Wednesday 31 December 2008

To Braille or not to Braille!


I forgot to explain how to enable braille display support when I wrote the original 'How to Roll Your Own Vinux'. For some reason brltty is not enabled by default in Ubuntu 8.10 and therefore has to be manually enabled and configured. Firstly you have to open the /etc/default/brltty file by typing 'sudo gedit /etc/default/brltty' into a terminal. Then find the line which reads 'RUN_BRLTTY=no' and change it to 'RUN_BRLTTY=yes' and save the changes. This will add brltty to the list of applications which run when Vinux starts. Secondly you have to open the /etc/brltty.conf file by typing 'sudo gedit /etc/brltty.conf' into a terminal and uncomment the relevant configuration settings by deleting the '#' at the beginning of the lines. The settings I configured were: 'braille-driver auto # autodetect', 'text-table en_UK # English (United Kingdom)' and 'contraction-table en-uebc-g2 # Grade 2 Unified English Braille Code'. Which enables braille display autoprobing at boot with English six-dot contracted Grade 2 braille output once Orca is running. Thanks to Osvaldo La Rosa for suggesting this modification and providing simple instructions on how to do it!