Send to
Braille¶

Send To Braille is a tool to create a quick and dirty braille file. It adds a shortcut to your Send To folder, so you can point at a file, right click and pick Send To, then pick Braille. It creates a braille version of the file with minimal formatting in the same folder with .brl appended to the end of the original file's name. It keeps the original extension to help you see the original file's source, so if you translate test.doc, you end up with test.doc.brl.
Send To Braille Shortcut produces "Quick and dirty" braille. It is a translation only, much like you get from screen reader output. It is not formatted in any way except to try to preserve paragraphs. Headings and list items are generally on their own lines, but exact results depend on the original file. Pandoc converts the file into plain text before sending it to the Liblouis translator.
Correct braille transcription depends on a human to make several decisions and provide additional value to titles that are not generally accessible in some way. Some documents, however, may have enough information without the additional attention to justify a quick and dirty translation. And, this is where the Send To Braille shortcut comes in.

Installation¶

To install the shortcut, run the lt_setup.exe file. Once installed, you have a new item in the Send To folder called Braille.
Alternatively, unzip the files from the LouTran archive file and run the install.bat file inside.

How to Use¶

To translate a file, do the following:

1. Open File Explorer (On newer versions of Windows, use Windows + E.)
2. Highlight the file to translate.
3. Right click or press the Applications key. Windows responds with a context menu.
4. Select Send To from the context menu. Windows responds with a list of places to which you may send the file.
5. Select Braille from the Send To list.

How it Works¶

The Send To Braille Shortcut employs the services of two excellent libraries to do its job.
Pandoc is a file conversion tool.
Liblouis is an international braille code translator.
Send To Braille is a shortcut that combines these two tools and gives you an interface to use them conveniently.

Customization¶

Tables¶

Send To Braille comes set up with Unified English Braille (UEB) translation, but you may easily change it to translate any supported braille code in any supported language.
To change the table Send To Braille passes to Liblouis, the translator, do the following:

1. Open the SendToBraille folder by activating the Run command and typing userprofile\appdata\local\SendToBraille into the edit box that appears, then press Enter.
2. Find the file called lt.bat and open it with a plain text editor.
3. Find the line that says, "set table=en-ueb-g2.ctb" and change the "en-ueb-g2.ctb" to the Liblouis translation table file you wish to use. Consult the Liblouis documentation for which tables to use for the language and code of interest.

Additional Tasks¶

You can edit the lt.bat file to either open an editor after the translation or copy the file straight to an SD card or another device.

Other Platforms¶

This shortcut runs on Windows. We encourage others to create similar shortcuts for OSX or Linux.