Welcome to nfbtrans 7.53 July 3, 1999. Introduction. NFBTRANS is a Grade Two braille translator. It is freeware and comes with complete C sourse and documentation. The program converts ascii text into braille and sends the result to a file or an embossor. Special formatting commands may be placed in the text to customize the output. No knowledge of braille is required to use this program, however you must be able to edit ascii files and be familiar with MSDOS commands. This archive contains the DOS executable version of NFBTRANS. The program has been successfully compiled to run in unix. NFBTRANS is suitable for brailling menus, letters, and manuals. Many users have found that NFBTRANS serves their translation needs without having to purchase expensivbe commercial translators. Features: NFBTRANS is a very accurate Grade Two braille translator. It can also back translate a Grade Two file into normal text. The program has many options which allow the user to customize its operation. Formatting commands can be used to generate Tables of Contents, ink print page numbers, running headers and much more. Translation rules are in a text file and can easily be modified by the user. The program can be configured to hyphenate words to save space. Limitations: NFBTRANS can only translate from ascii text. It cannot convert binary files such as those produced by Microsoft Word unless they are first converted to ascii text. The text may have lines of unlimited length and they may contain extended graphics characters. Nfbtrans only has a partial implementation of Grade 3 braille. files included: back.tab: Table to translate a Grade 2 file back to text. vcomp.c: C source for braille compare utility. bcomp.exe DOS executable for braille compare utility. braille.tab: English braille translation table. english.dic: hyphenation dictionary. install.bat: Install batch file for nfbtrans. makedoc: script file for unix users to convert nfbtrans.fmt to nfbtrans.doc which can be printed. makedoc.bat: batch file to convert nfbtrans.fmt to a print manual. Makefile: make file for unix. menu.cnf: sample menu file. nfbasm.asm: sound routines for MicroSoft C. nfbtrans: make file for MicroSoft C. nfbtrans.c: source for nfbtrans. nfbtrans.cnf: sample configuration file. nfbtrans.exe: executable DOS version of nfbtrans. nfbtrans.fmt: documentation for nfbtrans formatted for brailling with nfbtrans. nfbpatch.c: routines required to run nfbtrans in unix. read.me: this file. tables.zip: foreign language tables for nfbtrans. tvfreqs.fmt example of a braille table. My purpose in releasing this version of nfbtrans is to make a high quality braille translation program available to anyone who has a use for it. It is very usable for most situations and will at least give you a feel for braille translation. Installing nfbtrans for MSDOS: 1. Unzip this archive into a scratch directory. 2. Change to that directory. 3. Run the install program using the command INSTALL drive:\nfbtrans_directory. 4. Examine the entries in nfbtrans.cnf and make changes if you wish. See nfbtrans.doc for a complete description of options. Include this directory in your path if you want to run nfbtrans from anywhere on your disk. Installing nfbtrans for Unix: Unzip nfbtrans into an empty directory. From the unix shell type mv MAKEFILE Makefile Then enter make lowercase This is necessary because the program files were zipped in MSDOS and the file names are in upper case when unzipped in unix. Compile nfbtrans by entering make target where target is ultrix, sunos, or aix. You will have to add the target for your machine to makefile if it is not ultrix, sunos, or aix. When the compile is successful, copy nfbtrans to usually /usr/local/bin and set permissions usually chmod 755 nfbtrans. Copy nfbtrans.cnf, back.tab and braille.tab to /usr/local/lib. Edit nfbtrans.cnf and change options if necessary. Quick Start: Always use the parallel port to connect with your embossor if possible. Otherwise use the mode command to redirect lpt1 to whatever com port you are using. Examine nfbtrans.cnf paying special attention to the entries pw=, pl= and sp=. Make sure your printer is configured to output computer braille, skip perfs, and that it supports the page width and length given in nfbtrans.cnf. Make sure the DOS print command is resident if you set sp=1. Nfbtrans can be run in several ways. The syntax is: NFBTRANS [option1] [option2] [...] [file1] [file2] [...]