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What are Braille printing software?

Updated the 04/14/2017 00:00 
 

Have you ever asked someone what a Braille printing program actually does? I know, few can answer you. You opened Google and searched for useful information, and now you're here. In my opinion, you did the right thing, and let me explain why.

These particular Software programs are programs that allow you to compose or format a Braille text. Some have a real editor, while others only allow you to process text written with other word processing programs. The most widespread Software in Italy is Biblos. For this reason, I can explain to you with knowledge how a Software for printing in Braille works.

A Braille printing program converts computer characters into Braille dots that are useful for the printer. At the core of it all is a 1-to-1 conversion of characters into Braille cells.

I can vouch for it, I swear! I am the author of one of the most well-known Software programs for printing in Braille, namely Biblos. Over the years with Biblos, I have revolutionized the printing process, because from the programming side, I have made the whole process much more complex than how it was accustomed to be done before, while from the user side, I have greatly simplified all the steps to arrive at printing in Braille. I followed the rules that are typical of Usability, that is, making Software internally more complex in order to externally facilitate all the operations that a user performs to use it.

All this has not affected the quality of the Braille obtained with Biblos in the slightest; on the contrary, the range of possibilities that Biblos offers is far wider than any other Software currently available.

The 1-to-1 conversion of characters is precisely the last operation of the translation process because Biblos, before performing the conversion, interprets the text and adds other codes. For example, it interprets numbers, capital letters, dates, etc.

Going backward, before interpreting the characters, Biblos detects the text styles and prepares it for the subsequent phase, where the style, position, spacing, and font type will also be useful information for their interpretation.

The structure of the document contains very important information because from the typographic structure, the Braille structure is also detected. In the typographic structure of a digital document, all the paratextual information that Biblos detects and interprets is contained. In fact, paragraph types, lists, tables, notes, titles, etc. contain essential information to arrive at a final Braille product that is not given by a simple conversion and interpretation of the text alone. I have already written about plain text files in a previous article.

The entire Braille printing process adheres to very specific rules. Biblos relieves the user from all these steps, making the entire process completely transparent and facilitating the work for those who want to print a document or a book in Braille. Let's think about what is done to print in Braille with Biblos: you open a document, click on Braille Print, click on the preparation button, and click on the print button. Everything that happens internally between preparation and the final Braille book is something totally transparent, the work for which a Braille printing program like Biblos puts all its strength into play.

For further support you can subscribe the Biblos Group on Facebook.