braille translators for Linux

[Jacob Schmude]

Hi
     Similar? Not if you mean an all-in-one program like megadots is. The
closest thing you're going to get is nfbtrans. Basically you enter your text
into an ascii file along with nfbtrans formatting commands and run it
through the translator. It actually works quite well though it takes a bit
of getting used to after an all-in-one program. One thing linux does not
seem to have a lot of is all-in-one suites. There's the functionality you
need but usually it's provided by separate programs.
     There's also turbo braille for linux, but I haven't seen any updates to
it since 1999. This is too bad as I really did like the turbo braille for
dos and would have liked to see a linux version equal to the dos one. It's
basically the same concept as nfbtrans but the commands are a bit different
and it seems to be able to translate regular ascii files more reliably
without command conflicts. I.e. punctuation mark followed by a string of
letters is considered to be a command with nfbtrans and turbo-braille.
Difference is that turbo-braille seems to be a bit more intelligent at
figuring out what is a command and what isn't. Even the linux version is
more intelligent than nfbtrans but I don't believe the linux version can
actually emboss yet. It's got printer setup and everything but I've not
found a way to get it to emboss.
     In short for linux translation the best thing right now is nfbtrans.
Mainly for the reason that it has the ability to emboss as well as
translate, and has a backtranslator as well.

HTH




On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 04:04:16PM -0500, Gregory Nowak wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I'm used to using Megadots under DOS/Windows. Is there anything similar that's freeware for Linux? Thanks.