I thought about replying within the message but decided that might not work so well for people who are trying to read fast. So I'll address each point here at the top.
1. My cable came with the Index basic and I didn't have to go find a prolific driver and cable. Maybe that is part of what the driver and application do though I do also happen to have prolific cables because of using brltty. Maybe it's been fixed but from Lion on, sometimes the official prolific driver caused problems; for instance, unplugging it without killing brltty first caused spontaneous reboot of my computer and I learned by searching online that this was not a brltty problem but was related to the prolific driver's interaction with the OS. And on one of my computers, installing the prolific driver did not result in a cu.usbserial or any other cu. device in /dev. So I looked around online and found that somebody had done a driver, though I had to directly install the kernel extension instead of just running an installer. The naming ends up being different from what the official driver did but it does start with a cu prefix. Btw I think that keyspan cables are no longer useable at all; I have a few of those too. The change in driver solved both issues. I'll post the links in case anybody needs them. But because I kind of went down a rabbit trail here let me again say that the cable that came with the Index Basic I have worked out of the box for me along with the driver and application. > PL2303 Serial USB on OSX Lion > Mountain Lion PL-2303 Driver Crash Fix | The Networking Nerd 2. Actually, I used to compile nfbtrans on my Mac in terminal just as I did in linux. I didn't actually use it for embossing but it could be done. I think I had help in doing a patch at one time for the Mac but I don't know if I still have it or if it would still work - this was a long time ago. 3. In addition to louis, which was done by Greg Kearney in order to implement liblouis on the Mac,, there are liblouis and liblouisutdml, which I use on the command line after compiling and installing. There are a few little quirks but I was able to install them on the Mac. I also now have them installed on an old powerpc Mac mini which I have turned into a debian linux machine. Unless Greg has fixed the problem in louis,, the right tables aren't being loaded for Spanish - I don't know about other languages. Part of the problem had to do with UTF8 character sets but I would have to go back and look at my notes and email exchanges with John Boyer and the related email lists to really give an accurate explanation. The result was that most of my accents were not being translated if I tried to use Louis but I would instead get these codes offset by single quotes if I remember correctly. 3. I think that somewhere with using liblouis and liblouisutdml and maybe other components, there is a program for doing rtf but I haven't ever tried it. While I do use liblouis and company successfully, it is not automatic conversion by any means. I have to do a lot of formatting within the text file to get what I want in the braille file and even then I have to do editing in the braille file too. Some of this may be my ignorance as to the proper way to do things but just be warned if you use it, there is definitely work and problem-solving involved. Hth. > -- > Cheryl > I tried and tried to turn over a new leaf. > I got crumpled wads of tear-stained paper thrown in the trash! > Then God gave me a new heart and life: > His joy for my despairing tears! > And now, every day: > "This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: > The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; > his mercies never come to an end; > they are new every morning; > great is your faithfulness." > (Lamentations 3:21-23 ESV) > On Jun 10, 2014, at 4:08 PM, Georgina Joyce <g...@gena-j.me.uk> wrote: > > Hello, > > I have just got an Index Basic going on my Mac. > > Firstly I needed a USB to serial lead. I understand that there are 2 chipsets > supported. I was lucky that one that I had for some time was a supported one. > I had to find a Prolific driver and install it. It wasn't difficult. It > generates a /dev/cu.usbserial device which you send the braille for embossing. > > Not sure if I needed the Index driver too but I installed it. > > I had used nfbtrans on a linux command line so grabbed that. However, it was > not going to work on the Mac. There is a Mac patch copy floating about which > I eventually found. This works OK but is limited. > > Then there is Louis a GUI accessible program. This works too. However, only > with text files. RTF and HTML etc files just seem to crash and don't work for > me. It does enable the translation of different braille tables. > > So check out nfbtrans if you don't mind working from the command line or > Louis if you want a GUI interface. > > HTH > > Gena > >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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