Hello Chelsea (and everyone) - I've used NimPro and was a beta tester for the
recently added support for EPUB3 content. While I've had braille transcription
training, my expertise area leans more to NIMAS (and XML markup in general).
NimPro is a handy tool as a conduit between the NIMAS source material and
Duxbury DBT. While the help menus are extensive and quite good, grasping the
content structure concepts will probably seem hard, but then seem simple once
you understand things.
Also important to know is that the NimPro "wizard" tools are mainly there to
repair or revise NIMAS element structures that don't work well for DBT. List
elements in NIMAS must be modified. The NIMAS model allows six subhead levels
when DBT wants to see only three. And so on...
Having a tool to fix NIMAS text elements is great, because the very flexible
NIMAS tagging scheme means that different (and sometimes not great) text
tagging methods are likely to be encountered. Put another way "valid NIMAS"
does not necessarily mean "good NIMAS".
Finally, I'll mention that my workflow with NIMAS and NimPro does not convert
directly to the .dxp file format for DTP, but rather to .docx (Word) - where I
use the SWIFT extension for Word (free at the Duxbury website) to do format
cleanup and additional editing (NimPro is not useful as a text editor). Duxbury
maps nicely to the SWIFT styles for braille.
Good luck - David Nelson
david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
P.S. has anyone out there used NimPro for EPUB3 work? I'd be interested to know
where EPUB3 is with accessibility metadata features that provide editorial
content descriptions.
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
David Holladay
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2023 7:02 AM
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [duxuser] Re: Epub?
Rorie:
By Duxbury, are you referring to Duxbury DBT or Duxbury Systems?
Nimpro is a product of Duxbury Systems. It has its own webpage:
https://www.duxburysystems.com/nimpro.asp
It is not included with Duxbury DBT, and it costs $295.
It is an ideal product for importing EPUB, Nimas, and Daisy files into DBT.
- David
On 9/1/2023 7:46 AM, Rorie, Tamara wrote:
Hi David:
A few questions about NimPro:
1. Is it part of Duxbury or do you have to acquire separately. If so, where
do you get it and how much does it cost?
2. Which versions of ePub does it work with?
Thanks
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx><mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of David Holladay
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2023 5:54 PM
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [duxuser] Re: Epub?
Chelsea:
Duxbury has NimPro, a product that can import EPUB files and produce DBT files.
On a practical level, just Google "convert EPUB to Word". Many websites do this
for free.
I do this sort of thing all the time. If you have difficulty, e-mail them to me
and I will do it.
Email me directly, not to the list.
- David Holladay
On 8/31/2023 5:35 PM, Chelsea Dye wrote:
Hello all,
I've just purchased a 3-volume set of books in Epubt format. How do I
convert them to Braille files?
Thanks in advance!
Chelsea
