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- BRLTTY Driver for the Tieman Voyager Braille Display
- This is the user-space-only version of the driver.
- Version 0.10 (March 2004)
-
- Copyright 2004 by StΘphane Doyon <s.doyon@videotron.ca>
-
- This is a partial rewrite of the driver which functions entirely from
- user-space (whereas the previous driver depended on a kernel driver for
- the USB communication with the Voyager display).
-
- This driver supports the Tieman Voyager 44 and 70.
-
- The driver works with later 2.4.x kernels and with at least some versions
- in the 2.6.x series.
- Note that the kernel brlvger driver used with the old BRLTTY driver does
- not work properly with 2.6.x kernels.
-
- Many thanks to the Tieman people: Corand van Strien, Ivar Illing, Daphne
- Vogelaar and Ingrid Vogel. They provided us with a Braille display (as
- well as programming information) so that we could write this driver. They
- replaced the display when it broke and they answered our technical
- questions. It is very motivating when companies take an interest in such
- projects and are so supportive.
-
- Thanks to Andor Demarteau <ademarte@students.cs.uu.nl> who got this whole
- project started and beta-tested all our early buggy attempts.
-
- Thanks to StΘphane Dalton who wrote the initial version of the old kernel
- driver. Without his initiative this project would not have been a success.
-
- This rewrite of the driver should allow more flexibility, but is as of yet
- very young and not thoroughly tested.
-
- When BRLTTY will be running, press the leftmost routing key to bring up
- the help screen so you can read the details of the key bindings.
-
- Users of the 2.6.x kernel may experience some difficulties. The old
- kernel driver, which is included in the official kernels, will actually
- get in the way of this driver as it will claim the USB interface to the
- display, and I've seen some hangs occur when BRLTTY asks to disconnect
- the kernel driver. If you have this problem you should make sure the
- kernel module called brlvger is not inserted into your kernel. One simple
- way to prevent that module from auto-loading is to rename the module file
- so it isn't found.
- cd /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/usb/
- mv brlvger.o brlvger.o.hold
- If lsmod shows the brlvger module as already loaded then do
- rmmod brlvger
-
- The old kernel driver will soon be pulled out of 2.6.x kernels.
-
- BRLTTY currently assumes the default braille device to be a serial port,
- so you must tell it that it is in fact USB.
- Either provide the "--with-braille-device=usb:" option when running the
- BRLTTY top-level ./configure command, or use the braille-device parameter
- in your BRLTTY configuration file (/etc/brltty.conf):
- braille-device usb:
-
- If you actually have more than one Voyager display connected at the same
- time, you can also specify the serial number of the device that you want
- to use.
-
- This driver knows a number of driver parameters which you can pass via
- the braille-parameters clause in your BRLTTY configuration file
- (/etc/brltty.conf) or via brltty's -B (--braille-parameters=) command
- line option.
-
- InputMode: This parameter specifies whether or not the eight top keys
- function as a braille keyboard. When set to "no" (the default), top
- key combinations perform various navigational and operational
- functions. When set to yes", they function as an 8-dot braille
- keyboard. If B, C, or B+C is pressed along with any top key
- combination then it's as if this parameter were set to "no".
-
- There are only a handful of BRLTTY users, so if you are trying out this
- driver, please drop us a note, even if you have no problems!
-
- Note to BRLTTY developers: This is my first attempt at combining the key
- binding definitions with the help file text in one place, through
- annotations in the braille.c file. If you change the key bindings,
- currently you need python installed to be able to rebuild the help
- files.
-