Codes, Styles and Templates

At first glance this may appear to be a complex set of three Topics.  Likewise, they may also appear to be in the wrong order.

If you initially understand what Templates are, and how they can save you work, you will be well on your way towards adding your own Styles to make Templates of your own do what you want.

Similarly, if you understand what a Style is, and also how they can save your work, you will be even further down the road towards creating braille documents more efficiently.

There are many Codes in DBT; over 200, in fact.  We have therefore tried to group these into categories relating to how a document is constructed beginning with basic Page Codes, Margins, Page Numbering, Headers and Footers, etc..

You may even come across Codes in existing documents, and wonder what they do.  Hopefully you will find the DBT Codes Quick Reference table at the end a useful cross reference.

Although occasional references are made about officially recognized braille authorities, such as the Braille Authority of North America (BANA) or the Braille Authority of the United Kingdom (BAUK), we have not tried to cover local requirements or recommendations unless they specifically affect an individual Code.

We have not attempted to cover mathematical or technical braille codes here since these are highly specialized, and often the subject of considerable localization.

Finally, we'd like to mention two resources for additional support.

The "duxuser" internet list is an excellent forum where questions may be asked 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.  Its many members come from all over the world, and of course many different times zones.

To subscribe to duxuser, send an e-mail message with the subject subscribe to duxuser-request@freelists.org, or if you are viewing this document in DBT, try clicking on this link.  Subscribe to Duxuser and simply send the message that pops up (no extra text is required).

For really tricky issues you may contact Duxbury directly by e-mail, telephone, fax or regular mail.

email: support@duxsys.com

Phone: +1 (978) 692 3000

Fax: +1 (978) 692 7912

or send us mail to:

Duxbury Systems, Inc.
270 Littleton Road, Unit 6,
Westford,  MA 01886.
United States of America.

Please try to have your DBT Serial Number and version available.  If you are unsure of this information, it can be found on the Help: About DBT... screen

NOTE: In many cases, particularly outside North America, your Duxbury Dealer may be able to provide support.

Author's Notes

The braille font used in the examples is "SimBraille", the copyright for which belongs to Duxbury Systems Inc..

Where braille examples are shown, these have generally been formatted for a 30 cell wide document.

Page breaks in the braille examples will show the following purely for clarification purposes:

------------ page break ------------

Where DBT's Codes and Styles are shown, they will appear in Courier New (red).

Where regular text which would normally appear in screen is used, it will appear in Courier New (black).

Keyboard commands are shown in Bold Arial.