The DAISY Planet
Index 
A1
HOT off the Press!
First Step in Adding Accessibility to Google Books - Was It Enough?
by George Kerscher
DAISY Marketplace B1
WANTED:
Product announcements for the DAISY Marketplace to circulate on the DAISY Consortium home page and here on The DAISY Planet.
Your Stories C1
Your picture here?
Our first Story will appear in next month's newsletter. It will
feature someone who is sure to inspire you!
Dear DAISY D1
Dear DAISY,
"I am blind, and a user of various audio formats. What I want to do is take a group of MP3 files and turn them into one DAISY title. Is there an inexpensive tool that I can use to convert a list of MP3 files into a DAISY DTB? MP3 files are reasonably easy to find, but without a tool to convert them into a simple DAISY structure, I lose so much functionality.
By turning the MP3 files into a DAISY book, I would then gain at least some of the DAISY player features such as time jump, bookmarks, sleep settings, elapsed and remaining time, that are not directly related to heading markup... Yes, I can play the MP3 files on this device, but I want the support of DAISY."
J. M. (Alberta, Canada)
Dear J. M.,
Most DAISY production tools were designed for production environments rather than personal use, and you may consider them to be expensive.
Some of the tools that may be of interest for your purposes are:
There is a free tool called DTBMaker that may meet your needs if you are a Mac or Linux user.
A demo version of the eClipseWriter Personal Edition (does not include eClipseReader or NeoSpeech voices) is available free on the IRTI site.
I know quite a few folks who have purchased the Plextalk Portable Recorder (PTR2) which is also a DAISY player, but you may not consider it to be inexpensive.
The gh Player is also a personal DAISY production tool.
More information is available on DAISY production tools, but as mentioned, most are intended for production environments rather than as personal tools.
- DAISY Tech Staff
The DAISY Pipeline: Available to All
July brought the first official release of the DAISY Pipeline, a suite of cross-platform transformation tools currently available for Windows (98, Me, XP), Mac OS X (PPC or Intel), and Linux.
The
need for tools that would facilitate the conversion of documents and
DTBs from one format to another was identified by the DAISY Consortium several
years ago. The Consortium hosts this open source, collaborative development
project. The first release of the DAISY Pipeline is the result of
almost three years of hard work and dedication by the Pipeline project team.
One of the primary goals of this project has been specifically to meet the production and conversion needs of the DAISY community. This release of the DAISY Pipeline is the Consortium's first step to meet these demands. The DAISY Board of Directors has agreed that tools developed by the DAISY Consortium will be open, licensed under LGPL (the GNU Lesser General Public License) and made available to everyone, every organization, company, or individual.
Join the DAISY Open Source Community
The DAISY Pipeline is designed to reduce duplication of effort, and ensure sharing of workload and expertise to further the global adoption of the DAISY standards. However, many transformers are yet to be developed. Information on the current suite of transformers is available in the SourceForge DAISY Pipeline area.
Other Conversion Tools
Other DAISY and DAISY-related conversion tools have been developed by DAISY Members, Friends, and other commercial companies. Information on conversion tools is available in the Tools area of the DAISY Web site. For example, two software systems which transform electronic files to DAISY format are EasyConverter by Dolphin Computer Access Limited and eClipseWriter from IRTI.
Important Links
- DAISY Pipeline download from SourceForge
- DAISY Pipeline download link on DAISY Tools Page
- Online installation instructions (read before installing the DAISY Pipeline)
- DAISY Pipeline Online User Guide
- Additional information is available on the DAISY Pipeline SourceForge Web site and the DAISY Pipeline Project Web page.
- Functionality included in this release of the DAISY Pipeline for end users
- Trackers for feature requests and bug reports
DAISY Online Delivery
In
June DAISY Members and Friends
from around the world met
to begin the development of an international
standard
protocol for the online delivery of DAISY books. Information about
the DAISY Online Delivery Project, notes from the June meeting and
specifications of three sample implementations are available in the
project
work area.
Nesbit Inducted as first Million-Mile Guide Dog
Nesbit
and George Kerscher, 
Secretary
General of the DAISY Consortium, graduated as a team from Guide
Dogs for the Blind 8 years ago. Little did Nesbit know that one
day he would become the first dog guide in history to have traveled
a million miles and to join the SkyMiles Million-Mile Club, as Delta
Air Line's first Million Miler Companion. Few people belong to this
special club, and only one dog, Nesbit can make this claim. Nesbit,
as a working dog guide, has been able to accompany George at no extra
cost.
On
March 19th Nesbit and George flew into Salt Lake City en route to
the 2007 CSUN Conference in Los Angeles. They were greeted by Delta
Air Lines representatives who escorted them on every leg of the trip.
That Tuesday evening at the CSUN International Reception, Nesbit
and George were presented with oversized Million Miler certificates,
and Nesbit received a special
Million
Miler patch for his harness. On their next trip they
reached the official million mile mark. A special rug was in place
on the plane for Nesbit, a big announcement was made, and everyone
clapped and cheered.
When you look into Nesbit's deep brown eyes you cannot help but love him. He is a hit at airports, with kids, teens, and adults alike.
Congratulations Nesbit - and Dr. Kerscher as well!
From The Editor E1
Welcome to The DAISY Planet, the DAISY Consortium's new newsletter. Some of you will recall our previous newsletters. Well, we have revamped the concept. The DAISY Planet will be short and sweet - it won't take much of your time to read it and catch up on what's new in the DAISY world. We are hoping that this will be your newsletter, that you will contribute to it as well as reading it. Please use the Contact Us form to send submissions or suggestions.
New features:
The DAISY Marketplace is for you to showcase your new tools, products and services, but we need your input to make this work. It will "live" on the DAISY Web site, and a heading or name for each entry will be listed in the DAISY Planet with a link to the Marketplace on our site for more details. It's really like free advertising, a benefit for the DAISY Membership.
The Your Stories column will feature someone who reads DAISY books, uses DAISY tools, teaches students who read DAISY books, and so on. Again, your input will help us to make this an interesting column. If you know of someone who has a story to tell, who loves reading books in DAISY format, or is somehow a part of our community, please let us know.
Letters to the Editor - Do you have an important or controversial issue you want to raise? Has your organization recently implemented DAISY and you would like to tell the DAISY world about it? Perhaps there is a related access issue you want to share. We are hoping to receive at least one or two letters for each issue.
The Dear DAISY column is for questions you would like us to try to answer. Submissions to this column may be anonymous upon request.
Some of you may want to write and submit a Feature Article. We'd love to hear from you as well.
As we are in the middle of the summer, some of you may not receive or read this for a couple of weeks, but please, do contribute, and help us make this the best newsletter on The DAISY Planet.
This month - a quiz to test your DAISY knowledge:
How many DAISY players are in use around the world?
Be sure to
read next month's issue of
The DAISY Planet
for the answer.
Letters to the Editor E2
Editor column cannot exist without your letters! Please send us your thoughts on
important or controversial issues, exciting implementation stories, or DAISY related issues you would like to tell the DAISY world about. Send your letters to the editor using our Contact Us Form.
How You Can Help H1
1. Circulate "The DAISY Planet" within your organization or company; share it with others.
2. Join the DAISY Open Source Community.
3. Nominate someone for a Story in "The DAISY Planet".
4. Make a charitable donation to support equality and access to information.
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