Hebrew braille display

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by falinn.onda on 2013-06-14 14:14 Hi, I am using Focus 40 blue. I set the braille output table to Hebrew with 8 dots. The thing is that in Hebrew, few letters have a final/non final version. A bit like the capital letters in English only for few letters when at the end of the word. Currently i get the same braille dots for both final/non final versions of the letter.

This miens that if i write a word incorrectly i cannot see the difference in braille, while sighted people will comment me about writing incorrectly.

Maybe there is already a standard solution which i am not aware of, but i know two things certainly:

1. my braille display shows the same dots for final/non final.
2. In 6 dots braille standard both final/non final letters are represented by the same dots.

I think that the solution should be like in capital English letters, i.e. adding dot 7 to the final letters.

I made a list of those letters according http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters#Hebrew

Note that i do not change the letter dots, only add dot 7 for final versions. If someone will explain me how to change the NVDA output table for Hebrew I'll try doing it myself.

Here is the list: letter, code, suggested dots kaf final, U+05DA, 157 kaf, U+05DB, 15 Mem final, U+05DD, 1347 Mem, U+05DE, 134 Final Nun, U+05DF, 13457 Nun, U+05E0, 1345 final pe, U+05E3, 1247 Pe, U+05E4, 124 final tsadik, U+05E5, 23467 tsadik, U+05E6, 2346

[nvaccessAuto]

Attachment he.ctb added by falinn.onda on 2013-06-20 18:27 Description:

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 1 by jteh on 2013-06-20 02:50 What you suggest makes sense, though the question is whether it complies with the Hebrew braille code and whether other Hebrew users will understand it.

NVDA uses the liblouis braille translator, so this would best be discussed on the liblouis mailing list. It'd be great if you could subscribe and start disucssion there.

The file you want to edit is called he.ctb in the louis\tables subdirectory of your NVDA program directory. You can find documentation about liblouis (including editing tables) on the liblouis website linked above.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 3 by falinn.onda on 2013-06-20 18:31 Thanks!!! It only took me five minutes to tweak the file and now it seems to work.

I have discussed this topic with two experienced braille readers. One of them is the most famous braille teacher for Hebrew (he taught most of Hebrew braille readers as far as i know)

They both agreed that the suggested fix is reasonable and said that there is no other known fix.

I attach the file, maybe someone else in the community will find it helpful.

My suggestion is that i'll try testing it for a while and show it to the teacher in practice on Sunday.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 4 by falinn.onda (in reply to comment 1) on 2013-06-24 12:02 After reading the Hebrew table i realize that there are several issues with the current tables. One is the final issue i mentioned but there are also other duplications of unicodes and many missing codes which are commonly used. For example there is no tab and types of newline and other symbols.

I am in the process of creating a table which will be better, at least for me and my community. It will take a lot of time but in the end we will try to contact louise, hopefully..

I do have one request though: I think it is a good idea that NVDA will enable users to customize tables, if they know the table format (by referring to louise docs). A simple way is to add several more tables files: custom1.utb costum2.utb and custom3.utb. Those files should be listed in the output and input table combo. That way the user will be able to edit those files to its needs without changing standard tables. For example i will be able to write a file like

inluding existing standard files (the real file names are a bit different)

include hebrew-8dots include numberslower6points include englishwith8dot

all sort of additions/fixes which are relevant for the user

Do you think this enhancement might be possible? I think this is better than users overriding existing tables...

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 5 by jteh on 2013-06-24 23:38 Support for custom tables should be handled in a separate ticket. In brief, I'd prefer not to do this for several reasons:

• Coming up with an elegant user interface for this is tricky.
• We then have to document and explain how it works.
• It encourages users to copy files into the NVDA program directory. In general, users should never touch the NVDA program directory, only their config directory.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 6 by nvdakor on 2014-05-30 02:24 Hi, Recently, LibLouis devs have incorporated new Hebrew table into LibLouis, so LibLouis 2.6 may solve this ticket.

[bhavyashah]

@josephsl's https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/3284#issuecomment-155307634 suggests that recent LibLouis developments may have solved this ticket. Could someone please test and triage this ticket accordingly?

[ehollig]

@josephsl, do you know if this issue has been resolved? Your https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/3284#issuecomment-155307634 suggests that it may be

[ehollig]

As NVDA is now using LibLouis 3.6, and https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/3284#issuecomment-155307634 suggests this may have been resolved in version 2.6, I am going to close this issue. If this issue comes up again in the future, we can revisit this issue.