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Transcribing Instructional Materials Using GOODFEEL with Duxbury

How to format a Lime file containing multiple musical examples for those who do not have the Duxbury Braille Translator.

If you have version 10.6 or later of the Duxbury Braille Translator, you can insert Lime files into a Duxbury document. Duxbury will then use GOODFEEL automatically to translate the music. The result is a single master braille document containing both text and musical passages.

Procedure:

  • Prepare separate Lime files for each of the musical examples.
  • Enter the text passages into a Duxbury print file.
  • Use the Insert File... entry from Duxbury's Edit menu to insert the musical excerpts in the appropriate places in the text.
  • Once all the text and the references to related Lime files have been entered into your Duxbury print document, choose the Translate entry from Duxbury’s File menu, or press CONTROL+T, to create your master braille document.
Delete the text that has instructions for people who do not have Duxbury, The new page will show this information. That text begins with:

If you don't have Duxbury Use the following steps in Lime to make better braille when transcribing instructional materials (pages of music with multiple exercises on them like in textbooks) using GOODFEEL. Following these instructions will not produce the standard format but all the correct information can be conveyed to the braille reader.

Instructions

  • Don't split up exercises into different Lime documents; keep them together. You will need to break up the files whenever the number of staves in a system changes.
  • Use rehearsal markers for exercise titles and/or exercise numbers but don't make them wider than your braille page width. GOODFEEL will truncate them.
  • Restart bar numbering at 1 (or 0 if there's a pickup) for every new exercise. GOODFEEL will assume that a new exercise is starting if a bar number is less than the previous bar number. If an exercise is only 1 measure long then you may need to start numbering at 0.
    Bar Numbering Instructions
    • Click on a note on the system just above the new exercise. (Yes, this will be in the previous exercise.)
    • Select Bar Line... from the Symbol menu.
    • In the Bar Line dialog:
      • Select the correct bar line.
      • Select At End of System.
      • Check Restart Bar Numbering With and set the number to 1 (or 0 for pickups).
      • Click on OK.
  • Make sure there is a time signature in Lime at every new exercise even if the time signature didn't change. This is usually only a problem if you entered your music directly into Lime without scanning software.

Example

This example is made up of a series of files that show different stages in transcribing braille in a textbook format. In this example, some markings were intentionally left out because those markings do not deal with the object of these instructions. The annotation Black American Spiritual has extra spaces in it to make it longer so that GOODFEEL will not try to squeeze some music in at the end of the line. If you have GOODFEEL, Lime and SharpEye installed on your computer you should be able to click on each of the following links and open the file.
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