[Blindmath] Crazy question about Braille 'writing'

[Birkir R. Gunnarsson]

Ryan

If you mean physically, where the braille keyboard is vertical on the
left and the right (3 buttons each), I don't think anything like that
exists, and it would be awfully uncomfortable to type on it.
If you just mean a one to one correspondance between braille dots and
keyboard, yes, it is called the Perkins keyboard, and it is shipped on
most braille notetakers like the PacMate, Braillesense, Braillenote
etc (Freedom Scientific, GW Micro, Humanware respectively). I am too
lazy to put the links in there.
You can get a perkins keyboard emulator for the computer as a freeware
from Duxbury, called Perkiduck.
 I believe your f, d, and s keys are mapped to the left column and j,
k and  to the right.
I am not aware of an 8-dot Perkins emulator, though I don't seehow
it'd be hard to make one with some programming and use mapping
libraries such as Liblouis.
Cheers
-B

On 4/22/12, Ryan Hemphill <ryanhemphill.email at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, as my subject states, I've got a seemingly crazy/sane question about
> Braille.
>
> Since Braille is composed of 6 to 8 dot 'characters', it would seem logical
> to me that if someone wished to do math by writing out their equation -
> would it not be possible or reasonable to have a hardware device that has 6
> button sets that are the right size for fingers in the same arrangement
> that the user could physically write the Braille characters?  I would see
> this, in my opinion of course, to be very helpful - especially in Math.
>  Some of the best thinking I've done has involved physical (not typing,
> mind you) handwriting.  Is there a device out there that has this
> one-to-one relationship that I'm talking about, and if so, is anyone using
> such a thing for Braille Math?  Granted, I could see it being slower, but
> in a case like Braille Math - slowing down to write it yourself as opposed
> to typing it would make a lot sense.
>
>
> Ryan
>
> --
>
>
>
> Shipping is a Feature...Perhaps the Most Important Feature.
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