DBT for MS-Windows Product History

Version/Build Entered (Released)

DBT 10.7 SR1 / 2009-3-18 (2009-6-5)

Here is a list of what's new since DBT 10.7:

French fonts have been renamed to be compatible with DBT’s Word importer. Versions of the fonts shipped with DBT 10.7 were not being recognized for purposes of reading in braille text marked up to avoid “double translation”.
Swedish encoding of braille documents has been added. A new French encoding for braille documents, “French Chiffres”, has been added. The standard “French” braille encoding for braille documents has been modified to match updated standards; the older encoding is now called “French 6 points”. (These changes are in display.cpt.)
Revised French documentation, and revised French DBT and Word templates. These changes should affect only those who use adaptations to DBT developed at AVH for use in producing French braille.
Translation improvements have been made to these tables:
- English/American (literary and textbook templates) -- Both American tables have been updated to conform to new rules regarding partially-emphasized words, and for improved handling of Greek letters within English context. A new "variation" code has been added to permit entering fractions more conveniently using a simple slash, e.g. 1/2 for one-half, when appropriate (as in cookbooks).
- Arabic -- Additional Unicode characters are now supported, as well as the standard "Arabic" page.
- Bulgarian -- (Minor update only.)
- Modern Greek -- Additional Unicode characters, as well as the standard basic "Greek" page, are now supported. The Nemeth Code is now supported for mathematics.
- English/British -- Corrections and improvements were made to the logic for inserting clarifying parentheses into algebraic fractions. The handling of mixed numbers imported from LaTeX documents was corrected. Other corrections affected the handling of certain apostrophe-letter endings in grade 1, embedded German, and other miscellaneous situations.
- English/Unified -- These tables were extensively updated to conform more closely to the latest transcriber rules for capitalization, shortform usage, lower-sign contraction usage, and other miscellaneous matters. A new pair of commands, [ucs] ... [uce], have been provided to allow manual control of capital passage extent when desired.
- French/Unified -- The treatment of apostrophe (') has been corrected in [cz;f] mode. Certain capital passage and double-sign issues have also been addressed.
- Croatian -- (Internal update only -- no functional change.)
- Kazakh -- Arabic script (as well as Cyrillic script) is now accepted as input.
- Malay -- The logic for contraction usage has been extensively updated.
- Norwegian -- The logic for contraction usage has been improved, and the treatment of comma within numbers corrected. Support for contracted English embedded within Norwegian has been removed, as such text is normally uncontracted.
- Russian -- Arabic script (as well as Cyrillic script) is now accepted as input.
- Ukrainian -- Arabic script (as well as Cyrillic script) is now accepted as input.
Improvements have been made for these embossers:
- All supported Tiger models: DBT has been updated to meet the requirements of the latest drivers from ViewPlus. (However, we are not adding to DBT 10.7 SR1 support for any Tiger embosser models not supported by DBT 10.7.)
- Tiger Pro Ink: ink placement has been corrected; ink placement, font choice and font size can also be adjusted, though this presently requires registry “tinkering”.
- VersaPoint Duo: graphics support improved.
- PED-30 plate embossers: more “handshaking” options have been added, and the inclusion of a blank “last side” when there are an odd number of sides to emboss has been suppressed, saving the operator loading a plate at the end of a job only to see it come through without any embossing.
- Thiel Beta X-3: additional paper sizes are now supported.
- A defect in interline print output on Gemini embossers has been corrected.
DBT’s Word importer will support use of the Math12 font. This change is in wrduni.txt, along with myriad other changes geared toward future support of new languages, as in chitab.txt.

DBT 10.7 / 2008-5-20 (2008-06-23)

Here is a list of what's new since DBT 10.6 SR4:

Direct imports of math in Word documents with MathType 5 or 6 installed

DBT's Word importer supports importation of mathematical expressions created with either MathType or Equation Editor. It does *not* support math typed directly into the text. That will still come in as it always has.

The importer requires that either MathType 6 or MathType 5 be installed and activated. They can be installed anywhere (i.e. they do not need to be installed within the DBT folder). MathType is a powerful interactive tool for Windows and Macintosh that lets you create mathematical notation for word processing, web pages, desktop publishing, presentations, and for TeX, LaTeX, and MathML documents. DBT's importing of MathType expression works only with Microsoft Word files.

Updated BANA translation

English/American: The BANA 2007 updates have been implemented (see http://www.brailleauthority.org/update07.html), notably including the two-cell slash, the use of the termination sign instead of hyphen to signal the end of the effect of the double capital sign, and other updated rules and added symbols. A control ("[big]") was added to provide for enlarged enclosure symbols in Nemeth Code.

Updated BAUK translation

A facility has been added to enable "locking" of the grade of translation, primarily to facilitate production of texts entirely in grade 1 despite the presence of [g2] in the text or within styles. See LOCK Grade 1 or 2 for more details.

Updated UEB (Unified English Braille) Translation

English/UEB: Transcription rule decisions of the UEB Committee through January 2008 have been implemented, including those affecting the treatment of shortform words and lower signs, and the extent of grade 1 word mode when initiated by a number. The braille-to-print UEB tables have been revised to construct appropriate print (.dxp) file encoding for most math structures and certain symbols, thereby replacing some of the "double-brace" notation typically used for indicators, etc. when translating from braille to print.

