Braille Encoding

Background

For the Fall 1999 edition of The Perl Journal, Sheri Wells and I wrote an article about Braille encoding as a case study in regular expression string replacement. The article was based somewhat on a talk I presented at the Yet Another Perl Conference in June 1999.

You can see the article and the illustration that goes with it. David Ondrik took the picture of the Tack Tiles that appeared on the cover of TPJ #15.

See also the Perl source and data tables to the Braille encoder I got more-or-less working, using just regular expression string replacement. The article was a study in algorithmics more than anything else, so I don't expect that anyone'd take my code and use it as the basis for a new braille encoder -- since tried-and-true encoders already exist. But you never know who it might prove interesting or useful to!

See also a chart from my handout at the conference, a List of Characters in American Literary Braille.

Braille and Braille-Encoding Links