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BRLTTY is Copyright (C) 1995-2003 by the
BRLTTY Team.
BRLTTY comes with NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, placed under the
GNU General Public License, as
published by the
Free Software Foundation.
The current production version of BRLTTY is 4.3 (October 10, 2011).
It can be downloaded in the following formats:
The current production version of BrlAPI is 0.5.6 (October 10, 2011).
It can be downloaded in the following formats:
BRLTTY can also be downloaded from:
- The Public's Library
-
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/access/
- The Blinux Site
-
ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux/brltty/
After downloading the package, install it as follows:
.tar.gz-
This flavour of the package contains the source and documentation
in a form which can be built on any system.
To unpack, configure, compile, and install it, do:
tar -xzf brltty-release.tar.gz
cd brltty-release
./configure
make
make install
The ./configure script is only provided with version 3.1 and beyond;
for earlier releases, carefully edit the top-level Makefile.
.arch.rpm-
This flavour of the package contains the compiled binaries and documentation
in RedHat Package Manager format.
To install or upgrade it, do:
rpm -Uvh brltty-release-version.arch.rpm
.src.rpm-
This flavour of the package contains the source and documentation
in RedHat Package Manager format.
To build it, do:
rpm -ivh brltty-release-version.src.rpm
rpm -bi brltty-release-version
After installing the package,
be sure to read its README file.
If you try BRLTTY, do
leave us a note!
We would like to know who the users of BRLTTY are.
This site offers binary packages for the later releases of BRLTTY
in the following formats:
- RPM (RedHat Package Manager)
See the Current Release
and the Old Releases
subsections of this page.
Debian packages for BRLTTY can be found at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/b/brltty/.
The following braillified installer and rescue images are available
(see below for instructions):
Some brief notes on writing to (burning) CDs:
-
If you're using a rewritable CD
then you should erase it first with a command like:
cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 blank=fast
-
You can write an image to a CD with a command like:
cdrecord -v -dao dev=0,0,0 -data image
-
For more information on writing to a CD, please check the
CD-Writing HOWTO.
If you're not doing this from a Linux system,
e.g. you're installing your first Linux system,
then remember that you need to write the image as raw data to the CD.
For installer images, the following modifications have been made:
- BRLTTY has been added (all drivers, all tables).
- The timeout for the initial boot loader prompt has been disabled.
- The default kernel configuration to be booted has been changed to text.
- The use of frame buffers for the text consoles has been disabled.
For rescue images, the following additional modifications have been made:
- Text consoles are used when rescue is selected.
- The use of frame buffers for the rescue consoles is disabled.
After booting from any of these images,
wait a few seconds after the CD has begun to spin
in order to give the boot loader enough time to get started
and to present its initial prompt.
Don't worry about waiting too long before typing
since the timeout for the initial prompt has been disabled.
- Then enter:
-
text brltty=driver,device,table
- For example:
-
text brltty=ht,ttyS1,de
Note that text starts the installer.
To rescue a system, use a rescue image
and specify rescue instead of text.
You may omit any operand of the brltty= parameter,
allowing it to default,
simply by not specifying it.
You also needn't specify any trailing commas
resulting from omitted operands.
For example:
- text brltty=driver,device,
- text brltty=driver,device
- text brltty=driver,
- text brltty=driver
- text brltty=driver,,table
- text brltty=driver,,
- driver
-
The first operand is the two-letter identifier of the driver for your braille display.
It's the only required operand.
- device
-
The second operand is the device to which your braille display is connected.
It's optional, and defaults to the primary serial port
(/dev/ttyS0).
If your display is connected to a serial port then specify
either the name (e.g. ttyS1) of
or the path (e.g. /dev/ttyS1) to
the corresponding device.
If it's connected to the USB then specify usb:
(the trailing colon is important).
- table
-
The third operand is the text translation table you wish to use.
It's optional, and defaults to nabcc
(North American Braille Computer Code).
See the text.*.tbl files
in the BrailleTables subdirectory
of BRLTTY's source tree for alternatives.
If your braille display uses a serial connection
then it's possible that the installer's probe for a serial mouse
will disturb the communication between BRLTTY and your display.
If your display stops working for no apparent reason during the initial stages
then try restarting the install and adding the noprobe parameter.
Since many models
either appear to be immune to this problem
or manage to recover from it,
you should only use this parameter if you need to
because a possible side-effect is that
you may need to answer more questions about your system's configuration.
If you're doing an install,
you may wish to make the following changes to the system
before rebooting to it.
While none is essential,
you should give serious consideration to each.
To prepare for making any of these changes, do the following:
-
Wait for the prompt to reboot the system
which is presented after the packages have been installed.
This ensures that the packages which require changes,
as well as your favourite editor,
are all available.
-
Switch to the installer's interactive shell
by pressing CTRL-ALT-F2 (all at once).
-
Switch to the installed system by executing the command:
<![CDATA[chroot /mnt/sysimage]]>
The changes which you may wish to make to the installed system are:
- Serial Port Probing
-
If your braille display is connected to your computer via a serial port
then it's possible that communication between the two will be disrupted
when the installed system probes for added or removed serial hardware.
You can disable serial port probing
by putting kudzu into safe mode.
Use your favourite editor
to change SAFE from no to yes
in /etc/sysconfig/kudzu.
You can also do this by executing the following command:
<![CDATA[sed -e '/^SAFE=/s/no/yes/' -i /etc/sysconfig/kudzu]]>
- Graphical Configuration Stage
-
If you have no sighted assistance when doing the install
then you'll find yourself stuck as soon as the installed system is booted.
This is because the last stage of the install
uses a graphical interface to configure various components
of the system while it's booting for the first time.
This stage can be disabled by executing the command:
<![CDATA[/sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 firstboot off]]>
- Graphical Login Screen
-
Unless you've explicitly deselected the X server,
the installed system will typically be configured
to boot to a graphical login screen.
If you choose to leave it like that,
e.g. if you share your system with sighted users,
then you can still always switch to a text login screen
by pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 (all at once) after the graphical screen is up.
Alternatively, you can disable the graphical login screen
by changing the default run-level.
Use your favourite editor to change the run-level
on the initdefault line
in /etc/inittab
from 5 to 3.
You can also do this by executing the following command:
<![CDATA[sed -e '/^id:/s/5/3/' -i /etc/inittab]]>
BRLTTY is developed within a subversion repository.
You can access the repository yourself
if you have the subversion client.
To download and/or learn how to use the subversion client,
go to [http://subversion.tigris.org/].
The repository is at [svn://mielke.cc/].
Here are a few simple things which you can do:
-
To check out your own copy of the latest development source, do:
svn checkout svn://mielke.cc/main/brltty
This will create the directory brltty in your current working directory.
To pick up the latest changes from that point on,
go to that directory and do:
svn update
No derived files, e.g. the configure script, are stored within the repository.
If you would like to build BRLTTY, then,
after checking out the source tree,
you must first create all of the initial derived files by running
the autogen script
(autogen.sh in older releases)
in the top-level directory.
cd brltty
./autogen
In order for autogen to run successfully, you need at least the following:
- Autoconf 2.53
-
If the default autoconf on your system is too old
then assign whatever command will invoke a sufficiently new
autoconf
to the environment variable BRLTTY_AUTOCONF.
export BRLTTY_AUTOCONF=autoconf-2.53
- TclX (Extended Tcl) 8.3
-
The Extended Tcl shell is assumed to be in
/usr/bin/tcl.
If it's in a different place on your system
then adjust the path in the first line of the gendeps script.
Most of the old releases of BRLTTY are still available:
