# Liblouis -- a universal solution for Braille transcription services

# Copyright (C) 2009 Christian Egli

# This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share
# Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
# http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to
# Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco,
# California, 94105, USA.

#+TITLE:     Liblouis -- a universal solution for Braille transcription services
#+AUTHOR:    Christian Egli \\christian.egli@sbszh.ch
#+EMAIL:     christian.egli@sbszh.ch
##+DATE:      2009-07-07
#+KEYWORDS:  Braille
#+LANGUAGE:  en
#+OPTIONS:   H:3 num:t toc:nil \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t -:t f:t *:t <:t
#+OPTIONS:   TeX:t LaTeX:nil skip:nil d:nil todo:t pri:nil tags:not-in-toc

#+MACRO: sbs Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired
#+MACRO: dtbook DTBook XML

#+LATEX_CLASS: beamer
#+LATEX_HEADER: \input{cc_beamer}

\begin{frame}
  \titlepage
  \vfill
  \begin{center}
    \CcGroupBySa{0.83}{0.95ex}\\[2.5ex]
    {\tiny\CcNote{\CcLongnameBySa}}
    \vspace*{-2.5ex}
  \end{center}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{Outline}
  \tableofcontents
\end{frame}

* Introduction
** Why are we here?
*** Background
- {{{sbs}}} produces accessible media
  - Braille, DTBs, Large Print and more
- Production moves to {{{dtbook}}}

*** Why are we here?
- Current tool set has problems
  - No support for DTBook XML
  - No support Unicode
- A better tool set is needed

* A universal solution
** Universal?
*** Universal?
- Open source
- Easily adapted
- Support for many languages
- Support for DTBook XML format

*** Open source
  - To ensure longevity
  - Not dependent on one person or one institution
  - Developed collaboratively
  - Code is free to study, use, modify and share
  - Runs on any platform

*** Easily adapted
  - Configurable outside of code proper
    - Braille translation
    - Braille formatting
  - Integrates with production system
    - Command line interface
    - Programming API

*** Support for many languages
- Support for many languages out of the box
  - German Grade 2
  - \ldots{}

*** Support for {{{dtbook}}} format
- Translate and format {{{dtbook}}} documents
  - Our production will be centered around it

* Liblouis
** What Liblouis offers
*** What Liblouis offers
- Liblouis is Open Source
- Liblouis is easily adapted
- Liblouis supports many languages
- Liblouis supports {{{dtbook}}}

*** What Liblouis offers
- Liblouis is Open Source
  - Liblouis is freely available
  - GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL)
  - runs on any modern platform (Windows, Linux, Mac)
- Liblouis is easily adapted
- Liblouis supports many languages
- Liblouis supports {{{dtbook}}}

*** What Liblouis offers
- Liblouis is Open Source
- Liblouis is easily adapted
  - text based translation tables
  - formatting is defined in semantic mappings
- Liblouis supports many languages
- Liblouis supports {{{dtbook}}}

*** What Liblouis offers
- Liblouis is Open Source
- Liblouis is easily adapted
- Liblouis supports many languages
  - currently over 40 languages
  - German grade 2 will be added soon
- Liblouis supports {{{dtbook}}}

*** What Liblouis offers
- Liblouis is Open Source
- Liblouis is easily adapted
- Liblouis supports many languages
- Liblouis supports {{{dtbook}}}
  - Many document formats are supported
    - {{{dtbook}}}
    - DocBook
    - Microsoft Word XML
    - etc

*** Architecture
#+ATTR_LaTeX: width=12cm
#+begin_ditaa liblouis-overview.png -r
:
:               Liblouis Braille
:            Transcription Services
:
: +-----+     +----------------+     +---------+
: | XML +---->|  Liblouisxml   +---->+ Braille |
: | {d} |     |                |     | {d}     |
: +-----+     |    +-----------+     +---------+
: 	      |    | Liblouis  |
: 	      +-+--+---------+-+
: 	        ^     	     ^
: 	        |      	     |
:      	  +-----+----+ +-----+-----+
: 	  |Formatting| |Translation|
:         |Definition| |   Table   |
:  	  +----------+ +-----------+
:
#+end_ditaa

*** Braille Translation
- Based on translation tables
- Braille translation for literary and computer Braille
- Contracted and uncontracted translation
  - For over 40 languages
  - Rule-based or dictionary-based approach
- Braille mathematics
  - Nemeth
  - UK Math
  - Marburg

*** Braille Formatting
- XML $\rightarrow$ Braille
  - Many formats supported out of the box
  - {{{dtbook}}}
  - DocBook, XHTML, Microsoft Word XML, etc
- Based on
  - Mappings between XML tag and formatting style
  - Formatting style definitions

*** Embedding
#+ATTR_LaTeX: width=12cm
#+begin_ditaa liblouis-embed.png -r
:
:	      +----------------+
:	      |Your Application|
:             |    +-----------+
:             |    |   Daisy   |
:      	      |    |  Pipeline |
: +-----+     +----+-----------+     +---------+
: | XML +---->|  Liblouisxml   +---->+ Braille |
: | {d} |     |                |     | {d}     |
: +-----+     |    +-----------+     +---------+
: 	      |    | Liblouis  |
: 	      +-+--+---------+-+
: 	        ^     	     ^
: 	        |      	     |
:      	  +-----+----+ +-----+-----+
: 	  |Formatting| |Translation|
:         |Definition| |   Table   |
:  	  +----------+ +-----------+
#+end_ditaa

*** Liblouis ecosystem
- Probably the most compelling feature
- Developer and user community
- Contributions
  - Feedback
  - Translation tables
  - Computer language bindings
  - GUI applications

* Demo
** Let me see it!
*** Demo Time
- Invoke xml2brl on the command line

* Conclusion
** What Liblouis can do for you
*** What Liblouis can do for you
- Universal solution for Braille transcription services
- Probably meets most of your Braille transcription needs

- Used in production
  - Bookshare.org
  - ViewPlus
  - Soon at the {{{sbs}}}

*** Liblouis is not perfect
- Isn't Liblouis perfect already?
- By no means!

*** Roadmap
- Java bindings
- Better table handling
- Formatting improvements
- Your pet feature?
  - Integration with Daisy Pipeline for example

*** Join the development
- Get code from http://code.google.com/p/liblouis/.
- Join the development
  - Feedback
  - Translation table improvements
  - etc

* Questions
** Questions
*** Questions
    \Large Questions?


* COMMENT Goals
- What are my goals for this talk?
  - Spread the word
  - More users
  - More testers
  - More contributors

* COMMENT Local Variables
# Local Variables:
# org-export-latex-title-command: ""
# End: