RE: Serving XHTML as XML

>> How do the open standards advocates feel about
>> [requiring Word to pre-process HTML for Braille translation]?

> Fine.  Although I am surprised that people have gone to the effort
> of translating the proprietary Word format,

Except that the "people" doing this effort is the developer of the Braille translation software, DBT.  Duxbury is merely satisfy consumer demand.  Chronologically, they first provided direct importing of WordPerfect files.  It was several years latter that they began to allow direct importation of Word files.  The explicit HTML import feature was added years after that.  I understand and appreciate Duxbury's decision to give priority to the proprietary word processing formats.  I just don't quite understand why the HTML import feature is still so weak after all these years.

> if it is really not possible to print a text dump from Links or
> W3M (since Lynx still handles tables badly, which is one of
> you apparent requirements).

I don't follow how a text browser relates to Braille translation of HTML.  All browsers save the same source files when one saves web pages.  Translating HTML to plain text is easy enough, but one looses way too much information.  For the record, I have come to understand that Lynx does a fine job with large data tables.

> What is the process for sharing a translation rules that some
> clever expert wrote? Do you buy it from Duxbury, or can you
> just pass them around?

I don't think I am plugged into the right DBT support groups, so I very much appreciated Lloyds help.  Duxbury doesn't sell extra rules.  I have read their license agreement closely, but I would guess that they do not prohibit such a thing, but they don't facilitate it either.  We are talking an expensive commercial product here.  I guess my expectations for the out-of-the-box experience are a little high.

My main point on this thread was that XHTML makes things, in practice, a little more difficult for Braille production.  Lloyd points out that I am incorrect because I should be using the NISO Daisy/NIMAS filter and not the one for HTML.

Received on Friday, 25 February 2005 20:25:34 UTC