ANNOUNCEMENT

liblouis 3.20.0 has been released

The liblouis developer team is proud to announce the liblouis release
3.20.0. 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 is a major release. Not only in terms of table additions and
updates but also in the way the tables are written. Bert has replaced
the ``uplow`` opcode with a more generalized ``base`` opcode. This
clears up the path for a more generalized handling of emphasis and
uppercase characters. In the course of this simplification some bugs
with computer braille were discovered and fixed.

On the Braille tables side there is a brand new table for braille kanji
and there are major updates to the Polish, Chinese, Russian literary and
the UEB tables.

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
------------

-  There is an experimental new feature that allows a table writer to
   write table macros. This feature is disabled by default. Macros are a
   helpful tool for refactoring, however as it stands the feature is not
   mature and might disappear in future releases.
-  Add a new opcode ``base`` that associates a character with another
   already defined character. Think of it as a generalized form of
   ``uplow``. A typical use of this opcode is for defining a pair of
   letters, a lowercase and the corresponding uppercase.

Bug fixes
---------

-  Fix a problem with the dot 7 capitalization indicator in computer
   braille thanks to Bert Frees.

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

-  New table for Kantenji (or "braille kanji", a Japanese
   braille system) thanks to Kensaku Y.
-  Improvements to Polish literary braille table thanks to Łukasz
   Golonka.

   -  use correct representation of indexes for squared, cubed etc.
   -  use correct representation for fractions
   -  change symbol used for underscore from dots 46 to 6
   -  add U+2212 minus symbol (also to computer braille table)

-  Updates to the Chinese braille table (``zh-tw.ctb``) thanks to
   Bo-Cheng Jhan.

   -  Complete translation of CJK Radicals Supplement
   -  Change the default braille pattern of '蛤' to ⠗⠜⠂
   -  Correct the default braille pattern of many Chinese characters
   -  Add various Chinese phrases involving exceptions of braille
      patterns
   -  Add a math symbol '◊' (⠫⠓)

-  Improvements to the Russian literary (uncontracted and contracted)
   braille thanks to Andrey Yakuboy.

   -  If the dot sign ('.') is after digits at the beginning of a
      string, the braille dot 6 isn't inserted between the last digit
      and the dot. This is necessary for items' numbers of numbered
      lists.
   -  Back translation for French letters has been disabled because of
      conflicts with punctuations.
   -  Back translation for Latin (mostly English and German) letters has
      been improved.
   -  The definition of the 7/8 fraction (U+215E) has been fixed.
   -  Placement of spaces around math symbols has been improved
      according to the Russian braille rules.
   -  The apostrophe sign ("'") and the right tick sign
      (u+2019) are displayed correctly if they're in the end of a word
      (English, for example).
   -  New contractions have been added and minor bugs have been fixed in
      the Russian contracted braille table.

-  New display table (``ru-brf.dis``) has been added. It adds support of
   Braille ASCII for Russian and other Cyrillic tables. Thanks to Andrey
   Yakuboy.
-  Improvements to UEB thanks to James Bowden.

   -  Fixed placement of numeric indicator in letters dot numbers.
   -  Added more mathematical symbols.
   -  Added the four new allowed shortform extension words.
   -  Improvements to words starting with "dis(h)" and
      "cross(h)".

-  Implement alphabet change indicator in Dutch braille thanks to Bert
   Frees.

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

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

-  None

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

-  The ``uplow`` opcode has been removed and replaced with the more
   general ``base`` opcode.

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

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

New
~~~

-  ru-brf.dis
-  ja-kantenji.utb
-  latinUppercaseComp6.uti

Renamed
~~~~~~~

None

Removed
~~~~~~~

-  ru-ru.dis
-  cs-letterDef8Dots.uti
-  ru-chardefs.cti
-  nl-g0.uti
-  nl-BE-g0.utb

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

The next release will be published on March 7 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/30?closed=1