NEW Pharma EBU/EC translation and template - EBU Pharma

At the time of writing (March 2008) the European Braille Union (EBU) have been discussing a proposed common/standard Pharmaceutical Braille code with European Braille Authorities to be used exclusively on medicinal packaging throughout Europe. See http://www.euroblind.org/fichiersGB/pharma.htm for more details.

For more up to date information concerning the production of Pharma Braille labels, etc., you may wish to contact our U.K. distributor http://www.techno-vision.co.uk.

NEW Esperanto translation and template.

"Esperanto is a language, but not of any country or ethnic group: it is a neutral, international language." For more details about the Esperanto language please see http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html.

Updated French translation

French/Unified: The print-to-braille tables have been updated to conform more closely to the new French mathematics code. The braille-to-print tables have been updated to include common computer and currency symbols.

Support added for Enabling Technologies new Romeo Pro 50LE

At the time of writing (March 2008) Enabling Technologies Inc were in the process of manufacturing a dedicated labelling embosser. Limited to 24 cells maximum width, the output is approximately 40% faster than a standard Romeo Pro.

DBT 10.7 includes additional form depths for this embosser from 0.5 inches to 4 inches in depth in increments of 0.25 of an inch.

10.6 Service Release 4 / 2007-7-19 (2007-11-30)

Here is a list of what's new since DBT 10.6:

What's new in SR4

The addition of a "Save As" file type to allow saving files for use with DBT 10.5 and earlier (Please note that DBT 10.5 and earlier will still ignore codes which they don't recognize).
A fix for a "stalling" problem which happens in some network environments.
A fix for a crashing problem when importing some HTML files, particularly those exported from Excel.
An updated SWIFT to eliminate "Error 13" showing up with some installations of Word.

What was new in SR2 + SR3

These were not generally released.

10.6 Service Release 1 / 2007-2-21 (2007-2-28)

Featured Improvements

DBT can now be installed in Windows Vista. (But note that slsService is not Vista-compatible, so if activation is to be shared among many computers, the computer holding the activation must not be running Vista. Other computers certainly can.) Click here for some notes on running DBT with Vista
Daisy/NIMAS imports have been improved and made more flexible. When appropriate, the Daisy-specific document template is automatically selected, avoiding a common mistake made in importing these documents.

Editing Improvements

DBT's responsiveness while editing a document has been improved in some unusual environments where sluggishness had been reported.
Applying a linear style will no longer remove a [fte~i] or similar code at the end of a line.
When deleting a code with a matching code that includes a number or a parameter (e.g. deleting [ptye] after [ptys2]), DBT now correctly deletes the entire matching code.
The list of open documents in the View menu has been improved.
"Replace all" now works correctly when certain special characters such as bullets are replaced.
When attempting to insert a Braille document into a print document or vice versa, DBT will now refuse to do so, rather than just display an error and proceed with the insert.
Rendering of [gd] code in coded view is corrected.
The [caplv], [ftlv], and [xcs] codes have been added to the code list (F5 list). These codes are honored by DBT 10.6, but could not be entered via the code list.
A bug has been fixed that caused a lock-up when generating a table of contents in some circumstances.

Translation and Formatting Improvements

Support has been added for Amharic, Khmer, and Ukrainian translation.
The Farsi table has been updated so that two variant letter forms are treated the same as the corresponding regular Arabic letter forms, i.e. U+06a9 Arabic letter keheh = variant of U+0643 Arabic letter kaf Arabic letter farsi yeh = variant of U+064a Arabic letter yeh
Translation fixes have been made in the Polish tables.
The Lithuanian braille-to-print table has been updated to process Lithuanian text properly as such, including the special Lithuanian letters. (Formerly it was a placeholder suitable only for the Latin-1 letters and embedded English.)
The English/Unified print-to-braille table has been updated in order to correct an infinite loop that would occur when [vrn~ida] (informal treatment of hyphen, as requested in Australia) was in effect and a capitalized passage was encountered that in fact also contained some digits.
The "new" English/British print-to-braille translation table has been updated so that:
1. When suppressing capitals ([caplv1] in effect), code [ii] (as in the "acronym" style) will not cause an unwanted extra letter sign when applied to an acronym that coincidentally is a Roman numeral, e.g. CD or VI.
2. Dots 456, 34 instead of just 34 is used for all explicit fractions in math as well as the literary oblique stroke.
The French/Quebec table has been updated to implement [fts...] ... [fte...] emphasis tagging in the same manner as the "pre-Unified" French tables.
A rare problem with the translation process, which affected American translations only, has been corrected. The problem could cause word capitalization to be handled incorrectly in some cases within the ordinary text following the first reference to a computer notation style (such as compinline or compdisplay).
DBT will no longer introduce spurious skipped lines within line-numbered BodyText.
Several running header problems have been fixed, notably that a [tld] (discontinue running head) on the same page as [tls] ... [tle] (set running head) would cause a lockup (endless internal loop) in DBT when "anticipatory headers" mode is in effect (as for British practice).
The formatter has been improved to guard against lockups even when due to yet-undiscovered problems.

