MandarinBrailleOperator — Braille for Mandarin

cjklib.reading.operator.MandarinBrailleOperator is an implementation for phonetically transcribing Mandarin using the Braille system.

Specifics

In Braille the fifth tone of Mandarin Chinese is indicated without a tone mark making a pure entity ambiguous if entities without tonal information are mixed in. As by default Braille seems to be frequently written omitting tone marks where unnecessary, the option missingToneMark controlling the behaviour of absent tone marking is set to 'extended', allowing the mixing of entities with fifth and with no tone. If lossless conversion is needed, this option should be set to 'fifth', forbidding entities without tonal information.

A small trick to get Braille output into an easily readable form on a normal screen; do:

>>> import unicodedata
>>> input = u'⠅⠡ ⠝⠊ ⠙⠼ ⠊⠁⠓⠫⠰⠂'
>>> [unicodedata.name(char).replace('BRAILLE PATTERN DOTS-', 'P') \\
...     for char in input]
['P13', 'P16', 'SPACE', 'P1345', 'P24', 'SPACE', 'P145', 'P3456', 'SPACE', 'P24', 'P1', 'P125', 'P1246', 'P56', 'P2']

Class

class cjklib.reading.operator.MandarinBrailleOperator(**options)

Bases: cjklib.reading.operator.ReadingOperator

Provides an operator on strings written in the Braille system for Mandarin.

Todo

• Impl: Punctuation marks in isFormattingEntity() and getFormattingEntities(). Then change PinyinBrailleConverter.convertEntitySequence() to use these methods.

Parameters:

• options – extra options
• dbConnectInst – instance of a DatabaseConnector, if none is given, default settings will be assumed.
• toneMarkType – if set to 'braille' tones will be marked (using the Braille characters ), if set to 'none' no tone marks will be used and no tonal information will be supplied at all.
• missingToneMark – if set to 'fifth' missing tone marks are interpreted as fifth tone (which by default lack a tone mark), if set to 'extended' missing tonal information is allowed and takes on the same form as fifth tone, rendering conversion processes lossy.

compose(readingEntities)

Composes the given list of basic entities to a string.

No special treatment is given for subsequent Braille entities. Use getSpaceSeparatedEntities() to insert spaces between two Braille syllables.

Parameter:readingEntities (list of str) – list of basic entities or other content Return type:str Returns:composed entities

decompose(readingString)

Decomposes the given string into basic entities that can be mapped to one Chinese character each (exceptions possible).

The given input string can contain other non reading characters, e.g. punctuation marks.

The returned list contains a mix of basic reading entities and other characters e.g. spaces and punctuation marks.

Parameter:readingString (str) – reading string Return type:list of str Returns:a list of basic entities of the input string

classmethod getDefaultOptions()

getOnsetRhyme(plainSyllable)

Splits the given plain syllable into onset (initial) and rhyme (final).

Parameter:plainSyllable (str) – syllable without tone marks Return type:tuple of str Returns:tuple of syllable onset and rhyme Raises InvalidEntityError:  if the entity is invalid.

getSpaceSeparatedEntities(readingEntities)

Inserts spaces between two Braille entities for a given list of reading entities.

Spaces in the Braille system are applied between words. This is not reflected here and instead a space will be added between single syllables.

Parameter:readingEntities (list of str) – list of basic entities or other content Return type:list of str Returns:entities with spaces inserted between Braille sequences

getTonalEntity(plainEntity, tone)

Gets the entity with tone mark for the given plain entity and tone.

Parameters:

• plainEntity (str) – entity without tonal information
• tone (str) – tone

Return type:

str

Returns:

entity with appropriate tone

Raises InvalidEntityError:  

if the entity is invalid.

getTones(*args, **kwargs)

Returns a set of tones supported by the reading.

Return type:set Returns:set of supported tone marks.

isReadingEntity(entity)

splitEntityTone(entity)

Splits the entity into an entity without tone mark and the name of the entity’s tone.

Parameter:entity (str) – entity with tonal information Return type:tuple Returns:plain entity without tone mark and additionally the tone Raises InvalidEntityError:  if the entity is invalid.