BrlTex / News: Recent posts

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YABT-2.0b2 released
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YABT-2.0b2 has been released and is now available on the python package index at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/YABT. There
has been some significant changes since YABT-2.0b1. One of the most noticeable is that YABT is now its own project
hosted on BerliOS. This means that the YABT website is now http://yabt.berlios.de. This is a complete move from the
BrlTex SourceForge project and no further YABT development will occur on SourceForge.... read more

Yet Another Braille Translator (YABT) is being developed to be the new translation system used by BrlTex. We hope with this new development of a translation system designed specifically for use in BrlTex then the task of developing new braille code support for BrlTex will be significantly less.

Whilst YABT is being designed primarily for use in BrlTex, other applications may find YABT suitable for there needs.... read more

In trying to make BrlTex available for more people, there are now Windows binaries available. These binaries do not depend on anything, so making the installation much easier. Download information for the Windows Binaries can be found at http://brltex.sf.net/winbin.html where it can also be downloaded.

BrlTex is a LaTex to braille translator designed for mathematics. It seeks to get accurate translation. Currently BrlTex produces British braille, but eventually the intension is to support more braille codes. With the productions of Windows binaries this braille translation should now be available to more computer users.

An early test version of BrlTex code name gibbon is now available. BrlTex gibbon is the next planned major version of BrlTex, offering many improvements and features over the current version of BrlTex 0.0.x series.

This early test version of BrlTex gibbon comes with two plugins, a LaTex input plugin and an speech output module. Due to it being an early test version, and it not yet having braille, it is not a replacement for the current releases of BrlTex at the moment. This should be used by those who wish to see what some of the new features will be, and those who need speech output. Those who want BAUK braille output should still use the BrlTex 0.0.x series until further new on BrlTex gibbon.... read more

An update to BrlTex to the latest version of liblouis has occured, but this requires that you make sure you are using the right version of BrlTex with the right version of liblouis. For BrlTex in SVN after 11 January 2007 or releases after this date, use liblouis 1.1.4, and for earlier versions of BrlTex use liblouis 1.0.2. This problem doesn't affect users on any other operating system, as it is related to the way the windows dll is compiled.

An update to BrlTex to the latest version of liblouis has occured, but this requires that you make sure you are using the right version of BrlTex with the right version of liblouis. For BrlTex in SVN after 11 January 2007 or releases after this date, use liblouis 1.1.4, and for earlier versions of BrlTex use liblouis 1.0.2. This problem doesn't affect users on any other operating system, as it is related to the way the windows dll is compiled.

The proposal for the structure of the next version of BrlTex (codename gibbon) has been made in the BrlTex proposals forum. BrlTex gibbon is planned to widen the scope of BrlTex, to allow easy development of input and output formats. Initial work will be on translation from LaTex as this is known to work, and experience has been gained from the work done the current version of BrlTex. Also the output will be widened as potentially other formats other than braille could be supported, this could include speech, dotsplus, etc. also thought is that an editor for the intermediate format could be developed, allowing hand corrections to be made to translated files, or an accessible work environment for creating mathematical documents. The options really will be quite wide. Also this alteration to the design will mean that modules could potentially be developed under any license (provided where licenses clash the module should be developed totally independently of the tools provided by BrlTex). Further details regarding licensing related to module development will be made available as BrlTex gibbon is developed and design is finalised.... read more

SVN snapshots are generated every night, although the svn code may not actually change every day. To help users identify whether they actually will be getting an update by downloading the snapshot, the date of the last change to the SVN repositry will be shown. Also as stability is now sought, effort will be made to try and make sure that all work on code will not break any of the snapshots.

BrlTex 0.0.1 beta has been released. This release shows the change of direction to preparing a stable release. This version now uses liblouis for the text translator, which solved some bugs and tidies up the code. Also there is now a file where users can speiy their own pre-processing rules so that they can correct any latex that plasTeX may not understan. Many other bug fixes and improvements have been made as well.... read more

Work on documentation on braille translation has started. This will include general braille information, but will also include BrlTex specific documentation. This section is still under development, so updates and new documents will be added in time.

After finding that even though BrlTex has moved on quite a bit from 0.0.1 alpha2, people are still downloading this older version. As I feel I want to solve some more bugs before I move things into beta stage, but feel that 0.0.1 alpha2 or earlier is not as good as SVN has now got, so I now provide a snapshot of SVN which is updated every night. I recommend that until a beta release, that people should now use this snapshot, or SVN. A link to the snapshot can be found on the BrlTex home page at http://brltex.sf.net

BrlTex now uses liblouis for the text translation. This should improve the performance of BrlTex, and it will not have to keep accessing tempory files to communicate to the text translator. Once this is to be known to be working well, the intention is to take BrlTex to beta stage where the concentration will be on fixing bugs and adding only important extras until the first stable release, which is getting closer.... read more

BrlView has been added to BrlTex. BrlView allows the output of BrlTex to be viewed on a braille displays, with keys to navigate throughout the document, so meaning that the user can read the whole document without taking hands off the display. BrlView is part of the BrlTex package, and currently is in SVN, but will be in the next release.

This is just another addition to the BrlTex project in making mathematical documents in the LaTex format available to the braille reader.... read more

The first testing release of BrlTex the LaTex to Braille translator has been made and can be downloaded from the download page at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=175206.

This release is very much a testing version, but does demonstrate the possibilities of BrlTex in translating mathematical documents in the LaTex format into Braille. This release should be seen as something to base comments and suggestions on for a stable release. The current development version can always be checked out through svn if you wish to track the progress before the next release which is planned to be a beta release, when a feature freeze will be implemented and bugs will only be solved before the stable release.

In trying to make BrlTex available to as many as possible, it was realised that the install procedure was complex. To simplify this, an install script has now been added to the svn repositry. Users now just have to have python installed, and checkout BrlTex from svn and run install.py to get it running, and then to do updates, just update using svn.

BrlTex is a LaTex to braille translator supporting maths codes, allowing braille users greater access to maths. By adding this install now blind mathematicians with less computer knowledge can use BrlTex.

BrlTex is an open source LaTex to braille translator which is designed to handle mathematics. Previously BrlTex was only running on unix due to nfbtrans using 8.3 file names in Windows, but BrlTex now store temporary data in files with 8.3 names, so solving this bug, adding Windows to the list of supported operating systems.