Documentation Improvements

Some helpful tips for Vista users have been added to the online help.
Indexing of online help has been improved.
Several new screen shots have been added to "The Menus".
"Table and Style Example" has been added to "Working with Word", illustrating basic table handling.
French documentation ("Manuel d'utilisation DBT 10.6") has been updated to reflect use of DBT 10.6.
The [xcs] code is documented in Codes Quick Reference. (The code is not new, but it was undocumented in DBT 10.6.)

GOODFEEL Integration Improvements

Stability and performance when GOODFEEL is used to embed transcribed music in a document has been improved.

Embosser Support Improvements

The Modify Embosser and Remove buttons in DBT's Global Embosser Setup dialog will be disabled when it appears that a user will be unable to save the resulting change. This applies to any user not running "As Administrator" in Vista.
The Embosser Setup configuration editing dialog (the dialog with General, Device Settings, and Advanced tabs) will now lock a limited user, or anybody not running "As Administrator" in Vista, into saving a configuration "For the current user only".
Global Embosser Setup will now give an error message after any failure to save changes to embosser definitions.
For the Braillo 200/400 series, DBT now positively resets the "page adjust" offset to zero in case it has been externally set to some other value.
Support for the ViewPlus Emprint has been added.
A braille spacing problem when interline print is included in output to Tiger embossers has been fixed.
Control-Z has been added to the end of output for Index embossers and others that require it.
Interpoint alignment on narrow paper has been improved for Index embossers.
Multi-Copy output to pre-Model 3 Index embossers has been corrected.
New keywords PortCloseSyncCount, PortCloseSyncByte, and PortCloseSyncPrompt are supported in emb.elt and myemb.elt. These are documented in emb.elt. They should not generally be necessary, except, in rare cases, when data is lost at the end of any embossing job, and the problem is not solvable using other handshaking adjustments. PortCloseSyncPrompt has in fact been added for the PED-30, which will otherwise lose part of the last page of data.
If the user edits myemb.elt and introduces a syntax error, DBT will now report the error instead of just stopping at startup.
Sequences in the form <Ctrl-X> within embosser configuration custom job setup strings will now work.
Duxbury's embosser "drivers" now support a form offset. This is an advanced configuration feature that has been put to use on a PED-30 with plates that are less than the maximum width.
The Index embosser driver files included with DBT have been updated. This provides for better support for newer Index models and Index embossers connected via a USB cable.
Changes to paper size, margins, etc. made in Global, Embosser settings are now simpler to specify.
Output to an Interpoint 55 embosser is working again, correcting a bug introduced in the original DBT 10.6.
It is now possible to specify a VSHIFT value for an Interpoint 55 embosser in the Device Settings tab. Possible values are Auto-Rotate, 0, 1, 2, and 3.
Some paper size corrections have been made in emb.elt.

Improvements for Microsoft Word

The updated "Francais - 2006.dxt" is included in DBT distributions.
Word imports are more robust when encountering paragraph numbering information in an unrecognized format.
Start value overrides in auto-numbered documents are handled correctly again.
Text boxes now import from Word 2003 documents.
SWIFT has been updated to report an error with some instructions if the user attempts to use it to open an OpenXML document in DBT.

Improvements for Scientific Notebook

Support for \lnot (logical not) and \implies has been added.
Problems with spurious spaces after some function names were fixed.
Problems with sinh and real were fixed
Some problems with fraction levels were fixed.

JAWS Script Improvements

Laptop keyboard layout designation for keystrokes Alt+0 and Alt+P were removed; Laptop keyboard layout designation for keystrokes JawsKey+U, JawsKey+I, etc. were added.
When switching DBT back into focus in a braille document window, the user no longer gets an extra keyboard echo (QWERTY echo plus braille character echo).
When the user presses Alt+F3 the announcement of coded view or formatted view is no longer out of phase with JAWS versions 7 and up.

Braille-Build Improvements

Braille-Build has been modified to introduce a visible space character in the SimBraille font (U+00B7)
Braille-Build will honor a custom font name you specify.
Dot diameter adjustments are honored again, correcting a bug introduced in an earlier version.
The fonts have been updated to version 1.10.
Generated fonts are compatible with MacOS X.

Miscellaneous Improvements

Cancel button in Global Printer Setup and Document Printer Setup now works without side effects.
DBT will now be more fully compatible with the LaserJet 6P and other new and full-featured printers.
The prompt to remove temporary files, which typically followed after appearance of the Autosave Recovery Wizard, has been removed.
SGML will now import when the file type was selected by the user rather than autodetected.
"Global, Other Importer" has been removed. This feature has not been in common use for many years.
User-defined import filters, broken in the original DBT 10.6, are working again.
DBT's installer now traps processor exceptions in the custom action code and logs any failure to the normal log file. To get at the information, one must run the installer with sufficient logging enabled: e.g. /L*v <logfilename> on the command line.
A broader range of characters (specifically, numeric entity references) will be recognized by the HTML/SGML importer.

