-=> Quoting Jasen Betts to Leonard Erickson <=-

 LE>> Oh yeah, an 80-character, one line Braille display retails for
 LE>> $12,000.
 
 JB>> Hmm, that's $25 per solenoid which seems a little step.
 
 LE> Ever *see* braille?

 JB> Yeah, I've handled a braille book, seen a display on TV once too.
 
 LE> A Braille display has the rods that raise and
 LE> lower to create the character spaced at the same spacing as
 LE> printed braille.

 JB> yeah, 6 per character cell. presuably with a solenoid underneath
 JB> driving each one of them
 
 LE> And they need to be able to handle being on all the time.

 JB> make 'em bigger, or use permanent magnets to make them stick in
 JB> position. 

Permanent magnets that'll fit in the space available and *not* intefere
with adjacent rods aren't apt to be workable.
 
 LE> Then add in the fact that there's a lot of decoding going on, as
 LE> Braille is *not* mappable to ASCII.

 JB> in what way?  it's got letters and digits...

 JB> Braille is a lot closer to ASCII than ASL is to english.

Braille is heavily "overloaded", to use a programming term.

Level 1 Braille has 64 "characters". The uppercase letters, some
punctuation, a "numbers shift" character (ie
 is "1") and a
"lowercase" character (ie  is "a"). 

Level 2 Braille has a lot of the syumbols acquiring secondary meanings.
Some letter combos get shortened to one letter, some *words* gets
shortened to one letter. Others get shortened considerably. And
according to odd rules.

Level 3 Braille is even worse.

 JB> Brialle only has only 6 bits (and IIRC no lower case) but most of the
 JB> other symbols are there AIUI.

It's got lower case. You preceed the uppercase letter with a dot
pattern that indicates that the following is lowercase.

I'm way too familiar with a lot of this as a friend has been having to
learn Braille as her eyesight goes.

 LE> And finally, consider that these things are *not* "mass produced"
 LE> in any sense of the word. That last is probably the killer.

 JB> yeah. still seems a little steep though.
 
Yep. 

(above text repeated in the coding that'd be used to print it in
Braille on a Braille printer)

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