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NVDA, the free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows
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Problems with Spanish Braille table #10246

Open justin171185 opened 5 years ago

justin171185 commented 5 years ago

Hello, there seem to be some problems with Spanish grade 1 Braille table. For example, the period, which is normally dot 3, shows up as apostrophe. Also, lots of punctuation signs don't work, as numbers are typed instead. Examples include: dots 2-6, inverted question mark at beginning and regular question mark at end of question. Instead, you get the number 5. Inverted and regular exclamation marks are not working, as you get the number 6. We really don't need these Nemeth numbers, as we can just use the number sign and type them out normally. Even when Spanish grade 1 is selected, it would appear that you are expected to know computer Braille to enter in a lot of punctuation. However, the fact is, six dot Braille is selected. There are those of us that do not know computer Braille. So, this should be fixed. I am pretty sure it is NOT a problem with Liblouis, as other programs or applications that use the Liblouis tables do not have this problem. For Example, SoftBraille Keyboard on Android works almost perfectly. I don't get the inverted question or exclamation marks, but everything else is ok. On IOS, using the system keyboard, everything works. Not sure though how that differs from the Liblouis ones. But, I know enough to know that something is just not right with the tables in NVDA. Again, I and many others do not know computer Braille. This really should be fixed. Note: Output of Spanish grade 1 is just fine, but it's the input that is problematic. Thanks in advance for any help in resolving this issue.

LeonarddeR commented 5 years ago

@justin171185: Please provide the following details

DrSooom commented 5 years ago

@justin171185: Firstly please check the values for the output and the input braille table in the Braille NVDA Settings and report them here. Thanks.

AAClause commented 5 years ago

A PR is in progress on this. See https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/pull/662

Adriani90 commented 1 year ago

Unfortunately on that PR there was no activity, so it got closed.

AAClause commented 1 year ago

@justin171185 If I understand correctly, the apostrophe and the period are represented in the same way in Spanish grade 1 braille (⠄ = dot 3). Isn't this potentially problematic in certain cases, such as with the contraction of "para" into "pa'" (as in "pa' ti")?

How does SoftBraille Keyboard handle these cases? Does it consider that if there is a ⠄ in a word, it is an apostrophe, and otherwise a point?

jharris171185 commented 9 months ago

No longer have this older account, but I am the one who started the thread. Sadly, I do not have access anymore to an Android device to test this out. The only other devices I have that can do Braille entry, both via display or on screen are Apple devices. Interestingly enough, dot 3 only works as a period on those devices. I've yet to find a way to type an apostrophe in those cases, but it's so rarely needed it's not a problem. I know that the apostrophe is rarely used in Spanish. Other than the kind of thing mentioned by @aaclause it isn't used nearly as much as in English. If I had to choose, I would much rather have access to a period, which is obviously much more common and very much needed. We also need access to our inverted and regular question and exclamation marks, colon, semicolon, and so on.

I had honestly forgotten I had even reported this issue so many years ago. I had an ElBraille back then, but got rid of it because that model was very under powered. I just acquired one of the new ones that is much closer specked to a modern, though slightly low end laptop, but for what I will do with it, it works well. And, come to find out, still no progress had been made. I'm on NVDA 2023.3.1 and the same issues exist. This really needs fixing. We don't need the nemeth numbers, as we can just use a number sign. But we do need access to our punctuation.

@aaclause I know Braille Extender has at least basic support for personalized tables. Any chance we could actually see the option to edit the table from within Braille extender itself?

Adriani90 commented 9 months ago

There is #10172 still open, the original developer is not very active anymore but maybe someone else with coresponding skills from the community will take this up, then at least add-ons will be able to provide custom braille tables in NVDA. I would rather love to see the probability to adjust braille table from the NVDA core itsels, like it is done with speech dictionaries for example, but this is probably a longer way to go.

lukaszgo1 commented 9 months ago

This should really be reported against LibLouis and marked as needs external fix here. Note that on iOS LibLouis is not used by default, Soft Braille Keyboard heavily modifies the included LibLouis tables, so drawing any conclusions on where the issue is on that basis is incorrect.

jharris171185 commented 9 months ago

@lukaszgo1 This gives me a thought. I don't know how all this works internally. I'm not a programmer, just a very annoyed user, but one who is also willing to step in and try to help solve the problem in so much as I am able. Having said that, when you say that SBK heavily modifies the tables, it just makes me think... How hard would it be to swap the table used in SBK for the one NVDA is defaulting to? Do they have the same file type, needed format, etc? Especially considering I have Braille extender installed, and Braille extender does allow for custom tables. I just wonder if it would be compatible, since NVDA runs on Windows, and SBK is or was an Android app. Since I don't even use Android anymore, and haven't for years, I'm not sure if SBK is still around. But if I could track that down or get in touch with the dev, and get that table, maybe it could work? I would like to see this actually done in NVDA, but if not, something is better than nothing.

lukaszgo1 commented 9 months ago

You should theoretically be able to extract the Spanish table from SBK's apk and replace in in NVDA. I say theoretically because SBK was using pretty old version of LibLouis, so the table may or may not be compatible with the one used in NVDA currently. I'd really suggest to spend your time reporting this Against LibLouis rather than trying to work around the problem on your side.

Adriani90 commented 2 weeks ago

cc: @nvdaes can you check in the spanish community whether this issue still exists? The pull request referenced by @aaclause above on Liblouis side has unfortunately been closed due to inactivity.

nvdaes commented 2 weeks ago

@Adriani90 , I can ask on my spanish mailing list for NVDA and in some other groups. Anyway, testing myself I realise that problems haven't been fixed.