The subject of this message talks about touch screen input. Most
Braille displays have keys you can press to input Braille characters.
I'm not sure Linux supports touch screen input on the console. You
probably need to have a GUI running, such as Mate desktop, along with
if you want to get touch gestures like Android does. Somebody
correct me if I'm wrong. If you have an Android phone and a Braille
display you could try using BRLTTY on that to see how it works.
The Linux on phone support is mostly at a phase where it is useful only
to developers at this point because a lot of the Linux support is in an
Alpha state for any given hardware. I think Ubuntu Touch now has full
support for a Pixel 3a, hopefully a lot more devices will follow.
See
https://tuxphones.com/google-pixel-3a-full-stable-ubports-linux-ubuntu-touch-feature-support/
On 7/11/2022 5:01 PM, Rich Morin wrote:
Summary
I have some persistent notions about adding touch screen input (TSI) to
Linux-based cell phones. The motivation is to provide cheap, portable, and
flexible communication and computing power to blind and visually impaired
users. I'd like some clues about whether and how to use BRLTTY as part of the
stack.
Discussion
I gather that BRLTTY can accept braille input and feed it to the Linux console
and that it also has some screen review and speech output capability. Assuming
that another subsystem is capable of detecting touch screen input, here are
some obvious (if naive) questions:
- Is BRLTTY ever used with input-only devices (e.g., braille keyboards)?
- Is the speech output adequate to support convenient user interaction?
- What BRLTTY interface(s) would be the best (e.g., easiest) to use?
- What data formats does BRLTTY accept (e.g., ASCII, Braille, Unicode)?
- Is there a preferred software interface for control functions?
- What other software subsystems should I consider incorporating?
The lowest level user interface I have in mind for the device would be the
Linux console. Ideally, it would support a variety of higher-level programs.
The Stack
Here is a terse summary of the sort of stack I have in mind...
Hardware - Several billion Android cell phones have been sold. Many of these
cannot run current versions of Android. So, they are cheaply and readily
available.
OS - There are several Linux variants which run on cell phones. postmarketOS,
based on Alpine Linux, concentrates on older Android devices.
TSI - This subsystem would be structured as a graph of lightweight processes
(i.e., Actors) and implemented using Elixir and assorted libraries.
BRLTTY - This would accept input, hand it off to the console, and provide user
feedback in the form of generated speech.
??? - higher-level programs (e.g., menu systems, note takers, shells, terminal
switches, text editors)
Comments? Clues? Suggestions?
-r
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