/chisel

Tools and filters to use Braille embossers in Unix systems, optionally with CUPS.

Primary LanguageC

Chisel - Braille embosser filters

Chisel is a Free Software set of tools and filters to use Braille embossers in Unix systems. Most of the time it is used in conjunction with CUPS.

Installation

  1. (Optional) Edit Makefile.config to suit your needs.
  2. make
  3. make install

Also, you may want to set the installation prefix by passing PREFIX=/usr (or any other path) to the Make invocation.

Packagers may want to pass DESTDIR=/path/to/tmpdir in the installation step, to perform installation in an alternative file system root.

Basic usage

Obtaining information

The following command can be used to list the supported devices:

chisel -S chisel-ppd list simple

(Changing simple to plain will list only first column with the device identifiers.)

A PostScript Printer Definition (PPD) file to be used with other printing systems like CUPS is can be obtained by providing the device identifier to the following command:

chisel -S chisel-ppd cat device-id > file.ppd

Translate a text document to chisel document format

The following command can be used to convert a text file to a file in the [Chisel device-independent document format]:

chisel -S texttochisel < input.txt > output.chsl

This is a basic tool, and doesn't touch any options, but can be useful as a starting point. You can manually edit the resulting document output.chsl to configure the needed options (see docformat.md for the available configurable options). It is also possible to pass document-global options as command line arguments:

chisel -S texttochisel copies=5 < input.txt > output.chsl

Rendering a document

Provided that a file is already in the Chisel device-independent document format (examples can be found under the doc/examples/ subdirectory), the next command can be used to render it into a raw stream of data that can be then sent to the device. For example for an Index Braille Basic-D device:

chisel -S chiseltodev device=indexbraille/basic-d \
  < input.chsl > output.raw

Then, supposing that the embosser device is the /dev/lp0 device, it can be sent directly to it:

cat output.raw > /dev/lp0

or even directly using the device as output for the command above:

chisel -S chiseltodev device=indexbraille/basic-d \
  < input.chsl > /dev/lp0

The raw output files contain all the information that a particular device model needs to know to properly emboss a document. Note that raw output generated for one device cannot be used for another which is a different model.