README

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				LIBLOUIS
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Table of Contents
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1 Introduction
2 Documentation
3 Installation
4 Release Notes
5 History





1 Introduction
==============

  Liblouis is an open-source braille translator and back-translator
  named in honor of [Louis Braille]. It features support for computer
  and literary braille, supports contracted and uncontracted translation
  for [many languages] and has support for hyphenation. New languages
  can easily be added through tables that support a rule- or dictionary
  based approach. Tools for testing and debugging tables are also
  included. Liblouis also supports math braille (Nemeth and Marburg).

  Liblouis has features to support screen-reading programs. This has led
  to its use in two open-source screenreaders, [NVDA] and [Orca]. It is
  also used in some commercial assistive technology applications for
  example by [ViewPlus].

  Liblouis is based on the translation routines in the [BRLTTY]
  screenreader for Linux. It has, however, gone far beyond these
  routines. In Linux and Mac OSX it is a shared library, and in Windows
  it is a DLL.

  Liblouis is free software licensed under the [GNU Lesser GPL] (see the
  file COPYING.LIB).

  The command line tools, are licensed under the [GNU GPL] (see the file
  COPYING).


  [Louis Braille] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille

  [many languages]
  https://code.google.com/p/liblouis/source/browse/trunk/tables/

  [NVDA] http://www.nvda-project.org/

  [Orca] http://live.gnome.org/Orca

  [ViewPlus] http://www.viewplus.com

  [BRLTTY] http://mielke.cc/brltty/

  [GNU Lesser GPL] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html

  [GNU GPL] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html


2 Documentation
===============

  For documentation, see the [liblouis documentation] (either as info
  file, html, txt or pdf) in the doc directory. For examples of
  translation tables, see `en-us-g2.ctb', `en-us-g1.ctb',
  `chardefs.cti', and whatever other files they may include in the
  tables directory. This directory contains tables for many languages.
  The Nemeth files will only work with the sister library
  [liblouisutdml].


  [liblouis documentation]
  http://www.liblouis.org/documentation/liblouis.html

  [liblouisutdml] http://liblouis.org/


3 Installation
==============

  After unpacking the distribution tarball go to the directory it
  creates. You now have the choice to compile liblouis for either 16- or
  32-bit unicode. By default it is compiled for the former. To get
  32-bit Unicode run configure with `--enable-ucs4'.

  After running configure run `make' and then `make install'. You must
  have root privileges for the installation step.

  This will produce the liblouis library and the programs `lou_allround'
  (for testing the library), `lou_checkhyphens', `lou_checktable' (for
  checking translation tables), `lou_debug' (for debugging translation
  tables), `lou_translate' (for extensive testing of forward and
  backwards translation) and `lou_trace' (for tracing if individual
  translations). For more details see the liblouis documentation.

  If you wish to have man pages for the programs you might want to
  install `help2man' before running configure.


4 Release Notes
===============

  For notes on the newest and older releases see the file NEWS.


5 History
=========

  Liblouis was begun in 2002 largely as a business decision by
  [ViewPlus]. They believed that they could never have good braille
  except as part of an open source effort and knew that John Boyer was
  dying to start just such a project. So ViewPlus did start it on the
  agreement that they would give a small monthly stipend to John Boyer
  that allowed him to pay for sighted assistants. While ViewPlus has not
  contributed much to the coding, it certainly has contributed and
  continues to contribute to liblouis through that support of John
  Boyer.


  [ViewPlus] http://www.viewplus.com