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Creating formatted documents on an iPhone with a braille display (self.Blind)
submitted by garlic-lover
As a deafblind user that uses a braille display, I'm looking for advice for creating formatted documents on my iPhone. I've tried MS Word 365 but it seems that it doesn't capture everything typed and formatting things is time consuming because it doesn't recognize UEB type form characters for bold, italics, etc. I've considered using Markdown but there are a few characters I don't know how to create with UEB like back tick and the pipe symbol. I've also tried Textastic but that seems to be really slow to respond to input and misses a lot of the input too. I'm using an iPhone 13 mini with the latest iOS updates.
BenandGracie 1 points 1y ago
I use Markdown on every platform, but I am not sure how to make those symbols come out right. Maybe look at HTML. You can put HTML in Markdown documents. Maybe that would work.
garlic-lover [OP] 1 points 1y ago
The problem with HTML is it is a lot more verbose and finicky about opening and closing tags being balanced. For now, I picked a few letter combinations that won't conflict with anything else in the document. Like {P} for pipe, {T} for tilde, and {B} for back tick allowing me to create brf files on my orbit reader 40 without being connected to my iPhone and later running the file through Liblouis and sed to produce the final markdown output.
```
cat bb.brf | from-brf-g2.sh | sed -e "s;{P};\|;g" -e "s;{B};\`;g" -e "s;{T};\~;g" > bb.md
```
```
cat bb.brf | from-brf-g2.sh | sed -e "s;{P};\|;g" -e "s;{B};\`;g" -e "s;{T};\~;g" > bb.md
```
BenandGracie 1 points 1y ago
That's a good point about HTML.
I haven’t found myself needing anything fancy out of Markdown yet. I can usually get by with basic heading and italic mark up.
I haven’t found myself needing anything fancy out of Markdown yet. I can usually get by with basic heading and italic mark up.
BlindGuyNW 1 points 1y ago
I know that the Notes app can apply text formatting, as can Word, but it will probably be annoying to use with just the display.
I would definitely suggest Markdown if you can figure out how to type those symbols in UEB, they certainly exist. I wonder if any software recognizes the letter form indicators when interspersed with regular text, I'd imagine something like Duxbury Braille translator might, but I don't think i"ve encounter that in any other applications.
I hope you can figure this out. I am personally a fan of LaTeX, but that's much more oriented towards academic writing and could be a bit of overkill depending n your needs.
I would definitely suggest Markdown if you can figure out how to type those symbols in UEB, they certainly exist. I wonder if any software recognizes the letter form indicators when interspersed with regular text, I'd imagine something like Duxbury Braille translator might, but I don't think i"ve encounter that in any other applications.
I hope you can figure this out. I am personally a fan of LaTeX, but that's much more oriented towards academic writing and could be a bit of overkill depending n your needs.
garlic-lover [OP] 1 points 1y ago
I've been a fan of Markdown for years. It's the quickest and simplest for writing that I've used over the decades.
I've only seen the two symbols I'm looking for in computer braille so far.
I've only seen the two symbols I'm looking for in computer braille so far.
BlindGuyNW 1 points 1y ago
Okay, let me see. Typing the symbols into a document yields the following…
Backtick (grave accent) is dots 5-6, 6, 3-5-6. Vertical bar is dots 4-5-6, 12-56. I can type them in on my Mac and they both work as expected, I imagine the phone is the same.
I hope this helps.
Backtick (grave accent) is dots 5-6, 6, 3-5-6. Vertical bar is dots 4-5-6, 12-56. I can type them in on my Mac and they both work as expected, I imagine the phone is the same.
I hope this helps.
garlic-lover [OP] 1 points 1y ago
When I try to back translate those from .brf to text they come back as invalid escape sequences unfortunately.
BlindGuyNW 1 points 1y ago
That's weird. How are you backtranslating? I can confirm that the vertical line at least is correct, it's used in math equations among other places. Note that the grave accent is three cells while the vertical bar is two just to be clear.
FaerilyRowanwind 1 points 1y ago
The commands list has something in editing called output text style. I wonder if this would allow you to change the styles as you write. It’s dot 2, dot 3, dot 4, dot 5 , dot 6, space bar
garlic-lover [OP] 1 points 1y ago
It appears that output text style only displays the current text style on the braille display.
FaerilyRowanwind 1 points 1y ago
Hmmm. Well. That sucks. I feel there has to be a quick change for this. I know on computer you can get into the ribbon. Technically you should be able to on the iPhone too… there should be a way to do the drop menu…… maybe through the rotor
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