This plugin should be considered to be alpha software for now. It is being developed with active testing on a single Moodle installation. While it may be useful in conjunction with a Braille translation service, it is not packaged and distributed as a one-click installation. However, the following Moodle documentation may prove helpful in installing and configuring the filter.
The filter provides a number of short codes.
This short code allows you to enter the dot codes for Braille characters to be rendered using the UTF-8 range for Braille. The result is the display of the dot patterns on the computer display. The text is encoded in the web page as Braille, so any user software should be able to distinguish the appearance of Braille characters from non-Braille characters.
[BDots 123 0 456]
The above example will result in three Braille cells. The first cell will show the left column of dots. The second cell will show no dots (i.e., a Braille spacing character). The third cell will show the right column of dots.
Underscores and zeros are interchangeable for a Braille spacing cell.
Other characters may be mixed in with the numbers for legibility. For
example, all of the following are equivalent: 124 1.2.4 1-2-4 1_2_4
12.4... As long as the cell patterns are separated by spaces, any
non-digit characters are ignored.
This short code allows you to translate English text into the ASCII codes for embossing Braille. The translation service works well with plain ASCII English text, but doesn't handle some special characters such as em-dashes. The translation service also does not work with Nemeth Braille for math text.
[EmbBraille]English text to be translated to embossing codes.[/EmbBraille]
N.B.: This short code requires the configuration of the remote translation service. For more information, see the configuration section below.
This short code allows you to translate English text into the UTF-8 codes for Braille. The translation service works well with plain ASCII English text, but doesn't handle some special characters such as em-dashes. The translation service also does not work with Nemeth Braille for math text.
[SimBraille]English text to be translated to UTF-8 Braille codes.[/SimBraille]
N.B.: This short code requires the configuration of the remote translation service. For more information, see the configuration section below.
Braille translation requires the use of a remote translation service as described in the top-level README. An Amazon machine image is available with which you may start such a service.
Once you have a remote translation service available, you can configure the Moodle filter by going to Site Administration > Plugins > Filters > Braille Shortcode Filter. Enter the URL of the translation service in the text box for "Remote LibLouis service".
In the following image, we have copied the location of the remote translation service from the instructions for setting up an instance of the translation service on Amazon's EC2 cloud service.
