Liblouisutdml is an open-source library providing complete braille transcription services for xml, html and text documents. It translates into appropriate braille codes and formats according to its style sheet and the specifications in the document. A command-line program, file2brl which uses this library is also included. The latest version of liblouis is required. Java bindings are built in to the library.

The library is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3 or later. See the file COPYING.LIB.

The command line tools, are licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.0 or later. See the file COPYING.

For documentation, see liblouisutdml.html or liblouisutdml.txt. These are in the docs directory. For an example of a configuration file, see liblouisutdml.ini and preferences.cfg. For examples of semantics-action files, see dtbook.sem and nemeth.sem. These files are in the lbu_files subdirectory. For examples of translation tables, see en-us-g2.ctb, en-us-g1.ctb, chardefs.cti, nemeth.ctb and whatever other files they may include. These are all in the tables directory of liblouis.

First obtain the latest version of liblouis and compile it. Before compiling, you should chose between 16- and 32-bit Unicode, as described in the README file and the documentation. liblouisutdml inherits this choice from liblouis.

After unpacking the distribution tarball for liblouisutdml go to the directory it creates. After running configure run make and make install. You will need root privileges for the installation step.

This will produce the liblouisutdml library and the program file2brl. To compile the Java bindings go to the java subdirectory and run ant.

Note that that the library and programs will not work properly unless you have first installed the latest version of liblouis.

There are docker images for liblouisutdml and liblouis. So to run liblouisutdml from docker simply type the following command which will bring you into a shell where you can invoke file2brl:

$ docker run -it liblouis/liblouisutdml /bin/bash
root@74a8b1ad5e03:/usr/src/liblouisutdml# file2brl --help
Usage: file2brl [OPTION] [inputFile] [outputFile]
Translate an xml or a text file into an embosser-ready braille file.
This includes translation into grade two, if desired, mathematical 
codes, etc. It also includes formatting according to a built-in 
style sheet which can be modified by the user.

If inputFile is not specified or '-' input is taken from stdin. If outputFile
is not specified the output is sent to stdout.

  -h, --help          	  display this help and exit
  -v, --version       	  display version information and exit
  -f, --config-file       name a configuration file that specifies
                          how to do the translation
  -b, --backward      	  backward translation
  -r, --reformat      	  reformat a braille file
  -T, --text		  Treat as text even if xml
  -t, --html              html document, not xhtml
  -p, --poorly-formatted  translate a poorly formatted file
  -P, --paragraph-line    treat each block of text ending in a newline
                          as a paragraph. If there are two newline characters
                          a blank line will be inserted before the next paragraph
  -C, --config-setting    specify particular configuration settings
                          They override any settings that are specified in a
                          config file
  -w  --writeable-path    path for temp files and log file
  -l, --log-file          write errors to file2brl.log instead of stderr

Report bugs to <[email protected]>.
root@74a8b1ad5e03:/usr/src/liblouisutdml# 

You can use a Dockerfile to cross-compile liblouisutdml using mingw either for 32 or for 64 bit architecture:

# for 32 bit architecture
docker build -f Dockerfile.win32 .
# for 64 bit architecture
docker build -f Dockerfile.win64 .

Then grab the artifact from the docker container.

Or instead let the Makefile do it all for you:

make distwin