It’s been four years, but I’ve finally updated Braille Music Notator to a new version with several features that I hope will have been worth the wait.
There are two big changes I’m most excited about:
- First, I haven’t just added more braille music symbols… I’ve added all the braille music symbols! Braille Music Notator now includes every symbol defined in BANA’s 2015 Music Braille Code, from harp diagrams to accordion notation to feathered beaming! If you go to Options > Controls > Full, you’ll see a new controls layout that includes the whole set of music symbols as well as a page containing the full International Phonetic Alphabet and a text page that includes all literary symbols.
- Second, I’ve redesigned the BRM file format that Braille Music Notator uses to save files in a way that preserves the musical context of each symbol. Instead of the old, proprietary and — well, odd — format Braille Music Notator used to use, the new format is XML based, extensible, open-source, and is currently capable of storing all braille music, IPA and UEB character sets, including several older characters. In fact, the format is designed to work alongside MusicXML, meaning a single file can store both graphic notation and braille notation at once.
Beyond those two, here’s the list of changes and improvements:
- Added ability to add symbol by their code point name (here’s the full list) by typing Command/Conrol-Backslash
- Changed some terminology to align with the 2015 BANA specification
- Fixed text contraction symbols to prevent overlapping characters
- Changed the coloring of a few symbols
- Fixed a bug which caused score selections to grow erratically
- Fixed a bug which caused clicks to be ignored when dialog boxes were visible
- Fixed a bug which caused the canvas to scroll after choosing “Select All” and “Delete”
- Diced a bug which prevented Command/Control-R from rotating through all possible characters
- Improved parsing of imported or pasted braille ASCII
I also updated Braille Music Viewer, the utility that allows you to include translated braille in any website:
- Rebuilt Braille Music Viewer from scratch to support the new file format
- Changed the interface to display the switch button only when the mouse is over the viewer
- Added a feature to convert selected ASCII characters to Unicode braille characters in text anywhere on the page
I’m sure there are still plenty of bugs lurking in there, and I still have plans to further improve the program, but I hope you all find this new version useful and reliable. Enjoy!