
doesn't understand the symbols be they .html entity references, or
unrecognized UTF-8 characters. It will, however not recognize a plain
text file in UTF-8 at all.
These matters may seem trivial or irrelevant at a glance. One should,
however, bare in mind that the web is the richest source of information
for a braille reader, and I know from having a gross hearing loss that
immediate translation of such material to braille especially to be read
using a braille notetaker is almost simultaneous to real accessibility.
What I find useful with Dos or linux systems is that you are put
unceremoniously back at a prompt, if things don't work as they should.
Cheers
zJack
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