RE: [Groff] Re: Formatting braille

[Susan Jolly]

You are correct that there's only so many opportunities for formatting but
there are many combinations and permutations.  Think of how many different
formats are used in an old plain text man page.

In addition to centering and indenting, there are requirements for inserting
blank lines as part of certain types of formatting.  And there are the
standard rules about avoiding widows and orphans.  And then there are the
odd rules like those for poems where lines that end up being runover in
braille but not print (because of the shorter lines in braille) are done
with a hanging indent where the indent is two spaces greater than the
greatest line indent in the **entire** poem.

My guess is that the braille formatting rules are different in different
languages; I only know American English braille.  Here's a link to our
formatting rules.  Rule 4: Headings and Rules 7-19 are all relevant to my
question.  http://www.brl.org/formats/

The first computer-based braille translating applications became available
in 1965 and yet the formatting part still isn't fully automated.  You can
even become a certified expert in Braille Formats by taking a US$75 course
and paying US$125 for the final test.
http://www.nationalbraille.org/BrailleFormatsCourse.htm

I'll see if I can find a good example of something that illustrates a wider
variety of different formats than in the links I gave earlier. 

Susan