DBT Version 10.6 / 2006-7-27 (2006-8-15)

New Features in DBT 10.6

NEW Undo and Redo features.
NEW Autosave feature.
NEW Change Case feature has been added, and is accessible using Shift-F3.
NEW A margin bell can be enabled for braille entry.
Enhanced JAWS scripts add support for braille document input and review.
NEW Templates included for every supported language.
NEW enhanced installation and activation process.
Improved Support for custom embosser definitions.
DBT can now optionally read publishers page numbers.
IMPROVED Enhanced [folds] code supports more sophisticated fold lines.
NEW Customizeable behavior of Alt-3 ("CBC"), CTRL-Enter ("New page"), and Enter
NEW vertical page centering.
IMPROVED Braille-Build can build fonts with California spacing, Marburg spacing for EU signmakers, Marburg Medium spacing for the EU Pharmaceutical requirements, and customizeable for thermal paper, thermoform and other processes.
NEW Graphics supported for the Romeo Attache.
NEW A /template command line option allows desired template to be specified for imported files.
NEW /brf and /prf command line options make it possible to use DBT as a file-to-file translation tool.
... more!

Updated Translations

The following language translation tables have been added or substantially updated:

American English
The support for NLS' "Instruction Manual for Braille Transcribers" partially-contracted braille series has been revised to reflect the fourth edition.
British English
- The Fingerprint series has been added.
- Support for the new rules has been added
Croatian
Farsi
French (unified)
German (contracted)
Hausa
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish Gaelic
Kazakh
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Russian
Somali
Turkish
Ukrainian
Unified English (UEB)
Welsh
- Support for new rules
- Support for math and computer notation within Welsh
Yoruba

(Some of these have been included in service packs for DBT 10.5)

Additional Interfaces

Korean
Polish
Russian
Portugal Portuguese (as well as Brazilian Portuguese)
Documentation developed at AVH for French users is now included also.

Still More Improvements

New BANA templates have been introduced. The Word template file is now called BANA Braille 2006. When importing to DBT, two templates are available; one is specifically for Nemeth documents.
IMPROVED Handling of virtually all embossers. Improvements in the following models: ATC Dot and Print, Brailletec Btec-100, Brailletec PUMA, Braillo (270, 200, 400, 440), Braillo 440 SW (much improved), Enabling embossers (all modern models), Freedom Scientific VersaPoint, Freedom Scientific VersaPoint Duo, Index (all modern models), Index 4x4 (much improved), Interpoint Elekul 55, Nippon Telesoft BMP, Nippon Telesoft Gemini, Pulse Data Paragon, Thiel Beta X3, Triformations TED-600, and Viewplus (all modern models).
IMPROVED Virtually all aspects of DBT have been overhauled. The list of changes and improvements go on for page after page. We appologize for editing this list down to make it manageable. Please download a demo and have a look at all the changes yourself..
IMPROVED Word and WordPerfect imports.
IMPROVED French template translation table settings.
Operation of Workstations that Share an Activation.
ELIMINATED most causes of corrupted documents.
NEW Undo when typing over selected text.
NEW Undoing file inserts has been fixed.
NEW & IMPROVED Find and Replace dialogs are more flexible, search for or replace styles, use Control-< to enter the style as a.
IMPROVED Redesigned and uniform Emboss and Print.
NEW Hard spaces can now be entered when searching and replacing.

10.5 Service Release 2 / 2005-8-18 (2005-9-1)

Corrects problems with and enhances DBT 10.5

Improves support for new British Braille rules, including math and computer notation
Adds translation support for
- Farsi,
- contracted German,
- Hausa,
- Igbo,
- Indonesian,
- Lithuanian,
- Somali and
- Yoruba
Updates the LOC/NLS "Instruction Manual for Braille Transcribers" partial-contraction series
Updates the translation tables for numerous languages.
Provides Braille-Build (font builder) support for Marburg fonts and correctly spaced California braille.
Handles acute accents in Scientific Notebook files.
Provides additional French documentation.
Updates the JAWS macros, and supports installation of macros to JAWS 6.0.
Adds a utility (slsclock.exe) to help manage network installations with clock synchronization problems.

10.5 Service Release 1 / 2004-8-23 (2004-12-1)

Corrects problems with and enhances DBT 10.5

Improved embosser support
Support for new British Braille rules, including the Fingerprint Series.
An Improved DBT template for BANA documents.
Improved JAWS macros.

10.5 / 2004-8-23 (2004-9-2)

Min Sys Req: Windows 98 or higher, 50 MB free hard drive space

Enhanced Installation:

Install for Current or All users.
Install JAWS Scripts/Macros.
Install SWIFT.
Install Word Braille Template.

