Sunday 21 August 2016

GSoC 2016 IBus-Braille-Enhancement Project - Summary

Hi,
   First of all my thanks to Indic Project and Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) for accepting this project. All hats off to my mentors Nalin Sathyan and Samuel Thibault. The project was awesome and I believe that I have done my maximum without any prior experience

Project Blog : http://ibus-braille-enhancement.blogspot.in/


Now let me outline what we have done during this period.

Braille-Input-Tool (The on-line version)
  Just like Google transliteration or Google Input Tools online. This is required because it's completely operating system independent and it's a modern method which never force user to install additional plugin or specific browser. The user might use this form temporary places like internet cafe. This is written using JQuery and Html. And works well in GNU/Linux, Microsoft windows, Android etc

See All Commits : https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commits/gh-pages
Test with following link : http://anwar3746.github.io/braille-input/


IBus-Braille enhancements
See All Commits : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/activity

1 IBus-Braille integrated with Liblouis : The Liblouis software suite provides an open-source braille translator, back-translator and formatter for a large number of languages and braille codes. So maintaining and shipping separate braille maps(located at /share/ibus-sharada-braille/braille) with ibus-braille is a bad idea. Through this we completely adopted Ibus-Braille to use Liblouis. The conversion is done in an entire word manner instead of each letter. ie the conversion does after writing direct braille unicode and pressing space.
Commit 1 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/6826982fa39cbd2e155bfb389658e16cc57b0dae
Commit 2 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/7032cf7b0c8cea7ce6c619c39750f5110effcfa3
Commit 3 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/46ec83a1caab75b2b25bbd06e1156d927b33c211

See Picture of Ibus-Braille preferences given below

2 8-Dot braille Enabled : Yes languages having more than 64 characters which can't be handled with 64 (6 dots ) combination are there, Music notations like  “Abreu” and LAMBDA (Linear Access to Mathematics for Braille Device and Audio Synthesis) uses 8-dot braille system.  unicode support 8-dot braille.
Commit 1 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/54d22c0acbf644709d72db076bd6de00af0e20b9

See key/shortcut page picture of ISB preferences dot setting

3 Dot 4 issue Solved :  In IBus-Braille when we type in bharati braille such as Malayalam, Hindi, etc. we have to use 13-4-13 to get letter ക്ക(Kka). But according to braille standard in order to get EKKA one should press 4-13-13. And this make beginners to do extra learning to start typing. Through this project we solved this issues and a conventional-braille-mode switch is provided in preferences in order to switch between.

Commit : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/089edca78d31355c3ab0e08559f0d9fe79929de6

4 Add Facility to write direct Braille Unicode : Now one can use IBus-Braille to type braille dot notation directly with the combination.  The output may be sent to a braille embosser. Here braille embosser is an impact printer that renders text in braille characters as tactile braille cells.

Commit : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/4c6d2e3c8a2bbe86e08ca8820412201a52117ad1


5 Three to Six for disabled people with one hand : A three key implementation which uses delay factor between key presses for example 13 followed by
13 having delay less than delay factor (eg:0.2) will give X. If more, then output would be KK. If one want to type a letter having combination only 4,5,6 he have to press "t" key prior. The key and the Conversion-Delay can be adjusted from preferences.

Commit : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/dda2bd83ba69fb0a0f6b526a940bc878bf230485

6 Arabic language added
Commit : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/bd0af5fcfabf891f0b0e6649a3a6c647b0d5e336

7 Many bugs solved
Commit : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/da0f0309edb4915ed770e9ab41e4355c2bd2c713
others are implied

Project Discourse : https://docs.google.com/document/d/16v-BMLLzWmzbo1n5S-wDTnUmFV-cwhoon1PeJ0mDM64/edit?usp=sharing
IBus-Sharada-Braille (GSoC 2014) : http://ibus-sharada-braille.blogspot.in/

Plugins for firefox and chrome
    This plugin can be installed will work with every text entry on the web pages no need for copy paste. extensions are written in Javascript.
See All Commits : https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-browser-addons/commits/master


Modification yet desirable are as following

1 Announce extra information through Screen Reader:  When user expand abbreviation or a contraction having more than 2 letters is substituted the screen reader is not announcing it. We have to write a orca(screen reader) plugin for Ibus-Braille

2 A UI for Creating and Editing Liblouis Tables

3 Add support for more Indic Languages and Mathematica Operators via liblouis

Braille-input-tool (online version)
                             
                       Liblouis integration
Conventional Braille, Three Dot mode and Table Type selection 
Chrome Extension

Direct braille unicode typing
 Eight dot braille enabled

Tuesday 16 August 2016

IBus-Braille Enhancement - 3

Hi,
 A hard week passed!

