Greg Kearney has released Louis – The Macintosh Braille Translator version 1.0. Full release announcement follows.
DESCRIPTION:
Louis is a full featured braille translator for the Apple Macintosh. Designed around liblouis and liblouisxml Louis is designed to produce braille in a wide range of formats and languages.* Full Mac GUI with VoiceOver.
* Full online and local documentation.
* Translation of MS Word, text, XML, HTML DocBook, DAISY/NIMAS, NewsML.
* Ability to learn new XML based formats.
* Support for a wide range of languages.
* Support for MathML to nemeth translation.
* Back translation.
* Creating and saving custom configuration files.
* Including custom files.
* Integration with TextEdit, including a TextEdit menu script.
* Braille contextual menu for translating English text to U.S. Grade two braille in Cocoa applications.
* Braille widget for quick translations and sign making.
* Braille and BrailleShadow True Type fonts in the public domain.
* Ability to run translations from he command line.Louis and it's support programs are free, open source under the GNU license. The source code for Louis can also be downloaded from the Louis web site.
- Ricky Buchanan
Nancy Cormier December 7, 2009 at 5:34 am
I am currently taking a braille course and I used to be able to use Perky Duck with my Mac laptop with OSX. This does not work on my new Mac Book with Snow leopard. What do I need to download (that is free) to be able to use my computer to practice my braille lessons?
Mayleen January 11, 2010 at 5:06 am
same problem here Nancy…. HELP PLEASE!!!
Ricky Buchanan January 12, 2010 at 6:45 pm
@Nancy, Mayleen: It’s not possible to use Perky Duck with OS X because it’s just too old and Duxbury Systems have not updated the software for a long time. It’s like trying to run an MS-DOS program on Windows 7 – you just can’t do it.
I don’t know of any braille input software available for OS X at the moment, honestly. If you find any please let me know and I’ll make the information available on ATMac though!
Barbara September 3, 2010 at 4:01 am
I called Duxbury, who makes Perky Duck, and they said they were not going to upgrade their program to accommodate OS10. For those of us in a Braille class, can this Louis program be used in lieu of Perky Duck?
Ricky Buchanan September 23, 2010 at 6:09 pm
@Barbara: No, the Louis program is for converting text to braille format, not for typing. That’s a pity about Perky Duck but it’s good to be sure about it.
sarah November 27, 2010 at 10:05 am
I am using Perky Duck, but I cannot configure the punctuation marks as they are not the same as my keyboard’s punctuation marks. Is there a manual or a guide of some sort to finding the right keys for the punctuation marks like the comma, period, colon, semi-colon, dash, hyphen, and so forth?