David, For many years, I loosely guided work that was done on NFBTRANS, a free braille translator. Randy Formenti did the real heavy lifting. However, that software could not easily be modified for UEB. Also, the American Printing House has developed a free translator called Braille Blaster that does a pretty good job and handles much more than NFBTRANS did. Plus, it relies on the LIBLOUIS open source translation library so there is multi-language capability and corrections are made. BrailleBlaster works somewhat similarly to Duxbury although it isn't as mature a product. Rather than being a batch process, you bring text into it, add formatting styles to the degree you want to do that, and then emboss directly from there similar to Duxbury. It has multiple windows so you can even jump over and see what the formatted braille will look like as long as you are familiar with which characters are equivalent to certain dot patterns.
Also, BrailleBlaster includes an open source document converter called PanDoc which allows other document types including those created by Microsoft Word to be brought into BrailleBlaster with some formatting included. It seems to convert Microsoft Word styles better than specific codes, but one can learn to create a document in Word that will come out with some desired formatting if one is more comfortable with that. If you can recover your Duxbury key, I would urge you to do that since you've already put some money into that. However, in the meantime or if you can't, check out BrailleBlaster at http://www.brailleblaster.org Best regards, Steve Jacobson -----Original Message----- From: Talk <talk-bounces+steve.jacobson=outlook....@lists.window-eyes.com> On Behalf Of David via Talk Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2019 5:56 AM To: WE English Mailinglist <t...@window-eyes.com> Cc: David <trailerda...@hotmail.com> Subject: Off-Topic: Braille Translation Software Don't know if any of you listers own a Braille Embosser. Just wondered if someone happen to know of any OK translation software. I did use Duxbury in the past, but have lost my license key. And from what I can make out of it, that package is not exactly cheap. Basically, I need just a piece of software, that will format a plain text, into something printable in Braille. Of course, it will be best if it manages Grade-Two, as well. If any of you would have some brand name, or some kind of experience to share, please let me know. Contact me off-list, that we don't clutter the traffic here. If nothing else, I would have to write my own little piece of software, to handle the few printing jobs I need. Does there exist any booklets, that define the printing rules of American Grade-Two (contracted) Braille? Anything up-to-date available on the net? Thanks for any feedback. _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.window-eyes.com%2Foptions.cgi%2Ftalk-window-eyes.com%2Fsteve.jacobson%2540outlook.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7C622eddb033754262d08c08d70d00df36%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636992169700793335&sdata=eRs75YlMmKGe5H%2FZwrGrdfUHJnRP%2Ftqsx8x18Q8pnpU%3D&reserved=0. For subscription options, visit https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.window-eyes.com%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Ftalk-window-eyes.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7C622eddb033754262d08c08d70d00df36%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636992169700793335&sdata=kmVRwxqEBXgjmXrLdHDfzkL9dvG6E4dq01RySIuiYGU%3D&reserved=0 List archives can be found at https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.window-eyes.com%2Fprivate.cgi%2Ftalk-window-eyes.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7C622eddb033754262d08c08d70d00df36%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636992169700793335&sdata=AuhTjuayBRwEnrau0Wi4ShCW9nnqia70RQ2pAQdsd2Y%3D&reserved=0 _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
