[brailleblaster] Re: Editor
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 12:02:22 -0700
Hello Keith. A few comments. I don't understand why the braille view is
read-only. The braille needs to be editable according to the specs. We
have discussed several possibilities for synchronizing the braille and text
views. They don't need to be continuously synchronized, but one does need
to have some button to push to synch them. Synching means nothing more than
putting the cursor more or less in the right place. To fully update both,
one retranslates. After locking the braille changes of course! Of course
one could do some more fancy synching, but this should be pretty
straightforward to implement, and fancier things are likely to be a big can
of worms.
You brought up the subject of images and math, and I have forgotten the
specs for those. It is worth having a discussion at this point about the
minimum needed for BrailleBlaster version 1.0. I don't know how one
includes images into embosser data for conventional embossers, but I do know
how ViewPlus embossers handle them. The ViewPlus printer driver just
converts them to dots and sends the image to the embosser along with the
braille. This should be easy to include in the braille view. And the image
should also be reproduced in the "ink view".
Math should be included as MathML,and liblouis can convert it to several
possible math codes. Any math images will need to be converted by the user
to MathML to be translatable. The math braille will be automatically
included in the braille view, and the math image should be included in the
ink view. Interestingly, if one chooses to use DotsPlus for math, it can be
treated as an image in both views without any translation required.
There is still a lot to do with BB, but I agree with you that we need to
think forward about the tools we are using.
John G
From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Keith Creasy
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 10:28 AM
To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: nimas@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [brailleblaster] Editor
I've spent some time this weekend looking over the current state of
BrailleBlaster. My main thoughts so far are:
The text editor/view needs to display the DAISY/NIMAS document as HTML with
mixed fonts and images. Maybe we could use something like
http://djproject.sourceforge.net/ns/ to do this? Please check it out and
share your thoughts. Showing images is important since many textbooks
contain images that need descriptions and also use images for such things as
diagrams and math equations. This is where BB can shine by providing a nice
user interface for expressing these items in text or Nemeth braille. XSL
transforms can be used to render the XML to HTML for viewing and editing.
Along with this is the need to support or allow one to use a braille display
and keyboard to directly edit in the braille view. Maybe the screen readers
can be used to make this work. Not sure. It would be great if the braille
keyboard/display could be locked onto the braille view somehow.
The braille view is read-only. We can probably use the current StyledText
view for editing braille since we won't need images or mixed fonts in
braille.
We'll need a mechanism for synchronising the two views. I'm thinking the
parent view can be notified of any edits to either view and then send a
message with the view that changed and an object containing information
about the change. Android has a nice structure for doing this and LibLouis
provides information about the current offsets for braille and text. We use
this for the Braille Plus' braille editor to synchronise the braille editor
with the edit control in the Android app.
In my opinion this is what is most needed in BB to make it the kind of
powerful tool we want and need. Let's think about this and try to identify
the best way to get this accomplished. I'm willing to put in some developer
time-my own time-to work on it but we need to agree on what
libraries/controls to use.
Also, we found a translation bug in LibLouis but our library is out of date.
Does anyone know off hand if it still reverse-translates "update" to
"upaidate"?
Thanks.
Keith
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