[Nfb-science] LaTex to braille translator

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
Some of you may know of me from the blindmath list, and be aware of some of what I am going to say.

I have been working on an open source LaTex to braille translator, which can be found at http://brltex.sf.net. I have made an initial alpha release and would like some feed back on what features are wanted for a stable release. So what can it currently do? features include: Windows and Linux compatible, handles equations, mathematical content, tables, lists, pages, so output can be embossed, although the output can be viewed with a braille display and others. So what makes it different from other attempts? It uses a standard library for LaTex processing, so allowing the development on this concentrate on braille.

A bit of history on this:
I am a blind undergraduate studying physics, and always been struggling to get good braille notes. The university use Duxbury to translate LaTex, but its support for LaTex is insufficient for my needs, and less than perfect work arounds were made. In June 2006, I had a look around again at python LaTex packages, and found plasTeX (http://plasTeX.sf.net) and started to think that it would be a good base for a braille translator. Within the following two months, I started writing an output module for plasTeX and found it really seemed to have potential and made it open source to encourage further development that may take me too long (e.g. other braille codes). Finally it now has an alpha release, and feedback is sought, and may be you now can create the further history.

From
Michael Whapples
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Hello,
Some of you may know of me from the blindmath list, and be aware of some of what I am going to say.
 
I have been working on an open source LaTex to braille translator, which can be found at http://brltex.sf.net http://brltex.sf.net
. I have made an initial alpha release and would like some feed back on what features are wanted for a stable release. So what can it currently do? features include: Windows and Linux compatible, handles equations, mathematical content, tables, lists, pages, so output can be embossed, although the output can be viewed with a braille display and others. So what makes it different from other attempts? It uses a standard library for LaTex processing, so allowing the development on this concentrate on braille.
 
A bit of history on this:
I am a blind undergraduate studying physics, and always been struggling to get good braille notes. The university use Duxbury to translate LaTex, but its support for LaTex is insufficient for my needs, and less than perfect work arounds were made. In June 2006, I had a look around again at python LaTex packages, and found plasTeX ( http://plasTeX.sf.net http://plasTeX.sf.net
) and started to think that it would be a good base for a braille translator. Within the following two months, I started writing an output module for plasTeX and found it really seemed to have potential and made it open source to encourage further development that may take me too long (e.g. other braille codes). Finally it now has an alpha release, and feedback is sought, and may be you now can create the further history.
 
From
Michael Whapples