User Interface:

Cursor Locator - Pressing the shift key will cause an array of concentric circles to show the position of the cursor.
Cursor Location retained on translation - When you translate a document into braille, your cursor is now positioned at the beginning of the word in the braille file
JAWS Scripts - Scripts have been included as an option for JAWS Screen Reader users.
All dialogs have been re-designed to conform the Windows standards. Among other things, this means that users of High Contrast Accessibility Settings can work to those.
Unicode - Many Unicode characters can now be displayed in DBT's editor.
Improved Coded View - When viewing Codes, they appear very similar to XML/HTML tags.
Coded view is now possible when viewing braille on screen.
Modify Codes & Styles in Coded View - You may now highlight any code or Style you wish to edit, and press Ctrl + [ or Ctrl + < to edit it.
Search & Replace - You can now search for a Style and/or Code in addition to text, and replace it. This can be done on an all or selective basis.
Search & Replace functions work exclusively in a highlighted range of text.
Both Search & Replace functions will prompt user to check rest of document if starting a mid-point in the document, or a highlighted range.
Copy & Paste - This facility works better with other applications.
File Name Handling - When importing files, DBT now suggests the default name of the imported file. For example, myfile.doc will become myfile.dxp in text, and myfile.dxb in braille. You may override the name if you wish.
Custom icons for .dxp, .dxb and .brf files.

Updates:

A "Check for Updates" option as been added to the Help menu. Provided you have Internet access, this will access the Duxbury Systems web site, and check to see if you are eligible for any updates.

Embossing:

Emboss (Help Topic) - As well as a "Print" Help topic button, there is now an "Emboss" Help Topic button which will output any selected Help Topic to your selected default braille embosser.
Emboss selected pages by Braille Page Number or Page Sequence Number. You can also highlight a contiguous selection of text and emboss only the selection.
"Sticky Document Information " - Information about how a document is set up, such as Page and Line length, and embosser, is now stored with each file.
Support has been added for many more makes and models of braille embosser.
Multiple embossers and embosser setups can be installed and selected as required.
Enhanced Embosser Setup - Set up your embosser and let DBT control it.
Index Printers - USB & Network Support for Version 3 embossers has been added.

File Import:

Import Music Braille - Music Braille files can be imported into documents when GOODFEEL® is installed. (This depends upon GOODFEEL version 3.0 which we understand is forthcoming as of 2004-9-2.)
Scientific Notebook - Various improvements have been made to the Scientific Notebook importer.
Word Importer + Text Boxes - Further improvements have been made to the Word Importer. In addition, Word Text Boxes are now imported.

Internationalization:

Change Program Language - Support has been added to enable DBT to display its menus in other languages. What is available may be subject to licensing conditions. In addition to English, there are:
Danish
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Norwegian

New Languages:

The list of languages for print-braille translation has been extended to include:
Arabic
Danish
English/American Textbook (Distinct Emphasis)
English/British (New) (Experimental)
French/Quebec
Hebrew/American Uncontracted
Hebrew/Israeli Uncontracted
Latvian/Uncontracted
Polish
Romanian/Uncontracted
Turkish/Uncontracted

Folding:

A new Fold code will produce a blank line to allow one or two page folds.

Vertical Page Alignment:

New Codes enable Title pages and such like to be centered vvertically on the page.
Braille can also be aligned to bottom of page.

Templates:

You can now store text in Templates. For example, you could set up a letter heading for yourself to save constantly re-typing your name and address details.
If a style named "initial" is defined in your template, then the start codes for this style will be implicitly applied at the start of every document created with this template.
Hide unused Templates.
Set a Default Template.
Associate Template with a Word - DBT Customized Style mapping file.

New DBT & Word Template:

A DBT Template and connecting Microsoft Word template have been added to simplify transcription according to BANA standards, using terminology familiar to BANA transcribers. These templates were designed by Susan Christensen, a well-known BANA Transcriber. The principles and templates themselves could readily be adapted for use with other braille standards.

Customized Word - DBT Mapping Files:

You may now create custom .mws Mapping Files and link them to selected Templates.

Table of Contents Generator:

A bug in the UK Templates which caused page numbers to be one out has been fixed.

Mouse Wheel:

Sighted users will find the scroll facility offered by a wheel mouse useful.

10.4 / 2002-5-31

Min Sys Req: Windows 95 or higher, 25 MB free hard drive space

New build to fix problem embossing from Windows NT.

10.4 / 2002-4-16 (2002-5-9)

