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NVDA, the free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows
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Braille indication of font attributes using dots 7/8 #7097

Open JordyDew opened 7 years ago

JordyDew commented 7 years ago

It would be fine if NVDA indicates bold, italic, underlined, ... text in braille, as it does in speech output. Something like JAWS, where all those things are underlined with dots seven and eight, would be very nice. And regardless of which braille table is used. It's difficult for me to use the UEB tables, becaus I never learnt to read literal braille correctly. I usually use the German 8 dots braille table, but there, we don't have any options to see formatting in braille. I, and others, need this in several: studying, preparing a paper, writing an official letter, telling a story,...

josephsl commented 7 years ago

Hi, looks like a duplicate request from the past? Thanks.

From: Jordy [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Monday, April 24, 2017 11:55 AM To: nvaccess/nvda nvda@noreply.github.com Cc: Subscribed subscribed@noreply.github.com Subject: [nvaccess/nvda] Feature request: braille indication of lay-out (#7097)

It would be fine if NVDA indicates bold, italic, underlined, ... text in braille, as it does in speech output. Something like JAWS, where all those things are underlined with dots seven and eight, would be very nice. And regardless of which braille table is used. It's difficult for me to use the UEB tables, becaus I never learnt to read literal braille correctly. I usually use the German 8 dots braille table, but there, we don't have any options to see formatting in braille. I, and others, need this in several: studying, preparing a paper, writing an official letter, telling a story,...

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LeonarddeR commented 7 years ago

cc @dkager

The following issues seem to be relevant here:

It somehow turns out that this is a duplicate of #538, but I agree with @JordyDew and @gregjozk that the fix in #538 is far from ideal.

@josephsl: I do not see a valid reason to close this

dkager commented 7 years ago

There is an underlying issue, liblouis doesn't currently support augmenting cells with certain dots for certain attributes.

A few more things to consider:

josephsl commented 7 years ago

Hi, another way, although risky, might be to use emphasis opcode and dot definitions for these. Thanks.

From: Davy Kager [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 6:40 AM To: nvaccess/nvda nvda@noreply.github.com Cc: Joseph Lee joseph.lee22590@gmail.com; Mention mention@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Feature request: braille indication of lay-out (#7097)

There is an underlying issue, liblouis doesn't currently support augmenting cells with certain dots for certain attributes.

A few more things to consider:

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derekriemer commented 7 years ago

What about using braille weight to do emphasis?

On Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 7:41 AM, Joseph Lee notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi, another way, although risky, might be to use emphasis opcode and dot definitions for these. Thanks.

From: Davy Kager [mailto:notifications@github.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2017 6:40 AM To: nvaccess/nvda nvda@noreply.github.com Cc: Joseph Lee joseph.lee22590@gmail.com; Mention < mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [nvaccess/nvda] Feature request: braille indication of lay-out (#7097)

There is an underlying issue, liblouis doesn't currently support augmenting cells with certain dots for certain attributes.

A few more things to consider:

  • Dots 7 & 8 are already used to indicate selection, so this could get confusing.
  • Just dot 8 is another popular option.
  • We'd need a way to map attributes to dots.
  • It would probably be useful to have a command to report the formatting under the braille cursor routing key being pressed. Jsut seeing dots 7 & 8 still doesn't tell you if it's bold, italic, etc.

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jcsteh commented 7 years ago

@leonardder commented on 25 Apr. 2017, 5:27 pm AEST:

It somehow turns out that this is a duplicate of #538, but I agree with @JordyDew and @gregjozk that the fix in #538 is far from ideal.

I'd still argue #538 is the correct "default" behaviour. Underlining emphasis is not part of any braille standard; it's a convention. It's also ambiguous. Still, happy to accept that people might want this to be configurable for efficiency and for tables which don't support emphasis.

@dkager commented on 25 Apr. 2017, 11:40 pm AEST:

There is an underlying issue, liblouis doesn't currently support augmenting cells with certain dots for certain attributes.

True enough, though we can work around this like we do for selection I think.

  • We'd need a way to map attributes to dots.

I don't quite follow this. Can you elaborate?

  • It would probably be useful to have a command to report the formatting under the braille cursor routing key being pressed. Jsut seeing dots 7 & 8 still doesn't tell you if it's bold, italic, etc.

