Hi Dave,
Thanks, that's helpful.
To be honest, I'm not all that proficient with technical aspects of
Windows
10 myself - I switched to it relatively recently.
I installed BRLTTY from the .exe, for the libusb-1.0 version. I only
picked that because it mentioned it was a more recent one, and, given I'm
using Windows 10, that sounded more appropriate.
I configured it in the installer itself; I chose Freedom Scientific, and
USB (the latter simply because I'm completely ignorant about the
technical
aspects of the FS Focus driver, and didn't know if I was supposed to
bypass
it, use a virtual serial port, or something else). I'm fairly sure, from
what you wrote, thatI chose wrong at that point.
How to run BRLTTY was, actually, a non-trivial question for me. It was
obvious that, once I got it running, I should choose the option to
install
it as a service; but I wanted to get it working first. I wasn't sure
whether to try to run it from a command prompt - and, if I did, whether I
needed to make sure it was run as administrator (the Windows
equivalent of
a `su' shell). In the end, I used run-debug.bat, but, as I mentioned
before, I had to choose "Run as administrator" from the context menu (the
Windows equivalent of running it with `sudo').
Re my brltty.conf, the only uncommented lines are right at the end of the
file, and read:
braille-device USB:
braille-driver fs # FreedomScientific
OK, so that's what I did previously.
On to your suggestion re using a serial port. I went into the device
driver, and looked under `Ports (COM & LPT)'. Both with the braille
display unplugged and plugged in, there are 4 entries, 2 for "Standard
Serial over Bluetooth link', and 2 for "USB Serial Device`; the Bluetooth
ones were COM6 and COM7, and the USB ones were COM3 and COM4. As far
as I
can tell, though, none of these have anything to do with the braille
display driver.
When I plugged the braille display in to the USB, a new driver appeared,
which is the FS Focus driver. However, I've looked through all the
sections (driver, details etc.), and there's no indication of any link
to a
serial port.
I could just try a whole load of serial ports - that shouldn't take too
long, and I'm happy to do that, if you think it's the best approach.
Other
options are probably (a) switch to the libusb-win32 version (I presume
that's the version you were referring to, which has the filter; but
please
correct me if I misunderstood that); or (b) contact Freedom
Scientific, and
see if I can find out about a virtual serial port attached to the Focus
driver.
What do you think?
BTW, I'm attaching my debug.log, just in case it's helpful; but, since I
was using USB: as the port, and you've already told me that that won't
work
for sharing the display with JAWS, I'm guessing it isn't actually that
helpful after all.
Cheers,
Nikhil.
On Sat, 27 Jul 2019, Dave Mielke wrote:
[quoted lines by Nikhil Nair on 2019/07/27 at 15:00 +0100]
I take it, from the silence, that my assumption was wrong, and no
one (or
at least, no one who regularly reads this list) has experience with
Freedom
Scientific displays under the Windows version of BRLTTY.
Freedom Scientific braille devices have indeed been successfully used on
windows. The more likely situation is that trying to figure out what
your
problem is isn't that easy so noone ventured to give it a try.
I didn't answer right away because I'm rather illiterate when it
comes to
Windows - I'm a Linux and an Android person. I was hoping that
someone much
more familiar with Windows would respond, but, since that hasn't
happened, I'll
give it a try.
How did you install brltty on your Windows system, and how did you
configure
it? For example, did you unpack the .zip archive or did you run the .exe
installer? Also, how are you starting brltty (including which options
are being
specified). Perhaps you could also post your brltty.conf (as an
attachment will
do).
The usual behaviour of Windows is to direct a specific USB device to
a specific
driver. Put simply, you can't (easily) have your braille device
directed to
both the JAWS driver and the LibUSB driver. Since you need JAWS to
continue to
be able to communicate with your braille device, its driver must be
left in
control.
You could try using the same serial device. If, say, the JAWS driver
is using
COM6 then you'd set your braille device to serial:com6. You don't
need to
separately test each existing serial device. Look through the Windows
serial
device list to find the one that's attached to the JAWS driver for
your braille
device.
If you'd like to use USB directly then, as described above, you won't
be able
to use the standard LibUSB driver. You need to use the other LibUSB
driver -
the one that uses a filter. The LibUSB filter gets installed at the
Windows
kernel level and intercepts all USB operations. Whenever it sees a USB
operation that LibUSB is looking for then, if no other application
has that USB
device open, that USB operation is directed to LibUSB.
To keep it simple, it might be best to try the serial approach first.
--
I believe the Bible to be the very Word of God: http://Mielke.cc/bible/
Dave Mielke | 2213 Fox Crescent | WebHome: http://Mielke.cc/
EMail: [email protected] | Ottawa, Ontario | Twitter: @Dave_Mielke
Phone: +1 613 726 0014 | Canada K2A 1H7 |
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