> Curtis Chong writes:
> >
> > Secondly, the software that is used to drive the plotter should be
> > able to receive as input graphic files that are created using
> > traditional drawing programs. This would enable sighted people not
> > conversant with braille to create pictures that can then be read by
> > a blind person. It would also simplify the creation of braille
> > pictures and diagrams because we would not have to develop special
> > drawing software.
> >
>
> While this sounds good in theory and I realize that some good drawings
> have been created from graphics formats designed for print, I
> believe that Curtis' requirement isn't as simple as it might
> seem. In particular, it is my experience that isometric (that is,
> perspective) drawings don't translate into tactile images well (Pual
> Gabias and I may differ here) and therefore it's problematical whether
> drawings much more complicated than line drawings would come out well
> when translated. Then again, may be we could design software
> which would have sufficient "smarts" to translate from the sighted
> environment into something we blind persons could make sense of.
There is a program that already exists to convert
existing print graphics into a file suitable for printing
in Braille. It is called Lowrez and was written by Chuck Hallenbeck
of KANSYS, Inc. I have played with it a very little,
but not much. We will be looking at it in the next round of
Braille evaluations for APH, in the next few months.
It will convert existing formats like tiff, pcx, and wpg,
and allows a blind person to do some manipulation and drawing.
You are right Mike that graphics need to be relatively
simple, like line drawings, or you get overwhelmed
with dot noise.
David Andrews
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Dec 02 2012 - 01:30:03 PST