Hi John,
This is neat! Thanks!
If I may, I'll compare this with btv:
The command to run brffilt would be something like:
brffilt < BOOKNAME | less
Because brffilt is written in C, it's doubtless much faster than btv.
Because the user is probably using something like less, he can back up,
search, and otherwise skip around.
brffilt does not include any bookmarking facility, so the user has to
use whatever system is now in place to start a new session where she
left off. I kept a file full of filenames and line numbers so I could
look up the place every time I started reading, or else viewed it with
an editor and chopped off from the present location to the beginning of
the file every time I was going to quit. Using btv, I don't have to do
either of these; just start reading and I'm where I was when I stopped.
Of course, I might not always want to take up where I left off, in which
case I can either invoke less directly, or invoke less from btv to back
up a page or two or do a search. (When I do invoke less, I don't have
6-dot Braille.)
brffilt also cannot be used when reading standard text files. btv's
bookmarks can be used for printable text files also; I'm going through
the man page for bash in this way whenever I have free time.
While developing btv I had the good(?) fortune to stumble across
Captains Courageous (BR 05593) by Rudyard Kipling. Once past the
introductory material this book has improper End-of-Page sequences. The
btv distribution consequently contains a utility called fixeop which
cleans up this type of file.
brffilt is a neat filter. If I run a book through it I'll have 6-dot
Braille even when I use less or emacs to look around, and can choose
between viewing the translated or untranslated file. It meets a need,
though not precisely the same need as btv. I like it very much. Thanks!
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 12:39:56PM -0500, John J. Boyer wrote:
> Attached is a simple program which can be used for viewing Grade 2 files
> such as those on Web-Braille and bookshare. To compile it type
> gcc -o brffilt brffilt.c
>
> As the name suggests, this is a filter. It takes input from stdin, changes
> capitals to lower-case and characters like [ to {, and then puts it out to
> stdout. To use it, type something like
> <bookname brffilt |less
>
> You can also direct the output to a file. Change to 6-dot braille when
> using brltty to turn off translation. You can then read the book using the
> ordinary l;ess commands. If you use the screen utility, you can keep
> several books open at once and return to them as you wish.
>
> Hope this is of some use.
> John
>
>
> --
> Computers to Help People, Inc.
> http://www.chpi.org
> 825 East Johnson; Madison, WI 53703
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