Convert-Braille
Conversions Between Braille Representations in Perl
About This Release
While not at the 100% point, Convert::Braille does a
good bit and offers a starting point for anyone getting
involved with Braille processing.
Why Convert::Braille?
Born out of my own need when working with the visually impaired to translate lingo "Z is 1356" into a meaningful character code. As everyone should be migrating to Unicode, this package offers conversion between ASCII encoded Braille and the Unicode specification.
What This Package Can Do
Convert a string between:
Braille-ASCII ⇔ Unicode
Braille-ASCII ⇔ Dots
Dots ⇔ Unicode
Unicode here means "UTF-8" encoded text.
8 dot Braiile in Unicode is convert into 6 dot Braille by simply stripping off the dots -there is probably a better solution that can be applied based on the context of dots 7 and 8.
Convert::Braille::Ethiopic is complete and requires
Convert::Number::Ethiopic. Perl 5.8 is recommended
for this module.
What This Package Can NOT Do
This package can not convert between Braille-ASCII and English -which look a lot alike in the alphabetic range, but thats about it. Only character codes are converted, no semantic checking is performed.
What Next?
I intend to work on conversion for Braille implementations:
Convert::Braille::English (started, need definitive info)
Convert::Braille::Ethiopic (done!)
Convert::Braille::Japanese (not started)
Ethiopic and Japanese both use multi char Braille sequences to represent their systems of writing which presents some interesting challenges.
...the code will be commented, etc...
More Info
Traditional 6 dot Braille provides 63 printable sequences. Few of the Braille fonts I could find on the Internet, which are supposed to use Braille-ASCII, have the full repertoire or are even compatible with one another. Very confusing...
This module was developed with Braille-ASCII information presented here:
http://www.uronramp.net/~lizgray/ascii.html http://www.cc.utah.edu/~nahaj/ada/braille/braille-ascii.ads.html
It is also inspired by Convert-Morse-0.03.
See examples/demo.pl.