Category: accessible Devices
Hi, all. I have a question about downloading BARD books onto Braille devices, particularly 40-cell ones like the Edge, Brailliant, etc. I had thought NLS formatted their BARD Braille files to work best on 40-cell displays. they can be read on other sizes of course, but I'd been told once that by default they were formatted for 40. I have a Braille Edge, which is 40 cells. But 90 percent of the books I download from BARD have really strange formatting...lines only half full, lines with only one word on each of them, and so on. I posted this question on Facebook, and two other friends told me they were having the same issues, one using a Brailliant, one a Focus. They had no idea why this was, either. Posting here to see if any of you have this issue, or know what might be causing it? If so, is there anything I can do to fix it? Makes it nearly impossible to read most books on my Edge. I'm considering contacting NLS to ask about this, since I know two other people with two different displays are having the same problem, but I figured I'd ask here first. Thanks in advance for any help.
Hmm have you tried converting them to txt or word documents? Sometimes that fixes the problem.
And how would you convert to txt?
I used to use WinBT, but it doesn't seem to work on Windows 10, which is a big disappointment, as I used it just about every day, and have done so, for the past ten years or so.
So if I remember correctly, the Braille page is 33 characters in length. Brf files literally have spaces on either side of the text when centering, or four spaces to indent a paragraph, etc.
I'm guessing the software you're using to read these is probably messing these up somehow. I used to read NLS brl fooks on my PAC Mate when I had one years ago. I never had that problem; you just saw the Braille formatting, spaces where they should be, etc.
BRF is just a so-called "dumb" format, a text file with Braille characters in it. What that means is, instead of a symbol that indicates "New Paragraph" or "Center this", you have spaces and new line characters to represent everything.
I'm curious: On your iPhone, how do they show up using the Bard app itself? I haven't read a Bard book in Braille on there for awhile except for some Braille music, but I have an 18-cell display which is really the pits for reading a lot of text like a good book.
It looks like they designed the BRF format for printers that don't know even basic postscript symbols. sure, font facing and weight aren't important for Braille, but spacing sure is. So they just space it all out.
It seems Apple does weird things with spacing also sometimes, at least from what I've seen with a 18-cell RefreshaBraille.
Imp, I have the same question that Violet does. How would you do that conversion?
Leo, the weird thing is, some books do this, and some don't. Some books I download off BARD do fine in the Edge, others don't. The same ones that are weird downloaded from the website are also messed up when reading with my Edge from the iPhone. I should ask my friends who have the Brailliant and the Focus if they experience anything differently when reading in Braille from the app.
Not sure if this will work with the Edge, but I just re-save the books on my U2 with a txt or doc extention
So the books that are being weird are probably inserting newline characters.
One thing you could do if you wanted them in .txt is rename the file, turn off your translator and go. Remember, brf is txt but using odd symbols. Braces, brackets, all kinds of things like that. The number 4 as the double d or period. To a Braille display and its software, if you turn off the translator, it does character-for-character, which is computer Braille. I'd also turn off 8-dot representation if it's on, and then it will look like Grade II as that's what is in the file. I don't know what benefit you would have from doing this.
Even if you had a reverse translator and translated the file, unless it knew enough to remove spaces (which it probably doesn't), you'd still end up with at least the same problems or worse. Remember BRF is 33 *Braille Grade II* characters on one line. So the word people is one character, but 6 characters if it were back-translated.
I think the files in question were probably formatted incorrectly, or their editor added new line characters where they ought not, possibly paragraph symbols, which many text viewers will interpret as a single or double new line.
In short, you didn't do it, and the file was probably formatted incorrectly. By all the gods which may or may not exist, speaking as a software engineer, I haven't any idea why they did the BRF format as it has been done, so easily corruptible without symbols to represent spacing. They could've used some characters above and below the boundary where you usually see them to represent these markings, and you'd never know they were there as a user. Things like the bell character, the rub-out symbol, etc.
Anyway probably too much geek, but yeah NLS needs to fix it, or perhaps has already gotten complaints and is in process. My guess: Whatever they use to mass produce the files got an update and is now trying to "get cute" with some new symbols that pretty well bonk it for Braille displays and their software. I don't actually know, of course. I'm not them. And I'm sure there's lots I don't know about Braille translation. But it's the kind of thing you see elsewhere in the software business. Some tool (pun intended) gets an update,, and now other programs that depend on it are left with the consequences.
Again, I can't say for sure this is it but just a less-than-scientific wild-ass guess.
Thanks, guys. Leo, yeah, that's a little technical, but it's ok, I think I get most of it, and I appreciate you taking the time to explain it thoroughly. It's good info to have. Maybe I'll contct NLS, and see what they have to say. Thanks both for the suggestions.