How it works
Text to braille
The converter writes Unified English Braille, grade 1: every letter spelled out, with no contractions. Each letter becomes one six-dot cell from the Unicode braille block (U+2800 to U+28FF).
A capital letter gets the capital indicator (dot 6) before it, and a word in capitals gets two. A run of digits starts with the number sign (dots 3-4-5-6) and uses the cells for a to j. When a letter from a to j follows a number, the grade 1 indicator (dots 5-6) is added so it is not read as a digit. Common punctuation has its own cells; anything else, such as é or &, passes through unchanged.
Braille to text
In Auto mode, input that contains braille cells is read back as text; anything else is converted to braille. Reading follows the same rules in reverse, so capitals, numbers and punctuation come back as they were written.
The braille keyboard enters cells without pasting: raise dots one by one and press Insert, or chord them on the f d s j k l keys as on a Perkins brailler (f, d, s are dots 1, 2, 3; j, k, l are dots 4, 5, 6).
Embossing and page count
The embossed view draws each cell with its raised dots and the faint pits of the others, with what it reads underneath; ⇧ marks a capital indicator and # a number sign.
The page count assumes a common embossing format of 40 cells by 25 lines: words are wrapped whole, a word longer than a line is split, and each line break starts a new line.
pages = ⌈lines ÷ 25⌉
