A new apk has been released for brltty on Android. I'd appreciate it if those who use brltty on Android would update to it and let me know what problems they encounter. Among other things, it includes the following:
Your braille deivce will be found even if a specific device hasn't been added and selected. It'll be found somewhat slower, since brltty needs to search for it, so adding and then selecting it is still worth doing given that that means immediate connection. What it does mean, however, is that, even though connection is slower, it's much easier to establish initial braille access. Note that, for Bluetooth devices, pairing is still necessary. There's a new general setting checkbox named Release Braille Device. If you check it then brltty won't keep looking for your device (e.g. if it's turned off, out of range, etc). You may wish to use this setting, for example, when going out without wanting to also take your braille device with you. There's now a status bar item for brltty that let's you know if your braille device is in one of the following states: 1) connected (brltty is actively communicating with it) 2) waiting (brltty is looking for it and hasn't found it yet) 3) released (you've checked Release Braille Device) If you open the Notifications shade then you'll find a brltty notification which contains the current status (see above), the name of the currently selected braille device (or a note saying that no device has been selected), and a hint letting you know that tapping the notification will take you to brltty's Settings screen. Your Android device is no longer subject to timing out and locking due to inactivity while you're navigating one of brltty's virtual screens (help, the menu, etc). If your Android device is running 5.0 (Lollipop) or later then the button on the right at the bottom of the screen now says Overview (instead of the older Recent Apps). Checkboxes now have a table-independent representation. The old representation was table-dependent - an uppercase X (for ehecked) or a space (for unchecked) between square brackets. The new representation is three braille characters which have been designed to actually look more like an actual checkbox: 1) dots 123478 (a symbol depicting the left side of the box) 2) either a space (for unchecked) or dots 2356 (for checked) 3) dots 145678 (a symbol depicting the right side of the box) In braille, they look like this: ⣏ ⣹ unchecked ⣏⠶⣹ checked Switches now have their own representation and, therefore, can be distinguished from checkboxes. They, too, are three braille characters: 1) dots 4568 (depicting the left side of the switch) 2) dots 1478 (depicting the top and bottom of the switch) 3) dots 1237 (depicting the right side of the switch) The state of the switch is shown by adding dots 36 (for off) or dots 25 (for on) to the middle character. In braille, they look like this: ⢸⣭⡇ off ⢸⣛⡇ on Brltty now follows TalkBack gestures (actually, Explore by Touch gestrues) that change the screen focus more meaningfully. The braille sometimes used to show the widget type of a container. Now it shows the text that labels the container. Brltty is now more sensitive to developer-provided descriptions for images. This, too, means that meaningful text, rather than widget types, are shown in more cases. The states of checkbox selectors within brltty's Settings screens are now shown. If your Android device is running 5.0 (Lollipop) or later then textual descriptions (rather than hexadecimal vendor and product identifiers) are shown when adding a USB device. This, of course, makes searching for the desired USB device much easier. Brltty no longer crashes if your Android device doesn't support Bluetooth or if you've turned Bluetooth off. This, of course, only actually matters when adding or trying to use a Bluetooth device. -- 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 | _______________________________________________ This message was sent via the BRLTTY mailing list. To post a message, send an e-mail to: [email protected] For general information, go to: http://brltty.com/mailman/listinfo/brltty
