Hi Simon, Yes I'm having the same issue when having documents open in 2 languages at the same time. When translating from German into Dutch for example, it would be nice to have just 1 braille table, that can display Dutch accented letters as well as the German ones, at the same time. But what I never understood was the unicode thing you mention. Is unicode sort of an extended version of ascii? I know what the ascii table is and what it roughly contains, but you can't do more than 256 characters, and a lot are already taken by numbers, punctuation, some graphic symbols and so on. If you write it out in decimal values that we are used to, the the first 32 places in the total of 256 entries of the ascii table are already taken up by things like linefeed, carriage return, form feed and a lot of similar stuff. Escape is one. From 32 it is punctuation and numbers, then lowercase letters,, then a gap and uppercase letters and accented letters and graphics. Some German and also some Dutch symbols are in the ascii table above 127, but I think probably not all of them.
To what extent does the ascii table relate to a braille table, and what exactly is unicode and how does that get translated to a unicode braille table? Very interested. Because if unicode is some 16-bit thing, why then would we need another braille table if you already have over 64 thousand character possibilities? Having just one braille table would be nice. Can you tell me more on this? Paul. On Aug 30, 2011, at 1:07 PM, Simon Cavendish wrote: > Dear Listers, > > This message is primarily for those who use Braille with a Braille display > under Lion and who need to use Braille in foreign languages, especially those > languages that use non-Latin characters. In my case, it is Greek and Russian. > > I am not sure whether anyone has noticed but under lion, although Apple > accessibility has provided lots of Braille tables for foreign languages - as > Anne Robertson has already mentioned - some of them are outdated. > Additionally, the current Braille tables, do not include a unicode Braille > table. The result is that if one is working in a document that contains two > different languages, say English and Greek, or if one is working on two > documents at the same time as you would in translation, you have to keep on > switching Braille tables in Voiceover utility which as you can imagine is > bothersome and makes translation work impossible. Similarly, if you are > reading the bilingual text, and you have your Braille table set to English, > all the Greek text will be invisible to the Braille display and you want be > able to read it. > > Under Snow Leopard, we had Braille tables provided by Archie Robertson from > Cecimac - free gift from this generous person. It had a unicode Braille table > as well as many other language tables, and this problem did not arise there. > The unicode Braille table was able to handle many languages at the same time. > So I could comfortably read an Anglo-Greek text in Braille. > > Sadly, under Lion, Archie's tables cannot be added nor can the existing > tables be modified. I've written to Accessibility team to ask them to make a > modification and addition of tables possible, or else include a unicode 8 dot > table in further developments. I was wondering whether others on the list > have a similar concern, and if yes, would they also write to accessibility. > The job that the Accessibility Team have done so far is absolutely great - > and I have made it profusely clear when writing to them. But this little step > is missing, and this step is also crucial for those who need to engage in the > study of some foreign languages, and/or translation work. > > Thank you all for reading this > > Simon > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
