ANNOUNCEMENT

liblouis 3.5.0 has been released

The liblouis developer team is proud to announce the liblouis release
3.5.0. The release is available for download at:

    https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/releases

Introduction
============

Liblouis is an open-source braille translator and back-translator. It
features support for computer, literary and math braille, supports
contracted and uncontracted translation for many, many languages[1].
It plays an important role in an open source accessibility stack and
is used by screenreaders such as NVDA, Orca and JAWS. A companion
project liblouisutdml[2] deals with formatting of braille.

Changes in this release
=======================

This release has a number of Braille table improvements, cleanups and
meta data enhancements. The most prominent new feature however is
probably the much improved test coverage. This has helped in tracing
and fixing a number of long standing bugs.

For a detailed list of all the changes refer to [the list of closed
issues].


[the list of closed issues]
https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/milestone/15?closed=1

New features
~~~~~~~~~~~~

- The same name can now be used in more than one `class' rule. The
  effect is that both set of characters become part of that one class.

Bug fixes
~~~~~~~~~

- Fix a regression in inputPositions thanks to Bert Frees
- Treat characters within the range `compbrlStart' and `compbrlEnd' as
  a special case. This fixes many if not most of the problems with
  cursor position and the `compbrlAtCursor' mode. Thanks to Dave
  Mielke.
- Fix `swapdd' opcode thanks to Bert Frees
- Fix negation of attribute matcher in multipass expressions thanks to
  Bert Frees

Braille table improvements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Add a display table that maps braille dots to brl/brf character set.
  For an in depth explanation see the corresponding [github issue].
  Thanks to Rimas Kudelis
- Major Improvements to Unified French Grade 2 thanks to André-Abush
  Clause
- Fix braille number input for Greek Braille thanks to Dave Mielke
- Add a fix for "phad" according to UEB Rule 10.7.3 thanks to Anthony
  Tibbs
- Updates to the Urdu tables thanks to Jake Kyle from Compass Braille
- Updates to the Chinese braille table (`zh-tw.ctb') thanks to
  Bo-Cheng Jhan
- `IPA.utb' now contains a more complete list of phonetic symbols,
  including some that might conflict with other tables. For this
  reason it is not suitable for inclusion in other tables. A separate
  table `IPA-unicode-range.uti' has been added for this purpose.
  Thanks to Ludovic Oger.
- The Mongolian table has been improved and there is now also support
  for grade 2 thanks to Tsengel Maidar.
- Minor updates to the Danish tables thanks to Bue Vester-Andersen
- Fix back translation of numbers in Dutch, Finnish and Canadian
  French, thanks to Leonard de Ruijter.
- New table for Ukrainian thanks to Sergiy Moskalets.

[github issue] https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/issues/503

Other changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Improved documentation
----------------------

- Extend the documentation on multipass opcodes. Thanks to Dave Mielke
  and Christian Egli.
- Remove the deprecation note of the '=' dots operand. While there are
  still problems with back-translation we will not remove support for
  it. See also the discussion in the [github issue].

[github issue] https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/issues/500

Improved meta data information in tables
----------------------------------------

The meta data in the tables such as locale, contraction grade, etc has
been improved and is now also used when testing from a YAML test.
Thanks to Bert Frees.

Major overhaul of the YAML test suite
-------------------------------------

* Support for proper testing of cursor positions

Due to problems in the cursor position computation the YAML test suite
was improved to support proper testing of cursor position also in
combination with input, output position and modes. In essence all of
the liblouis API is now supported and can be tested via the YAML
tests. Thanks to Christian Egli.

* Support for table selection via meta data query

The tables to be tested can now be specified via a meta data query in
addition to specifying them by filename. See the documentation for
more details. Internally the YAML tests have been split up into tests
that test the braille translation for a particular locale (now located
in `tests/braille_specs') and tests that check a specific feature of
liblouis. Thanks to Bert Frees.

Deprecation notice
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

None

Backwards incompatible changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- The translation mode `comp8Dots' has been removed as it was never
  really implemented anyway
- Support for the `pass1Only' flag has now been removed. Thanks to Bue
  Vester-Andersen.
- The old UEB tables `UEBC-g1.ctb' and `UEBC-g2.ctb' have been removed
  as the have been superseded by `en-ueb-g1.ctb' and `en-ueb-g2.ctb'.
- The french tables `fr-2007.ctb', `fr-fr-g1.utb', `fr-fr-g2.ctb',
  `fr-ca-g1.utb' and `fr-ca-g2.ctb' have been removed. Use
  `fr-bfu-comp6.utb' for 6 dots literary, `fr-bfu-comp8.utb' for 8
  dots computer and `fr-bfu-g2.ctb' for contracted braille instead.

New, renamed or removed tables
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New
---

  - IPA-unicode-range.uti
  - mn-MN-g2.ctb
  - uk.utb

Renamed
-------

  - mn-MN.utb -> mn-MN-g1.utb

Removed
-------

  - fr-2007.ctb
  - fr-ca-g1.utb
  - Fr-Ca-g2.ctb
  - fr-fr-g1.utb
  - Fr-Fr-g2.ctb
  - UEBC-g1.ctb
  - UEBC-g2.ctb

Next release
============

The next release will be published on June 4 2018 so please keep up
the excellent work and keep those improvements coming.

Share and Enjoy!

-- Christian Egli, on behalf of the liblouis developers

Footnotes
=========

[1]  See https://github.com/liblouis/liblouis/tree/master/tables
[2]  See https://github.com/liblouis/liblouisutdml