Sao Mai Braille 24.3 Released

The SM software development team will participate in the CSUN 2024 conference in the United States from March 19th to 22nd, and will present a session on the Sao Mai Braille software at 14:20 on Tuesday, March 19th, in the Grand AB room of the Anaheim Marriott, California. If you are attending the conference, we look forward to welcoming you to the session. See detailed information at: https://www.csun.edu/cod/conference/sessions/index.php/public/presentations/view/1670

Since the previous release version 24.2, we had nearly 2 weeks off for Tet holidays and then more than 3 weeks of work to release version SMB 24.3 with some new features and significant improvements as follows: many language translation tables updated with LibLouis 3.29; spell check function; full support of translation rules for music vocal score; and many other important improvements. Below are the details of the new features in this Sao Mai Braille 24.3 release, written in the general and the music-specific sections.

General

• Fixed empty translation result when selecting display Braille code as North America (Lowercase).
• Fixed "list index out of bounds" error message when saving to BRF.
• Support keyboard interaction with links. Press Enter to activate the link when the cursor is in the name of an email, web link, or table of contents.
• Added spell check function. On the General settings page in the Options dialog in the Tools menu, select "Check spelling as you type", and next to it is a list of language dictionaries to choose from.
  
  If spell check is enabled while composing, misspelled words will be highlighted in red and the screen reader will also announce spelling errors. At the misspelled word, right-click or press the Application key, select the correct suggestion, and press Enter to change.
  
  Additionally, you can select "Spell check" from the Tools menu to open the spell check dialog.
• Use LibLouis 3.29 library with many translation table updates for languages such as Belarusian, Ukrainian, Kannada, Danish, English UEB, Malay, Hungarian, and Turkish. Added 2 new tables with capitals for Belarusian and Ukrainian languages.
• Use the latest MathCAT library 0.4 with many improvements in speaking and translating Braille for Mathematics.
• Improved Braille output encoding-related options. When choosing to save BRF/BRL/BRA as ASCII or convert to Ascii, and the Braille document is in Unicode, it will convert correctly from Unicode to the currently selected ASCII encoding. It also sends the text with same ASCII encoding to the embosser. Please note, for saving or converting from ASCII to Unicode, currently it only supports the US ASCII to Unicode.

Braille Music

• Improved lyric slur when both lyrics and notes are slurred nestingly and crossingly.
• Fixed error of having an extra blank line of lyrics in instrumental score.
• Improved numbering for lyric slur.
• Support lyric numbering when lyrics are changed to different voices.
• Support lyric slur for syllables in-between two parallels.
• Support repeating lyric text. Add "Lyric repeat" option in the music Braille's transcription settings page in Options dialogue.
• When choosing not to show lyrics, vocal score is translated as instrument one.
• Improved irregular beamings.
• Fixed missing double bar line at the end of repeated measures in some cases.
• Improved stating of pedal-up sign when two signs appear at the same position followed by a double bar line.
• Improved measure numbering function in full-score transcription modes and in section-by-section format for cases where a measure is broken into the next section.
• Improved internal tuplet repeat when there are directions inside the tuplet.
• Fixed wrongly stating tuplet doubling end in some complicated cases nested with part-measure repeats.
• Fixed missing several measures when translating a part exported from a full score, in which doesn't use standard MusicXML tags and attributes for staff numbering.
• Support stating chord symbols according to the available MusicXML symbol list when the score uses symbols instead of text to display chords.
• Improved condition of combining notes from multiple voices into chords when notes should be at the end of a tie or slur.
• Cue note sign is attached to its note in a chord, instead of moving to write in front of the written note.
• Accidental with parenthesis is stated separately from the note.
• Fixed not ending the doubling at the end of a parallel of some big full scores.
• Not automatically change chord's interval direction when clef is changed in the same staff.
• Added a space between a single-word and a phrase expression.
• Support handling one-shot dynamics repeat. Added the option whether to treat one-shot dynamics as other dynamics for repeat.
• Improved part-measure in-accord and stem note for some special cases with hidden rests in multiple voices.
• Fixed missing rehearsal marks in full-score transcription mode when the mark is written not on the first part.
• Added option to align from note in the first measure of a parallel for bar-over-bar format.
• Fixed hang error when translating some music scores.
• Fixed not listing all parts in the score info dialogue for some cases.
• Fixed having extra printed pages after saving editings in the score info dialog.
• Re-enable score info menu item in the Tools menu.
• The "Add profile" button is added in the music profiles page, allowing to choose to list more built-in profiles. By default, the list only shows 8 translation profiles that we think meet the majority of users' needs.
• Added more music translation profiles, up to 47 in total; and all profiles are updated with the description.
• When standing at the music translation profile list in the Options or the score info dialogue, the current profile's description is shown on the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Press F1 to hear the screen reader speak the description.