Hi. This is probably mostly for the webmaster, but I would like to get input from others on this list. Also, if you think this is off topic, I can move this discussion to the gutvol-p list instead. Has any progress been made with regards to making PG books available in Braille formatted files? There is at least one free Braille translator for *nix that I know of. I haven't seen this on the recode or bibrec pages. I would be willing to test the Braille output. I know of others who would probably also be interested. Probably a link on the recode page would be best, but it would be nice to see a link as part of the standard download links on the bibrec pages. That link could probably be a cgi program which would call the translator, NFBTrans, which would convert the file. I believe that it can be set to write to stdout, but it might be more convenient to have it create a separate file with the .brf extension for downloading. Here are a couple of issues to keep in mind. First, Braille only works with 7-bit, upper case files. NFBTrans will convert from mixed case just fine, but it is important that they are not 8-bit files. Braille does not support international accented characters. There are different Braille codes for other languages such as Spanish or German, but I don't know how well NFBTrans supports them. Besides it would be difficult to have an automated way of passing this information on the command line at the time of translation. Second, it will work only on plain text. It does not convert from html at all. Third, it might be best to have two links, one for a single file and one for multiple volumes. The reason why is that one printed page is about 3-6 Braille pages, depending on the size of the print and any illustrations. Many blind people now use special PDAs which can handle big files, but large files are bad for embossers. If someone downloads and tries to emboss a 300 page print book, it could easily be 900-1,000 pages in Braille. So, it is best to also make smaller files available. This is known as volumes. that same book could be downloaded in three Braille Volumes of 100-250 Braille pages each. That is much better for binding etc. I think the best way to do this is with the standard split utility. You can set it for X lines and that would be perfect. It would not indicate at the top of each new file that it is a subsequent volume in a set, but that can be added by the person doing the embossing if desired. I don't know exactly what the correct number of lines per file is, but I can check into that. Finally, after the translation to Braille options are set up and working, it would be nice if PG could have an official press release announcing this service. I know of several groups for the blind and many blind individuals who would be very interested. This is not as good of a solution as making books available in the new DAISY format, but I am not aware of a free html to DAISY converter, and I don't think that DAISY works on plain text at all. Once a master xml format is in place, conversion to DAISY would be even simpler, but I don't think there are any free tools. Really all that needs to be done is to integrate a script into the PG site that calls nfbtrans and generates the .brf file. The .brf can be sent to the browser for downloading. Windows users would probably have to right-click on the Braille links and save the files manually. It would not be much harder for the multiple volumes, just use a split utility on the .brf file and create a temporary page with each piece of the file linked so they can also be downloaded and saved. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I don't mind testing or finding others to test, but I admit that my knowledge of cgi scripting is almost zero. I can compile nfbtrans easily enough, but I don't know how to integrate it into the recode facility or the PG site in general.