[Dtb-talk] New to the list and a question posed to mefrom someone @ RFB&D

[Greg Kearney]

There is a group with in the Daisy Consortium working on braille in  
daisy now. The work has been slow and the technical issue great.

There are several kinds of Daisy books. Most like those you get from  
the LNS or from RFB&D are audio only books this means that they do not  
have text files of the book text with them. In such cases there is no  
text to turn into braille with the audio.

Book share produced text only Daisy books which have the full text of  
the book and no audio.

There are what are called full text/full audio Daisy books. In this  
case there will be a html/xml file in the file set that will be used  
to display the text being read in sync with the audio on playback  
software that supports such. This is perhaps the closest thing to what  
you want. Braille displayed in sync with audio.

Perhaps the best approach considering that technically we would have  
to translate he text for the book into braille and then keep the  
braille display in sync with the audio would be to copy the text files  
out of the Daisy file set and then translate the whole book into  
braille on paper so that the reader could keep up.

The Macintosh braille translator Louis can transform DTBook and the  
text files found in Daisy books to braille by default. I assume, but  
do not know for sure, that Windows braille translators can do the  
same. My DTBmaker production program for Macintosh makes braille files  
of the books it produces when it make the book from the source text  
but that is a somewhat unique feature of that program alone.

The final issue you will run into is that some book vendors such as  
RFB&D encrypt the text of the book and you would have no effective way  
of getting the unencrypted text out of the file set to translate.

If you would like to see some full text/full audio books that are not  
encrypted go to: www.cucat.org/books.php

I hope this is of some help.

Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
gkearney at gmail.com

On May 31, 2008, at 3:54 PM, Scott Spaulding wrote:

> Thank you for the information. IF anyone has any details to add,  
> such as how
> they would go about doing this, that may be of interest to Mrs.  
> Reynolds,
> please pass it along. I think she is thinking this would be included  
> on the
> CD with the standard RFB&D book files.
>
> Scott Spaulding
> Checkout my latest website at: www.swspaulding.com It is an internet
> resource site that I'm working on.
> Checkout www.marchforindependence.org/goto/scott for the NFB's March  
> for
> Independence and sponsorship information.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dtb-talk-bounces+spaulding.scott=gmail.com at nfbnet.org
> [mailto:dtb-talk-bounces+spaulding.scott=gmail.com at nfbnet.org] On  
> Behalf Of
> T. Joseph Carter
> Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2008 4:48 PM
> To: Discussion of Digital Talking Books
> Subject: Re: [Dtb-talk] New to the list and a question posed to mefrom
> someone @ RFB&D
>
> Scott, you can either put the BRF file on the disc or make the DAISY  
> book
> into a text/audio book.  The latter would need to be translated to  
> grade 2,
> but any device that would display the Braille should be able to  
> translate
> it.
>
> Joseph
>
> On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 11:34:18PM -0400, Scott Spaulding wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>    My name is Scott and many of you may know me from other lists. I
>> was asked today by Maryanne Reynolds of the Louisville office of  
>> RFB&D
>> to ask around to see if there is a way to add Braille files to the
>> books that RFB&D provides. She says this way someone could read along
>> as the book was playing. She is a former teacher and thinks that this
>> would be a huge benefit. If there is a way for them to do this,  
>> please
>> let me know and I'll forward the information to her.
>>
>>
>> Scott Spaulding
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