Min Sys Req: Windows 95 or higher, 25 MB free hard drive space

There is now an automatic facility for generating a table of contents in a braille document. The process can work simply from common heading styles, or custom methods can be designed based on new codes for marking text that is significant to the TOC (codes RPS and RPE).
The "help" facility has been greatly extended and improved (with thanks to Techno-Vision, Duxbury's UK distributor, for the bulk of this work)
JAWS and Window Eyes screen readers now read highlighted text.
Control-down arrow and Control-up arrow now allow movement down and up in a DBT document by paragraph.
Incremental typing is now supported in all list boxes.
Supported Embossers now include the Tiger Advantage and Elekul. A number of other embossers, formerly listed only generically, are now more clearly identified according to manufacturer and model name.
The Microsoft Word file import facility has been extensively improved, notably to map "character" styles as well as "paragraph" styles, and to permit control over the handling of hard and soft page breaks and multiple skipped lines.
The formatted braille (BRF) file import has been improved so that it can now be used to import ED-IT PC braille files.
A "hard hyphen" can now be imported and has been implemented in various contexts, e.g. to prevent splitting up number ranges across lines.
The LaTeX importer has been improved so that a wider range of file coding styles can now be imported successfully.
It is now possible to export print text using Windows encoding for accented letters etc.
The option to install British templates is now presented as an installation option for new installations.
Braille fonts are now generated on the fly for Windows. DBT maintains a special table that controls the link between ASCII characters in the DBT braille file and the way in which the braille is displayed on the screen and on a braille device.
An "English/American Textbook" translation table has been added, to accommodate the differences between general literary practice and the former "Textbook Formats" manual (now called "Braille Formats"). The unqualified "English/American" table continues to support the standard literary base code defined in "English Braille American Edition." The "Textbook" template now refers to this new American Textbook table.
Bulgarian/Uncontracted translation tables have been added.
Greek (Modern)/Uncontracted translation tables have been added.
Vietnamese/Uncontracted translation tables have been added, with an experimental extension for math.
The English/British translation tables have been changed so that computer notation is now done according to BAUK conventions instead of the BANA Computer Braille Code (CBC).
An English/Australian translation table has been added, in which literary material follows British practice while computer notation is handled according to BANA CBC. (This is in effect the same as the table previously identified as English / British.)
Both the Cymraeg (Welsh) and Irish Gaelic translation tables now have both "with Capitals" and "without Capitals" forms.
The French table now has an "Uncontracted" as well as the regular (contracted) form.
A warning is now given when attempting to translate a file which has already been translated.
There have been minor corrections, updates and improvements in virtually all areas of DBT.
Although not directly a part of DBT, the distribution CD now contains an enhanced version of SWIFT, a Word macro that lets you send a file directly to DBT from within Word. (SWIFT and the newer SWIFTER were produced by Techno-Vision, Duxbury's UK distributor.)
The "WordPort" add-in for certain file imports is no longer included with DBT, though it will remain available in cases where updates are installed into the same directory where an earlier DBT with Wordport is already installed. This should only affect imports of some obscure older file formats; current formats such as Word, WordPerfect, LaTeX, HTML and XML, etc. are imported directly by DBT without using the add-in. (We nevertheless encourage users with special import requirements to let us know, as it is likely that we can suggest a solution.)

10.3 / 2001-1-9 (2001-1-26)

Min Sys Req: Windows 95 or higher, 25 MB free hard drive space

Microsoft Word 2000 files can now be imported.
Microsoft Word imports have been improved in a number of respects, including the addition of a Global / Word Importer dialog that allows selecting: (1) whether to treat Courier font as CBC, (2) whether to preserve hard page breaks, and (3) whether to treat braille font as defining material already in braille (to be passed through without translation).
An importer has been added for LaTeX files, such as those generated by the "Scientific Notebook" math editor, including both the text and the mathematics.
An importer has been added for NISO (DAISY) XML files.
ASCII files to be imported may be encoded according to Windows or Macintosh conventions as well as MS-DOS conventions.
Support for literary print-to-braille translation has been added for Malay, Ndebele, Norwegian, Russian and Swati (Siswati).
Support for print-to-English Moon translation has been added. (Moon is a system of tactile writing wherein the raised characters mostly resemble the print characters for which they stand, thereby making the system especially easy to learn for people who become blind late in life. Although it is not a form of braille, Moon can be used as a stepping-stone to the learning of braille. An Enabling Technologies embosser with "Moon mode" setting, or equivalent, must be used to emboss the output.)
A graduated partial contraction series, following the "Cluster" Series developed and used at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI), has been added.
The American English tables have been updated to: (1) correct contraction usage in certain obscure words; (2) incorporate a large number of technical symbols for mathematics; (3) add the Euro symbol; (4) force spaces around "signs of comparison" even if not present in the input; (5) recognize certain short "enclosed lists" in math automatically, even if not so marked; (6) add the translation codes [bolim] and [bulim] to stand for "lim" with bar over and under, respectively.
The British English tables have been updated to: (1) add support for British maths, following "British Mathematics Notation 1987" and (2) allow contraction of "to", "into", or "by" followed by [ii] code.
The Unified English (UEBC or UBC) tables have been updated to incorporate technical notation such as math.
The Cymraeg (Welsh) tables have been updated to include direct codes for accented w and y, simplifying their import from Word.
The French tables have been updated to: (1) exchange the braille signs for parentheses and quotes, change the sign for dash to dots 3-6, 3-6, and make corresponding changes in contraction usage per new French rules; (2) add the translation code [vrn~gpt] to allow translation of those characters (guillemets, parenthSses, tirets) and contractions according to the "old" rules (and code [vrn] cancels that effect); and (3) add support for French mathematics braille.
The Irish Gaelic tables have been updated per new information about contraction usage.
The Spanish (Uncontracted) tables have been updated for new punctuation marks and other symbols per "Manual de Transcription Braille" (1998 ONCE) and other sources.
Some embosser setup parameters have been added or corrected.
Under Global / Internationalization, French has been added as a selectable code page for braille display driving.
The Help system has been overhauled, and now includes Windows HTML-style help and two new documents: a Transcriber's Guide and a Translation Tables Reference.
A crashing bug that could be encountered after use of scrollbars has been corrected.
The search/replace functions have been updated to allow entry of accented letters and other miscellaneous characters into the search and replace fields, and to correct a bug that could cause some replacements to be missed.
Distribution is now normally on CD, with a separate diskette used only for the license file in new installations. All the documents being now on the CD and the installed software, "hard-copy" documents will be omitted in all update distributions and in certain other instances.
There is now a separate "all-French" version, i.e. one in which the prompts, messages and online documents are in French.

