Here is my understanding of what views there would be and what can be done in each (based on the initial understanding).
BrailleBlaster will have two views, an original document view (DAISY view as DAISY is the base document format BrailleBlaster uses) and a Braille view.
The original document view will allow one to perform basic word processing tasks on documents to edit content and the structure. Any changes in the original document will be translated and the translation will show in the Braille view. Whether the changes in the original document view will automatically be reflected in the Braille view I don't know as it depends how difficult this would be, but if the user needs to manually perform it then it should be at the press of a button.
The Braille view will show both Braille and ink text. The Braille part probably is understood by all, the ink text part of the Braille view relates to the ink output on the tiger printers which support Braille and ink. The user should be able to decide whether both Braille and ink are both shown or whether only one of these should be shown.
The Braille view will allow one to make changes to the Braille for any content which will be Braille specific (IE. make changes to the Braille which will not be reflected back in the original document). I think for any Braille specific changes the user may need to mark that part of the Braille as "locked" so that future translations will not overwrite the change.
Michael Whapples On 29/07/2012 22:20, John J. Boyer wrote:
The way BrailleBlaster works jnow, when an xml file is opened the text is displayed in the Daisy view. This is also the case with imported files, which are converted to xml. There are two modes of translation, with and without UTD. In both cases the translation is displayed in the Braille view. if the translation is done without UTD the Braille view is read-only, since it is derived strictly from the prinnt original. If the translation is done with UTD the Braille view is editable, but the Daisy view is read-only, because it is derived from the information in the UTD file and does not correspond to the original. I feel strrongly that making it editable would be unwise. If the user needs to change the print original they should be able to go back to the display shown when the file was opened. I want to see what the others on the team have to say. They should be looking at the list later today or tomorrow. After all, it's Sunday. John B On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 08:16:50PM +0000, Keith Creasy wrote:I'm not sure. I invision only two views. One for braille and one for XML/HTML rendering of the text from the XML file. They should both dynamically update as changes are made. Why would we need a third view for the text from the braille view? Keith From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Gardner Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 4:09 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Editor Keith, okay I'm confused again. What is your second view? Seems to me you need a regular text view when viewing the original XML file, and then you need a dual view of the translated document - one showing the braille and one showing the accompanying ink - basically a reformatted version of the regular view. This is what I called the "ink view". I hope that we are not working from different models of what BB is supposed to do. My original vision was that users would create or import a document, and when it is more or less finished, translate it. From that point on, one is no longer working with the original XML document - one is working with the UTD document. The text on screen is the same but formatted to match the braille, so all lines are very short. A smart user would do little or no editing of text in such a document but can edit the braille as she chooses. Since almost any braille editing is gonna cause line/page wrap problems, one should re-translate before embossing the final copy. To keep true synchronization between the braille and ink copy, BB would need to re-translate continually, and that seems pretty heavy overhead to me. Keeping the portions scrolling together might be a much easier problem, but it might not be trivial to take account of how line wrapping in one view is to be handled when scrolling. I don't know much about displaying graphics. Huge files are a big problem, and displaying graphics just makes them lots harder. But you need to have the graphics. John G From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Keith Creasy Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 12:28 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Chuck Myers; Mark Klarer Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Editor That's what I thought but John B. seems to prefer directly editing XML. So, my position is that either way we need that ability to make the DAISY view/editor as visually functional as possible. At a minimum it needs to format the text in a sane manner and include images. Ideally it should also respect style attributes and CSS. This is an essential component if BB is ever going to appeal to 99% of the braille transcribers and producers out there. The model I had in mind is a base XML document with two views. Both views update the document dynamically and the parent view handles tex-change events. There are a lot of details to work out but I think an HTML editor view would work. As we do this we can better encapsulate the document/view objects so that an MDI feature is more easily implemented if that is something folks want. Another thing to consider is that several tools, including Word, is choaking on the larger NIMAS files so opening and rendering the entire XML document at once may not even be practical. The XML DOM plus images can get very large. We can probably open the entire XML document but I doubt that we can render the entire thing with images. At least the images need to be loaded and rendered on an as-needed basis. Let's keep talking about this. Some of what others are doing may need to be suspended until some decisions are made. Keith From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Gardner Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 3:12 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Editor Hi Keith, continuous synching was not specified originally in order to keep BB version 1 as simple as possible. However if it is really easy to do, nobody would have any objection to it being added. I guess I am confused about the XML display problem. To my knowledge, it should be possible to map any of the XML formats that we plan to support onto HTML, so I see no real problem in using a HTML visual display. What am I missing here? John G From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Keith Creasy Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 12:05 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Editor I disagree about the need for them to be continuously synchronised. I believe they should be. Doing so is not a momumental task, much easier than coming up with the kind of XML editor we need for example. :) A sighted braille transcriber is going to want the two to match as they work with changes in one immdiately reflected in the other. Just my opinion. Keith From: brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Gardner Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 3:02 PM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [brailleblaster] Re: Editor 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> [mailto:brailleblaster-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Keith Creasy Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 10:28 AM To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: nimas@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto: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
