ANNOUNCEMENT

liblouis 3.21.0 has been released

The liblouis developer team is proud to announce the liblouis release
3.21.0. The release is available for download at:

https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/releases

Introduction
============

Liblouis is an open-source braille translator and back-translator. It
features support for computer, literary and math braille, supports
contracted and uncontracted translation for many, many languages [1]_.
It plays an important role in an open source accessibility stack and is
used by screenreaders such as NVDA, Orca and JAWS. A companion project
liblouisutdml [2]_ deals with formatting of braille.

Noteworthy changes in this release
==================================

This release sees major updates for Hungarian and German. The Swiss
Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled has agreed
to upstream their tables and Attila Hammer has adapted Hungarian to the
latest standard. A bug in numeric mode was fixed which should it make
more useful for languages other than UEB. Finally there are fixes for
Norwegian and Danish.

I'd like to thank everybody for helping to bring liblouis forward.

For a detailed list of all the changes refer to the list of closed
issues [3]_.

New features
------------

-  New table for German 6-dot computer braille thanks to the Swiss
   Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled

Bug fixes
---------

-  When numeric mode was enabled, i.e. when a table contains any of the
   ``numericmodechars``, ``midnumericmodechars`` or
   ``numericnocontchars`` opcodes, contraction was automatically
   disabled. This is required for UEB but not necessarily so for other
   braille systems (as mentioned in Issue 615).
   This has now been changed so that contraction is only disabled if the
   ``nocontractsign`` has been defined. Thanks to Christian Egli.

Braille table improvements
--------------------------

-  Fixed emphasis, section sign and dash between numbers in Danish
   tables thanks to Bue Vester-Andersen.
-  Correct latin small letter sharp s in Norwegian thanks to Lars
   Bjørndal and Dawn Renouf Bjørneby.
-  Major improvements to German Braille thanks to the Swiss Library for
   the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled

   -  Improvements to emphasis handling in German tables and greatly
      extended test coverage.
   -  All the improvements from the tables formerly known as bidi tables
      were merged in the main tables and are now used by both tables.
      The bidi tables have been renamed to "detailed".
      Essentially the detailed tables provide capitalized Braille which
      helps with the back-translation.
   -  Upstream all improvements from the ``sbs-braille-tables``.

-  Improvements to the Hungarian tables thanks to Attila Hammer.

   -  Improved back-translation, notably of words containing special
      consonants like "szsz" or "ssz".
   -  Extended the Hungarian grade 1 "braille input"
      (back-translation aided by special extra dot patterns).
   -  Implemented latest update to the Hungarian braille standard (for
      example the characters "\" and "|" were
      changed).

Other changes
-------------

-  Make ``autogen.sh`` work on MacOS, thanks to Ken Perry

Deprecation notice
------------------

-  None

Backwards incompatible changes
------------------------------

Invisible changes
-----------------

New, renamed or removed tables
------------------------------

New
~~~

-  de-comp6.utb

Renamed
~~~~~~~

-  de-g0-bidi.utb -> de-g0-detailed.utb
-  de-g1-bidi.ctb -> de-g1-detailed.ctb

Removed
~~~~~~~

None

Next release
============

The next release will be published on June 6 2022 so please keep up the
excellent work and keep those improvements coming.

Share and Enjoy!

– Christian Egli, on behalf of the liblouis developers

Footnotes
=========

.. [1]
   https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/tree/master/tables

.. [2]
   https://github.com/liblouis/liblouisutdml

.. [3]
   https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/milestone/31?closed=1