1 Conventional Braille Mode enabled : Through this we solved dot-4 issue and now one can type using braille without any extra knowledge

commit 1 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/089edca78d31355c3ab0e08559f0d9fe79929de6

2 handle configure parser exceptions : corrupted isb configuration file can make it won't start. so I solved this by proper exception handling

commit 2 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/da0f0309edb4915ed770e9ab41e4355c2bd2c713

3 Liblouis integration : I think our dream is about to come true!  But still also we are struggling with vowel substitution on the middle.
commit 3 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/6826982fa39cbd2e155bfb389658e16cc57b0dae
commit 4 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/46ec83a1caab75b2b25bbd06e1156d927b33c211
commit 5 : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/7032cf7b0c8cea7ce6c619c39750f5110effcfa3

Monday 8 August 2016

IBus-Braille Enhancement - 2

Hi, with this week I where fighting with my final semester exams! and it's over.  Also within this week I added the facility for typing direct braille Unicode.

https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/4c6d2e3c8a2bbe86e08ca8820412201a52117ad1

instead of converting to Unicode I added it as a new language so that one can later edit and use. 

Friday 29 July 2016

IBus-Braille Enhancement - 1

Hi,
  This week I forked IBus-Braille project from SMC GitLab repository  added two things.

1 Eight-Dot braille enabled. Now one can add languages with 8 dot's. The default keys are Z for dot 7 and period for dot-8. This can be remapped using preferences. 
https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/54d22c0acbf644709d72db076bd6de00af0e20b9


2 Arabic Language added and tested with users
https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commit/bd0af5fcfabf891f0b0e6649a3a6c647b0d5e336

See commits : https://gitlab.com/anwar3746/ibus-braille/commits/master

Wednesday 20 July 2016

work progress in browser-addon

Hi,
 About two months passed. We do many testing on online braille-input tool. And some widgets rearranged for user comforts. In the recent weeks we made a good progress in both Firefox and Chrome browser addons. But still we suffer from a grate problem with  these addons, The plugins are not working in google chat and Facebook chat entry's.  We are seeking the solution...

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Braille-Input-Tool : The final touch

Hi,

            With this two weeks we have done many testing with users and done many additions according to their needs. The first one  is Key reassigning. as you know there are many keyboard variants also user like to set there own keys instead of using f,d,s,j,k and l. But this make the necessity of saving user preferences. So we done this using jstorage. it's working fine
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/9e8bb0b5ef9a54d61dfa5081d0966ec9d10f01a0


Key reassigning can be done by clicking "Configure Keys" button which will popup many entry's where user can remap his keys. Restore option is also provided there.
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/3d3469ab8a68711ba0189d61f02c7231297ded3a


New and Save are the basic things that should be provided by a online editor
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/074829d2f4be81b7fa984931a90a108e3bac03ab

Changing font color, font size and background color are very impotent for partially impaired blind people. For keeping the page accessible we choose combobox containing major color list instead of providing graphical color picker
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/f1f6d3de308386d08977f40bc417c4c1ac0b3eb9

Various bugfixes
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/9b8cbc8d54051e9cb330514aacc6d8e6066cf7c6
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/d8127ceb3dc567bfb1778a437d29c2cfe989b24f
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/d3a01c17db64d4fabbad29b18d605992b633270f
https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commit/f34104bfb55c3e4e7735a23016ee913311444702

Braille-Input-Tool : http://anwar3746.github.io/braille-input/
See all commits : https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commits/gh-pages


Monday 20 June 2016

Bug fixes on Online Braille-Input-Tool

Hi,
  The first month is over, the webpage is almost finished we gone through many bugs in the last week. Sathyaseelan mash and Balaram G really helped us to find out the bugs. One of the crucial and not easy to detect was the bug with map initialization.  We take lot of time to find and fix it.  Another one was with the insertion of text at the middle. following are the names of other commits

CapsLock(G) and Beginning-Middle switch(Alt)
Simple mode checkbox
Word and letter deletion enabled
Abbreviation enabled

https://github.com/anwar3746/braille-input/commits/gh-pages