Unable to write some characters with Braille Sense in french

[jf-fr-git]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

With a Hims BrailleSense 6, in terminal mode, four braille combinations cannot be performed on the braille keyboard.
The corresponding combinations are occupied by the following NVDA commands:

• dots 2-7: alt left arrow
• dots 5-7: alt right arrow
• dots 2-3-7: alt up arrow
• dots 5-6-7: alt down arrow

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to be able to type these four braille combinations with the braille keyboard, because they correspond to the following characters in the French (unified) computer braille table 8 dots:

• dots 2-7: Å (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE, decimal 197)
• dots 5-7: ‹ (SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK, decimal 8249)
• dots 2-3-7: £ (POUND SIGN, decimal 163)
• dots 5-6-7: > (GREATER-THAN SIGN : decimal 62)

Describe alternatives you've considered

Additional context

[CyrilleB79]

@LeonarddeR any idea why these braille chords are taken by NVDA shortcuts?

PS: @jf-fr-git congratulation for opening your first ticket!

[LeonarddeR]

I don't know why these are bound, but I agree they should be removed.

[CyrilleB79]

@LeonarddeR you seem to be the author of the commit which introduced the hims driver, probably on behalf of @BabbageCom.

Who were your contact? Or may someone else at @BabbageCom answer? Maybe @FalkoBabbage?

It's surely a good idea to remove such gestures. But the manufacturer would probably prefer to bind these shortcuts to another chord gesture. This would not make sense to have no predefined gesture for alt+arrows but predefined gestures for alt+shift+arrows.

@jf-fr-git or any user of Braille Sense, you may also suggest logical 4 alternative gestures for alt+arrws if you have an idea.

[CyrilleB79]

@EdKweon I can see that you are currently active on HIMS code (see #16033).

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to progress the current issue.

I sent an e-mail to Hims Support on October 5, 2023 to notify them of this issue and I got an immediate answer from Chris: "I will pass this on to our developers."
However, unless I have missed another message, I have had no news from HIMS people since then, even after I sent another e-mail on November 20, 2023.

As a reminder the issue is the following:
The 4 shortcuts defined to emulate alt+arrow are defined only with dot keys; on the contrary, other shortcuts associate dot keys with space key or f1 to f8 key. Thus, these 4 shortcuts conflict with braille entries in the braille table. In French, these entries are the 4 following characters: Å, ‹, £ and >. Two of them are quite common.
Thus these shortcuts should either be deleted or redefined so that they do not conflict with a braille character input.

Could you provide a fix for this issue? Or at least give some indications so that anyone else wanting to fix it can?

What would you like to do regarding these 4 shortcuts corresponding to entries in the braille table?

• Would you like just to have them removed?
• Or would you associate new shortcuts to them? In this case, take care to use at least one non-dot key in the gesture.

As a reminder, all the shortcuts defined in the HIMS driver are also listed in the
HIMS devices paragraph of NVDA's documentation.

[KihunJang1981]

BrailleSense 6 has alt and control key on both sides of space.
I think that develop assigne alt-dot-5 key. And this key send the dots-5-7 key.
I will change alt-dot-5 key in the BrailleSense 6.
And EdKweon will change NVDA map for math alt-left arrow key.
Thank you.