Carriage Returns, Line Feeds, and Form feeds are sufficient to specify how the Braille is formatted. Previously BRF contained some additional specialized formatting instructions, but now BRF is formatted exactly like Web-Braille/BARD. BRF files can be embossed with a braille embosser or printed, read on a refreshable braille display, or imperfectly back-translated into standard text which can then be read by a screen reader or other similar program. Many find BRF files to be a more convenient way to receive brailled content, and it has increasing use as a distribution format. If a SimBraille font is downloaded and installed a BRF file can be opened in WordPad, Apache Open Office, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, etc., and the Braille will appear correctly rendered as 2 dimensional, non-tactile, visual 6 dot braille characters when the font is set to SimBraille. Unicode includes a means for encoding eight-dot braille; however, Braille ASCII continues to be the preferred format for encoding six-dot braille. Braille ASCII values The following table shows the arrangement of characters, with the hexadecimal value, corresponding ASCII character, binary notation matching the standard dot order, Braille Unicode glyph, and general meaning (the actual meaning may change depending on context). The following C string literal (which can also be used in Python and other programming languages that accept C string literals) is derived from the above table and gives the Braille ASCII mappings for Unicode Braille characters U+2800 through U+283F in order, starting with U+2800 at the start of the string: " A1B'K2L@CIF/MSP\"E3H9O6R^DJG>NTQ,*5<-U8V.%[$+X!&;:4\\0Z7(_?W]#Y)=" It maps this Unicode string: "⠀⠁⠂⠃⠄⠅⠆⠇⠈⠉⠊⠋⠌⠍⠎⠏⠐⠑⠒⠓⠔⠕⠖⠗⠘⠙⠚⠛⠜⠝⠞⠟⠠⠡⠢⠣⠤⠥⠦⠧⠨⠩⠪⠫⠬⠭⠮⠯⠰⠱⠲⠳⠴⠵⠶⠷⠸⠹⠺⠻⠼⠽⠾⠿" Unused ASCII values Only 64 characters are needed to represent all possible combinations of 6-dot braille (including space), so not all ASCII values are needed for Braille ASCII. The lower-case letters (a to z) are not normally used, but might be interpreted as having the same dot patterns as their upper-case equivalents. `, {, |, and } are not used and their Braille ASCII rendition is not defined. Braille ASCII is merely a subset of the ASCII table that can be used to represent all possible combinations of 6-dot braille. It is not to be confused with the Computer Braille Code, which can represent all ASCII values in braille. See also List of binary codes Braille Patterns (Unicode) References External links Early History of Braille Translators and Embossers Representing and Displaying Braille What's a BRF? (page on National Braille Bookstore) ASCII ASCII