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
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.
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----- 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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