Sao Mai Braille 24.7 Release Announcement

Dear All,

Sao Mai Centre for the Blind are thrilled to release Sao Mai Braille 24.7, featuring exciting new updates, improvements, and bug fixes, especially for math and music. SMB is not just a free Braille translation software solution but also a tool that enhances the learning and working experiences of blind individuals.

SMCB hopes you enjoy using SMB and would highly appreciate your help in spreading the word to others.

Please find the release announcement below.

Highlights in the SMB 24.7 release include: adding 7 new braille translation tables for text (Serbian Cyrillic, Biblical Hebrew, Yiddish, Akkadian, Syriac, Ugaritic, and Transliterated Cuneiform); speaking mathematical expressions in Swedish and Italian; converting mathematical expressions to ASCIIMath, LaTeX, and Swedish Braille codes; reading music score in navigation mode (experimental), improving numerous Braille translation rules for large scores with complex notation, adding 3 new music transcription options, supporting to insert various new music file types when MuseScore is installed; and many other new features and improvements.

We have created a dedicated web page to post tutorial videos for Sao Mai Braille at: https://saomaicenter.org/en/blog/SMBVideos

Sections in the user guide are also referenced to related videos, which you can watch on our Youtube channel as well.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Mr. Hu Haipeng and the DAISY Music Braille project for sponsoring two months of development to fix issues and improve existing features of the Braille music translation.

Please Visit the main page of Sao Mai Braille to download!

The details about this release are:

General

For Braille literature text translation, update to LibLouis 3.30: support new Braille translation tables for Serbian Cyrillic, Biblical Hebrew, Yiddish, Akkadian Borger and U.S systems, Syriac, Ugaritic, and Transliterated Cuneiform. Additionally, various improvements are made for Danish, Hungarian and Dutch tables.
For mathematics, updated to MathCAT 0.6.3: support new languages for speech output in Italian and Swedish, and new Braille math codes in ASCIIMath, LaTeX and Swedish.
Save Braille document in additional TXT file type.
When running SMB with JAWS/NVDA for the first time, it will alert you to set the display’s scale layout to 100% if you experience the issue that the menus and dialogues are not read correctly.
Re-enable all level X-Y styles up to level 11-11.
Update missing Braille display Ascii code files.
Improve navigation in the print dialogue in Braille documents.
Fix issue of not responding when browsing by category in the math equation insert dialogue in some cases.
When the “Check spelling as you type” option is enabled, screen readers report “misspell” if the typed word has an error.
Alert when spell check is complete and close the dialogue.
Fix the issue of not reading characters when moving left/right arrow keys in a table with Jaws.
Screen readers should speak the cell’s content when navigating by Tab and Shift+Tab in a table.
Fix “access violation” error when opening a BRF file and pressing Ctrl+P to print.
Fix placing the table of contents in the wrong location when converting from print to Braille.

Music

Music navigation mode (experimental feature): At the inserted score in the print document, press Shift+F5 or choose “Navigation mode” from the View menu to enable it. Then, use navigation keys to read the score with Braille and speech output.
Press right/left arrow to move to next/previous note item, up/down to move to voice above/below, ctrl+right/left to move to next/previous measure, home/end to beginning/end of current page, pagedown/pageup to next/previous page, ctrl+home/end to top/bottom of score, and ctrl+g to specify the measure number and presss enter to go to it.
Press Escape to return to the main editing window.
Watch the tutorial video on how to read music score in navigation mode, or refer to the music section in the User Guide for more details.
Support for inserting music scores with new file types (including MSCZ, MIDI and MEI). MuseScore software is used to convert these file types into MusicXML files, which are then translated into Braille by SMB. This file type conversion process between Musescore and SMB is carried out internally.
It requires MuseScore to be installed on your computer. You must specify the path of the MuseScore executable file on the General Settings page in the Options dialog.
Add the “multi-staff naming” option in the Staff tab page of the Score Info dialogue. By default, the Braille staff name is assigned automatically. Choose “Off” to not assign a name to the selected staff.
In the Staff tab of the Score Info dialogue, improve the detection of hidden staves and list only the visible ones for customization.
The “Stop doubling at the end of a parallel” option now works correctly.
Improve handling of hidden rests in staves with multiple voices.
Improve tuplet doubling.
Move pedal and hairpin directions to the correct position when joining two voices for part in-accord.
Fix the issue of not stating the print line number as having tempo text when translated in full score mode.
Improve staff and hand detection. It will respect the originally assigned hand for a voice on a staff. It only changes to the other hand if the whole voice of a measure changes to a new staff.
Improve measure rests on multiple staves in the same measure.
Improve slurs starting from multiple voices but ending in the same voice on the same staff. They will all be treated as normal slurs.
Fix the issue of missing long text direction when it appears with a metronome.
Add an option to combine hidden voice containing notation of note properties . If checked, notational elements on hidden voices are ignored. Otherwise, hidden voices are written in full-measure in-accord. Find this option in “Multiple voices” group on music Braille’s Transcription page in Options dialogue.
Improve tied-into and L.V. ties.
Improve part in-accord and measure repeat: do not repeat one voice of a measure when the voice in the previous measure is in part in-accord mode.
Improve part in-accord and part-measure repeat: only repeat when the repeated and original pieces are both in the combined voice or in the part-measure beat passage.
Stating the octave sign at the first note of a measure is now based on the last note of a Braille measure, instead of checking with the last note of the same voice in the previous measure.
The hand sign is now stated by checking its previous hand sign change in a Braille measure, rather than checking the changes in the same voice.
Not stating supplemental accidentals when the note is written in the combined voice while the accidental change is in the previous part-measure in-accord.
Add an option to apply repeat when matching both notated accidental mark and actual pitch. If not selected, it just checks for actual pitch regardless of the note notated with the accidental mark or not. Find this option in the Repetition group on music Braille’s transcription page in Options dialogue.
Support detecting and applying custom Braille definitions for instrument changes: use the correct instrument name and abbreviation in both single-part and full score modes, use custom Braille name and abbreviation, and list in the instrument list for full score mode.
Improve custom staff name defining functions: added an option to choose not to automatically name the staff. Auto-staff-naming is correct by adding alphabets of ABC etc., if the last Braille character of the part abbreviation is one of the Braille lower numbers: 1234567890.” Otherwise, it will be named as lower Braille numbers of 123456789.
Add an option to show/hide note size. Supported detection of cue, grace-cue, large, and normal note sizes. For chords with mixed note sizes, the sign will be stated before the written or interval note, then following notes should be considered in the same size unless there’s a sign to indicate the change. Find this option in the Show/hide symbols list on the music Braille’s transcription page in Options dialogue.
Showing hand changes doesn’t effect doubling and repeat anymore.
Force to state key signature when it’s printed but it has the same value with the running one.
Fix crashing and hanging issues, and many other minor improvements.