| # Introduction |
| |
| [](https://travis-ci.org/liblouis/liblouis) |
| |
| Liblouis is an open-source braille translator and back-translator |
| named in honor of [Louis Braille][]. It features support for computer |
| and literary braille, supports contracted and uncontracted translation |
| for [many languages][] and has support for hyphenation. New languages |
| can easily be added through tables that support a rule- or dictionary |
| based approach. Tools for testing and debugging tables are also |
| included. Liblouis also supports math braille (Nemeth and Marburg). |
| |
| Liblouis has features to support screen-reading programs. This has led |
| to its use in two open-source screenreaders, [NVDA][] and [Orca][]. It |
| is also used in some commercial assistive technology applications for |
| example by [ViewPlus][]. |
| |
| Liblouis is based on the translation routines in the [BRLTTY][] |
| screenreader for Linux. It has, however, gone far beyond these |
| routines. In Linux and Mac OSX it is a shared library, and in Windows |
| it is a DLL. |
| |
| Liblouis is free software licensed under the [GNU Lesser GPL][] (see |
| the file COPYING.LIB). |
| |
| The command line tools, are licensed under the [GNU GPL][] (see the |
| file COPYING). |
| |
| # Documentation |
| |
| For documentation, see the [liblouis documentation][] (either as info |
| file, html, txt or pdf) in the doc directory. For examples |
| of translation tables, see `en-us-g2.ctb`, `en-us-g1.ctb`, |
| `chardefs.cti`, and whatever other files they may include in the |
| tables directory. This directory contains tables for many languages. |
| The Nemeth files will only work with the sister library |
| [liblouisutdml][]. |
| |
| # Installation |
| |
| After unpacking the distribution tarball go to the directory it creates. |
| You now have the choice to compile liblouis for either 16- or 32-bit |
| unicode. By default it is compiled for the former. To get 32-bit Unicode |
| run configure with `--enable-ucs4`. |
| |
| After running configure run `make` and then `make install`. You must |
| have root privileges for the installation step. |
| |
| This will produce the liblouis library and the programs `lou_allround` |
| (for testing the library), `lou_checkhyphens`, `lou_checktable` (for |
| checking translation tables), `lou_debug` (for debugging translation |
| tables), `lou_translate` (for extensive testing of forward and |
| backwards translation) and `lou_trace` (for tracing if individual |
| translations). For more details see the liblouis documentation. |
| |
| If you wish to have man pages for the programs you might want to |
| install `help2man` before running configure. |
| |
| # Release Notes |
| |
| For notes on the newest and older releases see the file NEWS. |
| |
| # History |
| |
| Liblouis was begun in 2002 largely as a business decision by |
| [ViewPlus][]. They believed that they could never have good braille |
| except as part of an open source effort and knew that John Boyer was |
| dying to start just such a project. So ViewPlus did start it on the |
| agreement that they would give a small monthly stipend to John Boyer |
| that allowed him to pay for sighted assistants. While ViewPlus has not |
| contributed much to the coding, it certainly has contributed and |
| continues to contribute to liblouis through that support of John |
| Boyer. |
| |
| [Louis Braille]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille |
| [many languages]: https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/tree/master/tables |
| [NVDA]: http://www.nvda-project.org/ |
| [Orca]: http://live.gnome.org/Orca |
| [ViewPlus]: http://www.viewplus.com |
| [BRLTTY]: http://mielke.cc/brltty/ |
| [GNU Lesser GPL]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html |
| [GNU GPL]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html |
| [liblouisutdml]: http://www.liblouis.org/ |
| [liblouis documentation]: http://www.liblouis.org/documentation/liblouis.html |
| |
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