Driver for Tieman B.V.'s CombiBraille series
Copyright (C) 1995, 1996 by Nikhil Nair.
This driver is part of BRLTTY, and as such it is placed under the
terms of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free
Software Foundation. Please see the file LICENSE-GPL in the top-level
directory for details.
This driver was maintained by Nikhil Nair <nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk>.
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SUPPORTED HARDWARE
==================
This driver has only been used on a CombiBraille 40, although,
according to technical specifications provided by Tieman
B.V. <tieman@xs4all.nl>, it should work on the 20 and 80 cell models
as well. There is no support for the parallel interface, and so no
possibility of a 2-dimensional setup using a second display.
There is now some very rudimentary support for the internal speech
synthesiser. This, however, leaves much to be desired: there are only
`speak line' and `mute' functions, and the speed and pitch of the
speech is not yet configurable.
CONFIGURATION AND COMPILATION
=============================
For general information about configuring and compiling BRLTTY, please
see the BRLTTY manual.
Any CombiBraille-specific configuration is done by editing the
braille.h file in this directory. However, such configuration is
probably unnecessary as the display size is autodetected during
initialisation at run-time.
By default, BRLTTY can be started even if the CombiBraille is switched
off or not connected - it will wait in the background, checking every
five seconds for a display. This behaviour can be changed by
adjusting the values of ACK_TIMEOUT and MAX_ATTEMPTS.
The driver should probably set the autorepeat delay and rate of the
Braille display's keys during initialisation. This is yet to be
implemented.
GETTING STARTED
===============
The CombiBraille must be connected to the serial device you chose
during configuration, unless of course you use the -d option to
BRLTTY. The serial interface must be selected; this is done by
holding the left-most thumb key while turning on the display. BRLTTY
should then display its startup message before starting to echo the
screen.
KEY BINDINGS
============
The key bindings - particularly with regard to the Braille dot keys -
have been redesigned from the DOS driver provided with the
CombiBraille. However, the five thumb keys work similarly. If we
label them A to E from left to right, then A is FWINLT (go left one
full window width), B is LNUP (go up one line), D is LNDN (go down one
line) and E is FWINRT (go right one full window width). C toggles
cursor tracking, so C twice moves the window to the cursor position.
The extra cursor routing key (over the gap between the status cells
and the main display) is used to bring up the help screen. Pressing
this key again goes back to normal operation. The help screen has a
full list of key bindings (apart from the cursor routing keys); it can
be found in plain text format in the file help.txt in this
directory. The dot keys have been numbered (from left to right): 3,
2, 1, 4, 5, 6; capital letters in brackets refer to thumb keys,
e.g. (A) means A alone, (BD) means B and D pressed together and (CC)
means C, alone, twice.
All functions bound to the thumb keys can also be executed by using
the Braille dot keys. The converse, however, is not the case, as
there are far more available combinations of Braille dot keys than of
thumb keys (using not more than two at once).
Cursor Routing Keys
-------------------
The keys above the 20/40/80 cells of the main display can be used for
a more accurate form of cursor routing, specifying that particular
position rather than the start of the Braille window.
The extra six cursor routing keys have special meanings. The sixth
from the left toggles help mode; the fifth toggles freeze mode; the
fourth is the RESET button and the third is the CONFMENU button.
Special Cut Function
--------------------
The main cursor routing keys, together with the leftmost two of the
extra ones, can be used for a more advanced form of cutting.
To mark the top left corner of the rectangle to be cut, press the
leftmost cursor routing key followed immediately by the one over the
appropriate cell. Then, to mark the bottom right corner, press the
second cursor routing key followed immediately by the one over the
appropriate cell.
THE STATUS CELLS
================
The status cells are used slightly differently from the DOS driver.
The first four cells are used to denote the positions of the cursor
and the Braille window, and form two lines of four numbers. The top
line is the cursor position in the format CCRR where CC is the column
number and RR is the row number. The second line is the window
position in the same format. The top left corner of the screen is
0000, in this notation.
The fifth status cell is a set of flags, as follows:
Dot Number Dot Present Means
1 The screen is frozen
2 Attribute display is on
3 Audio signals are on
4 The cursor is visible
5 Cursor shape is block
6 Cursor blink is on
7 Cursor tracking is on
8 Sliding window is on
Nikhil Nair
Trinity College, CAMBRIDGE, CB2 1TQ, England
Tel.: +44 1223 368353
Email: nn201@cus.cam.ac.uk