Fall 1999, last edition of MS-DOS version of DBT. Click here for the release history of DBT for MS-DOS

10;2e / 1999-6-4 (1999-6-7)

Min Sys Req: Windows 95 or higher, 25 MB free hard drive space

A problem has been corrected that prevented the "help on help" and certain other help screens from being displayed under some conditions. (Note: this problem was inadvertently introduced in version 10;2d; it would not have affected versions earlier than that.)
Problems involving highlighting across page boundaries or at the end of the text and certain operations such as spell-checking or cutting and pasting have been corrected. Some of these could affect screen-reader operations or even cause a crash.
A specific Word import problem was found and corrected.

10;2d / 1999-3-11 (1999-3-15)

Support for print-to-braille translation in a number of new languages or variants has been added, viz. for:
- Afrikaans,
- English/South African,
- English/Unified (UBC) (Experimental!)
- Irish Gaelic,
- Nguni (Xhosa/Zulu),
- Sotho (Sesotho),
- Swedish/Uncontracted,
- Tsonga,
- Venda, and
- Welsh (Cymraeg).
All, except as noted, are contracted braille systems. Special thanks to the South Africa Blind Workers and the Institute for the Blind, South Africa, who principally developed the Afrikaans, Nguni, Sotho, Tsonga and Venda tables. Please note also that the UBC tables are incorporated for experimental uses only; UBC is not yet an officially accepted code for general braille production.
We have improved the coded view text wrapping so that the line won't wrap at the first letter of the line, and cursor placement, so that the cursor and new text will appear on one line.
We have improved the formatted view cursor placement so that the cursor may be viewed on blank lines.
Some crashes that could be encountered while scrolling or auto-scrolling have been fixed.
Table imports from MS Word have been greatly improved, so that the outline form of braille tables are automated.
DBT now recognizes several of the most commonly used MS Word styles, and equates them with DBT styles. For instance, the Word style "Normal" imports as the DBT style "para."
DBT now supports the auto-numbered lists and auto-bulleted lists which MS Word creates. We do recommend using list styles in Word when creating lists, so as to enable DBT to import the formatting better.
DBT now recognizes bold and italic font changes, and automatically applies the braille symbols appropriately. Please note that this will not affect the print document, as DBT currently does not support font changes within a print document.
If text in a braille font is imported from another document, DBT will use "grade 0," which will leave the imported braille as-is through the import and translation processes.

10;2 / 1998-8-13 (1998-8-18)

Long file names are now supported in Windows 95, 98 and NT. This is because a "32-bit" version of DBT Win is now installed on those versions of Windows. On Windows 3.x, a 16-bit version of DBT Win is installed. (The installation program automatically installs the appropriate version of DBT Win.)
There is now an uninstaller.
The license file (GJGMW.DXR or HJGMW.DXR) is now by itself on a separate "license disk", for convenience. The license disk is still needed only at installation,
There have been minor updates to the American and British translation tables, and somewhat more extensive updates to the French translation tables.

10;2 / 1998-2-3 (1998-2-18)

A problem affecting the back/front margin calculation when embossing in interpoint mode was corrected. Also, form-feeds after the second and subsequent pages could be inappropriately omitted in some circumstances, affecting both interpoint and single-sided embossing. (Note: These problems were introduced as an inadvertent by-product of the graphic inclusion feature in earlier editions of version 10;2; they would not affect versions 10;1 and earlier.)

10;2 / 1997-11-26 (1997-12-1)

With permission, Microsoft code libraries (DLL's) needed for Word imports on older Windows 3.x systems were added to the distribution (they are built-in on Windows 95 and NT systems).
Small changes were made to improve Word imports with "smart quotes" (but note that it remains generally advisable to have "smart quotes" turned OFF in any word processor, including Word).
A default setting that applies when embossing directly to a physical port has been changed, so that special settings for that case should be needed less frequently. (But note that it remains generally advisable to use a "Windows device" instead of a direct port in most circumstances, as explained in the README document.)

