Re: Progress With Braille output!

[Jason White <jasonw ariel ucs unimelb edu au>]

John J. Boyer writes:
 > Jason,
 > 
 > Thanks for the new info.  i'm trying to figure out how to write a driver 
 > for a new braille device. I would like to see support for my braille lite 
 > and an interface with brltty, which has drivers for almost everything and 
 > a grade 2 translator. It probably has a driver for your INKA
 > display.

I have been discussing this with Dave Mielke recently. The situation
is that Brltty only supports the Vario at this point, and, as I
understand it, in emulation mode rather than in native mode. What this
means is that the Vario can emulate other manufacturers' braille
displays. In Gnopernicus, by contrast, the Vario, DM80 and other Baum
displays are all supported using their native protocols, which are
very similar. The easiest solution I think, if at all possible, would
be to follow the Gnopernicus route and have one driver that supports
all of the Baum displays; and if Brltty and Gnopernicus can share code
at least at the driver level that would be helpful as it would avoid
duplication of effort.

If we can work out a solution that would support your Braille Lite and
my INKA that would be a good start toward wider hardware support in
this environment. Incidentally, INKA needs to be running the latest
firmware in order to use standard serial flow control at 19200 baud;
earlier versions used a non-standard flow control mechanism that won't
work under Linux.