Raised Dot Computing was started by David Holladay in 1981 in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1984, Raised Dot Computing relocated to Madison, Wisconsin. For 5 years, Raised Dot Computing mainly reflected the work of two married couples: David Holladay and Caryn Navy with majority ownership; and Jesse Kaysen and Nevin Olson as minority ownership. In 1989, Jesse Kaysen and Nevin Olson left Raised Dot Computing, selling their shares to David Holladay and Caryn Navy.
In January 1990 we hired Aaron Leventhal, a very talented young programmer. Since then, David, Caryn and Aaron have worked very closely as a team, with Aaron serving as the chief PC programmer.
In September, 1998, Raised Dot Computing reorganized as Braille Planet, A Wisconsin non-profit corporation run by greg Rosenberg.
To help you to appreciate the role of MegaDots in our product line, we think it would be useful to go over the evolution of braille translation software packages from Raised Dot Computing.
In 1980, we bought a tape-based VersaBraille and an Apple II computer. David wrote a software package which allowed easy exchange of material between the VersaBraille and the Apple. This grew into BRAILLE-EDIT. Very soon David wrote translators to go from print to braille and from braille to print.
Through 1983, an explosion of new possibilities burst forth on the scene. In quick succession came affordable speech synthesis, affordable braille embossers, and optical scanners. As each new generation of equipment came out, David extended BRAILLE-EDIT to work with these new devices.
BRAILLE-EDIT is an embedded command program. To achieve the output you desire, you type explicit commands into the file. Only during the act of printing (to your printer or to the screen) can you tell if your formatting commands have worked the way you want them to.
In 1985 we rewrote BRAILLE-EDIT to create BEX (BRAILLE-EDIT XPRESS). Among other things, BEX made better use of the capabilities of newer models in the Apple II computer family. One of our goals was to make BEX as useful a package as possible for resource teachers of blind and visually impaired students. For example, with BEX we introduced the ability to make large print output on common dot matrix printers.
In 1987 we released TranscriBEX. TranscriBEX enhanced BEX to add braille transcribing features. Stripped down to the essentials, TranscriBEX was a route away from the data anarchy of BEX. We told users exactly how to use the special TranscriBEX formatting commands. If you followed our instructions and used our transformation chapters, you got very reasonably formatted braille.
For many years, people asked us to do "BRAILLE-EDIT for the PC" and then "BEX for the PC." Because there were many other tools allowing blind and low vision individuals to use the PC effectively, we chose a more modest project for our first PC program. In 1986 Raised Dot Computing released Hot Dots, a braille translation program for the PC. To create Hot Dots, we turned the source code for BRAILLE-EDIT over to Lee Kamentsky, a freelance programmer, and he adapted it for the PC. Lee used a wide variety of programming languages and approaches to create Hot Dots. To create the Hot Dots formatter, for example, he found a way of converting each line of assembly language for the Apple II into assembly language for the PC. This brought the astonishing accomplishment of emulating our Apple II formatter so well that even its bugs were preserved in Hot Dots!
The original Hot Dots contained a forward translator from print to braille, a backward translator from braille to print, a global replace utility, and a formatter. However, Hot Dots did not include its own editor, and it lacked an effective way of bringing files in from a variety of PC word processors.
We recognized that we were stuck in an uncomfortable position. We did not have enough resources to properly switch from the less active Apple II world to the PC world. In June 1987 we submitted a phase 1 SBIR grant proposal to the National Science Foundation for work on a better system for braille translation and formatting. Through participation in the SBIR program (Small Business Innovative Research), various federal agencies which ordinarily fund academic research are able to deliver some funding for research by small businesses. A phase 1 grant gives you enough money to answer the question, "If we gave you more money, could you do something useful with it?" Much to our delight, we received a phase 1 grant. After describing the need for a better braille translation and formatting system in our phase 1 final report, we applied for phase 2 funding to develop it. The NSF eventually funded our phase 2 grant, which lasted from September 1989 to September 1991.
By the fall of 1990, we had a new translation system and were busy working out an elaborate new formatting system. We decided to market our new translators in an old wrapper. We combined our new translators, our old Hot Dots formatter, some licensed file conversion routines, and some global replacement rules files that Caryn had written to make better formatted braille from the Arkenstone scanner. We turned this combination into Hot Dots 3.0.
This served several objectives. Hot Dots 3.0 was much better than previous versions of Hot Dots since it could work directly off of files from numerous word processing programs (most often WordPerfect and plain ASCII textfiles). It gave us a chance to test out our new translators and to learn what users wanted. Marketing Hot Dots 3.0 caused PC users to pay more attention to Raised Dot Computing. We are no longer perceived as a company that only did work on the Apple II computer.
Hot Dots 3.0 was a very usable program. But it also had its flaws. It is limited by our old formatting system, which is very difficult to modify. Making quality braille format (textbook or literary format) with Hot Dots was a challenge.
While MegaDots has inherited a great deal from our earlier programs, it also represents some major changes in our software philosophy. Like BRAILLE-EDIT and BEX, MegaDots is designed to provide a comfortable environment for editing print, braille, or both simultaneously. A MegaDots file is very highly structured. It is designed to guide you into formatting your data in particular ways. At the same time, MegaDots includes tools that let you change the format rules that we supplied. MegaDots also departs from the purely embedded command (wait and see) formatting of our earlier products, but without entirely abandoning embedded markup. MegaDots provides a full WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment for easy editing of both print and braille; the hidden format markup becomes visible when you request it. MegaDots is designed for both informal brailling and formal transcription by both blind and sighted users (no extra software required). We have a strong platform for the years to come.
We are continuing to strengthen MegaDots in many directions. MegaDots version 2.0 enhances previous editions of MegaDots in a number of significant ways. We look forward to all the ways we can further enhance MegaDots in the years to come.