. Options are of the form xx=string. They are fully described in nfbtrans.doc. There are over 100 options many of which you will never need to use. They may be given on the command line, in nfbtrans.cnf, in the translation table, or in the document to be embossed. 1. To emboss a file, enter nfbtrans with no arguments and answer the questions. 2. Enter nfbtrans pw=42 pl=27 myfile.txt to emboss myfile.txt page width of 42 and page length of 27. 3. Enter nfbtrans file1.txt file2.txt to emboss file1.txt and file2.txt. 4. Enter nfbtrans file1.txt file2.txt >outfile to translate file1.txt and file2.txt to outfile. 5. Enter nfbtrans outfile.txt to translate file.txt to outfile.txt. 7. Enter type infile.txt | nfbtrans to emboss infile.txt. 8. Enter nfbtrans d:\progs\*.c c:\pascal\*.pas to emboss the .c and .pas files in the given directories. 9. Enter nfbtrans @listfile c:\temp\*.h to emboss the files contained in listfile and then the .h files in c:\temp. The file to be translated is assumed to be an ascii text file. Lines may be of any length. Characters from decimal 128-255 are processed according to the gm= option. gm=0 causes the high bit to be removed, gm=1 causes the character to be ignored, and gm=2 leaves the character unmodified. This character will be translated according to the rules in braille.tab. Graphics characters are used primarily with other languages. For properly formatted braille you must use the nfbtrans formatting commands. Formatting commands are indicated by a tilde preceeding the actual formatting command. For example (tilde)cChapter One willl center the line Chapter One. If you don't care if headings are centered or if columns of tables are aligned properly then don't worry about formatting commands. Nfbtrans can determine the start of a paragraph. If paragraphs are preceeded by a blank line use block paragraph mode (tilde)5. If paragraphs are indented use (tilde)t. Use (tilde)6 if you want nfbtrans to scan the file before translating to determine how paragraphs are formatted. Nfbtrans can be set up to rejoin hyphenated words in the file. You may also use the optional hyphenation dictionary english.dic to automatically hyphenate words. Nfbtrans translates files differently depending on their extension. This is determined by the ex= and i0= through i9= options in nfbtrans.cnf. Note that if input is redirected as in nfbtrans page width lost characters when split to next line. 7.17: Improved coding for joining hyphenated words. Added option rg= so characters >127 are ignored. Improved handling of words greater than the page width. This could happen when translating a mathematical formula or an 80 column line of dashes. Words consisting of repeated characters are truncated to the current line length. Alternating characters like -=-=-= are also considered repeating characters. Words of non-repeating characters are put on subsequent lines. Words more than 132 characters are truncated. Previous versions always used 6 characters for the page number in the upper right corner. This has been changed to 4 if page is less than 10 and 5 if page is less than 100. Backspace ctrl-h characters are handled properly. This is useful for printing unix man pages where ^h is used to underline words. 7.16: Added an alternative to 8-dot braille. Output is computer braille with the addition of braille capitalization marks and dots 56 to indicate lowercase. Eliminated the obsolete options fi= fo= po= tilde tilde =. Added options fs=format_string. Added option cs= so embossing time can be estimated if sp=1. Improved error checking while loading braille.tab. Match strings must now be in lexical order. 7.15: Added support for IO redirection. Rejoins hyphenated words before translation. Change lines of underscores to dashes for nicer looking braille. Added support for interpoint printers. Supports the DOS print command for embossing in backround. Will optionally number first page. Automatic centering of multiple lines. Can emboss multiple files in DOS with wildcards. User can configure nfbtrans to translate files depending on their extension. for example .c files in computer braille and .brl in Grade 2. User can translate to Grade 3 using only dot 4, 5, 45 and 456 contractions. See (tilde)31 and (tilde)32 in nfbtrans.doc. User can select to put filename and/or date at top of first page. Added format options (tilde)4 block, (tilde)5 block paragraph and (tilde)-option to call a command line option in a format command. Ending page can also be entered at the starting page prompt. Send bug reports to inge@netcom.com.