Agreed. From an implementation perspective, I think we'd need to add a method to get a TextInfo from a routing index. Duplicating formatting reporting code in both globalCommands and braille sounds ugly to me. That said, this should probably be split into a separate piece of work.

@derekriemer commented on 26 Apr. 2017, 3:08 am AEST:

What about using braille weight to do emphasis?

I know some displays can change braille weight, but I think it's across the entire display, not for individual cells. Regardless, many cells don't have configurable weight at all.

JordyDew commented 7 years ago

If someone can code it for the community, would there be acceptance for it?

jcsteh commented 7 years ago

Sure. If we weren't willing to accept it, I would have closed the issue. My point was that this should not be the default behaviour; it must be configurable.

dkager commented 7 years ago

We'd need a way to map attributes to dots.

I don't quite follow this. Can you elaborate?

First you'd need a way to define which attributes are shown, e.g. only bold or bold and italic, etc. Second, I believe some screen readers also offer dot 8 as an indicator, e.g. for reporting the accelerator key for menu items. So maybe someone could set italic to dots 7 & 8 and bold to dot 8? Just a thought, this is definitely not standard behavior. If there is some kind of standard behavior, it could be nice to add that to computer braille tables in liblouis so that more people benefit. But as Jamie said I don't think such a standard exists.

jcsteh commented 7 years ago

Ug. Allowing attributes to be individually customised is going to make for a pretty complicated UI. Are we only talking about bold, italic and underline or are there others we'd want this configuration for?

dkager commented 7 years ago

Hah, just trying to scope this. :)

Most other attributes (links, editor revisions) can be dealt with using start/end indicators. This is more consistent anyway. Related: #6785. Spelling errors could also be shown with start/end indicators, however I believe @leonardder wants to underline them. This makes sense if only part of a word can be marked as spelling/grammar error. I don't know if that's possible. If not, I'd say underlining should be reserved for font styles only. In that case it's probably enough to have an underline on/off toggle. You then configure what you want to see in the document formatting settings.

gregjozk commented 7 years ago

Hi,

when I wrote about this feature, I thought, that NVDA would incorporate solution from other screen readers. These programs underlined (used dots 7 and 8) for every atribute and made t.i. atribute mode. User has switched to this mode, when she/he wanted to know which atribute is in use. As I wrote years ago, this feature is important, because many liblouis tables do not have emphasis opcodes. And as I wrote, when a line is underlined, you know, that this text is important. If you use an emphasis opcodes you can quickly miss this information. In braille settings there can be a box where user can check which atribute can be shown on display (which text should be underlined with dots 7 and 8). On the other hand atribute mode can show atributes of characters instead of characters themselves. If characters have more then one atribute (a character is bolded and italicised), display would circle between "b" and "i".

Thanks for your good work.

regards, Jožef

2017-04-26 11:24 GMT+02.00, Davy Kager notifications@github.com:

Hah, just trying to scope this. :)

Most other attributes (links, editor revisions) can be dealt with using start/end indicators. This is more consistent anyway. Related: #6785. Spelling errors could also be shown with start/end indicators, however I believe @leonardder wants to underline them. This makes sense if only part of a word can be marked as spelling/grammar error. I don't know if that's possible. If not, I'd say underlining should be reserved for font styles only. In that case it's probably enough to have an underline on/off toggle. You then configure what you want to see in the document formatting settings.

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albzan commented 7 years ago

Hi, If anyone is interested to test or improve it, I've developed an addon for myself that implements braille attributes with dots 7 and 8. More info at: https://github.com/albzan/attribra/ It does not provide a comfortable GUI and so it is a bit rough to configure for a normal user (you have to edit an ini file). Maybe someone could find it interesting or want to contribute on it. Regards, Alberto

LeonarddeR commented 6 years ago

I think demand for this issue has become less now braille extender by @Andre9642 has become a quite popular add-on. I believe the code for this is also based on the add-on by @albzan.

Still, I think that this functionality belongs in core as long as the liblouis way of presenting formatting information to the user is the default and the preferred method.

NVDA's braille support has been heavily improved over the past few years, and because of this, this issue is getting more and more prominent on the list of features people would like to see.

zstanecic commented 6 years ago

Hi, about braille extender,

it is an essential addon to use braille effectively.

Some of its features can be, or should be integrated into it, so that we no more rely on liblouis.

the example is reporting of grammar errors.