10;2 / 1997-10-27 (1997-10-28)

A direct import filter was added for Word 7 and Word 97 files.
A generalized import toolkit (WordPort) was incorporated into the product, enabling import of numerous kinds word-processor files (including Word 6 and a second option for importing Word 7 files).
Support for mathematics and science notation according to American code (Nemeth Code) has been added. This involved addition of associated mathematical tagging (e.g. superscript start/end codes) and characters, and provision for the special handling of contractions in "math context" as well as actual math notation.
Support for inclusion of dot-graphic files, such as those produced by the TAG graphic composition program (.SIG files) and the ETGrafix and VPGRAPH screen capture programs (.BRG and .VIM files) has been added. This was done by adding a new "gd" (graphic data) command, which is generally similar in purpose to the former "pi" command, but is improved -notably in that the included file data is now actually incorporated into the DBT file at the time of reference, rather than relying upon access to the graphic file at embossing time.
Braille-to-print translation when using the Spanish tables was improved so that grade 1 Spanish should read normally.
Direct support for several new languages has been added on the Document/Translation menu. These new languages are:
- Dutch/Uncontracted
- Finnish/Uncontracted
- German/Uncontracted
- Italian/Uncontracted
- Kiswahili (Swahili)
- Latin/Uncontracted
- Portuguese/Brazilian
The "help" documentation has been considerably updated, and now includes a "how-to" section covering special topics such as working with mathematics notation and mixed-language documents.
The "direct codes list" (from the Layout menu, or F5) has been improved to include a brief description and also selectable categories.
A problem that could cause the cursor to jump to a different position when switching between coded and formatted views has been corrected.
A memory allocation problem that could cause a crash in certain circumstances (experienced by only a few users in practice) has been corrected.

10;1 / 1997-4-8 (1997-4-9)

A problem that could cause a crash when editing and switching between coded and formatted views has been corrected.
The treatment of German language within the British tables was improved, that is there is now better "partial grade 2 German". Likewise, use of the specifically foreign-language punctuation and other indicators was restricted to grade 2. Both changes are for better conformity with British treatment of foreign languages embedded in English context.
Certain words were corrected in the French tables.
There was a minor correction to the WordPerfect import, for certain unusual kinds of quote marks in character set 4.

10;1 / 1997-3-13 (1997-3-14)

A problem that commonly caused truncation of larger file imports has been corrected.
A problem affecting use of the scroll bar for viewing has been corrected.
The ability to select contractions when using the American tables (by section from the LOC "Braille Instruction Manual") is now incorporated within DBT's menus. (This was previously accomplished by manual file manipulations, using a separate free supplement nicknamed "WeeBee Dots".)
The braille-to-print table selection is now automatically inferred from the print-to-braille choice.
The WordPerfect character-set mapping tables have been updated so that Greek and Cyrillic text should now be converted, at the point of import, to special print file codes that directly determine the braille. This will effect useful braille translation in both cases. For Greek, the code used is for "classical" Greek.
Foreign-language treatment within English has been both generalized and simplified by addition of the "[lng~..]" code for language switching. Older methods (based on the [fl-lifg] and [fl-span] codes) remain operative.
By default, grade 1 within English now observes the dot-4 convention for accented letters, instead of presuming that French or German conventions should be followed, unless either the [fl-lifg] or the [fl-span] code has been explicitly used. A new code, [fl-none], can be used to restore the default condition if one of the other [fl-...] codes has been used (but the new [lng~...] codes are simpler and now preferred, in any case).
Support for the Maori language (via [lng~mao]) has been added, within the American tables.
New editing operations for style and line joining have been added.
The quick-reference document on codes has been reorganized and updated.
The braille-to-print translation has been updated slightly. The "religious" contractions will now be expanded only if the new "[vrn~rlg]" code is used; otherwise they will not be recognized. Also, we have discontinued the previous custom of using dot 4 to "quote" the next braille character, that is to assert that it has its "ASCII braille" meaning; instead, the BANA symbols using dot 4 prefix, such as the percent sign (dots 4, 2-5, 1-2-3-4) are recognized where appropriate. The former "quoting" behavior may be restored, if desired, using the new "[vrn~quo]" code.

10;1 / 1996-10-2 (1996-10-2)

An option to issue a banner page on embossed output was added.
A translation problem with certain capitalized accented letters was corrected.
Speed and other minor issues were improved in some imports, e.g. HTML files (via SGML/ICADD import).
Imports from WordPerfect were improved for certain special characters (e.g. cent, degree).

10;1 / 1995-12-29 (1996-8-8)

Update distributed TrueType fonts and font generator program (BRAILLE.TTF, SIMBRL.TTF & BRLBLD.EXE, with new file dates 1996-7-11), so that fonts will work properly on Windows NT

10;1 / 1995-12-29 (1995-12-29)

Correct problem with WordPerfect 6.1 file imports
Correct incompatibility with certain Windows 95 printer drivers
Improve compatibility with JAWS for Windows (i.e. the latest version -JAWS itself was recently updated)
Improve import from HTML files (via SGML/ICADD import)

10;1 / 1995-9-29 (1995-10-2)

Fix problem with "hard" spaces, which were being ignored in formatting.
The SGML/ICADD import/export filter was changed for a better match to the new standard templates, with linear styles.
Operations, especially search & replace, have been speeded up.
Some problems with printing and screen redrawing/updating were fixed.
Fix some cases where linear style codes could be left unpaired, particularly when the matching code appeared at the beginning or end of the document.
Allow import suggestion logic to choose WordPerfect for WP 6.1 files.
Fixed highlighting problems that could occur when switching between coded and formatted views.

10;1 / 1995-9-8 (1995-9-11)

Initial release of DBT Win product.