Customizing the emb.elt File

The emb.elt file contains parameters that describe many different braille embossers to DBT. You will find this file in your DBT program folder, typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Duxbury\DBT 12.7.

Note: You should NOT actually edit the original EMB.ELT.

Instead, make a copy of this file, or better, only selected parts of it, into a new text file. Call the new file "myemb.elt" and save it to the same directory as emb.elt itself. Whenever DBT reads information from emb.elt, it first looks for a file called "myemb.elt". DBT merges the information from the two files internally, giving preference to the parameters in myemb.elt where there are conflicts.

Making your modifications only in the new file, myemb.elt, prevents the DBT installer from overwriting your customizations if you use it to update, modify, or repair your installation.

An Example

The following is an example of how we might add support for 5 inch wide by 3 inch high continuous cards, which would would have a line size of up to 14 characters on a maximum of 8 lines. This example shows making the change to the "Generic Interpoint" embosser, but the same technique is applied regardless of what embosser you actually have.

Before making any changes, we copy the text shown below from emb.elt into a new file called myemb.elt. The text includes the embosser model name ("Generic Interpoint"), some comments (not required), and then some parameters between a single opening brace and a single closing brace, "{...}". This combined text, called a "section" of the emb.elt, defines one embosser model. When copying text from emb.elt to myemb.elt, you should always copy one or more whole sections. We recommend only copying sections that you intend to modify.

The example shows the letter "a" at the beginning of the line that we added to support the new form,"Cards". The letter is there only to show the customizations done for this example. It should not be part of the form definition.

NOTE: When you add a new form, there is a limitation of nine characters for the form name, and the name must be enclosed in double quotes. This form will subsequently be displayed in the Form Name field in the Embosser Setup dialog.

Shown with a letter "d" (again, to indicate our customizations) are two lines for forms with 12 inch paper. The example customization is that we will remove these lines (forms) altogether because this user has no requirement for 12 inch narrow or 12 inch wide paper. Those forms would subsequently be removed from the list of Forms when the user's Generic Interpoint Braille Device is selected.

"Generic Interpoint"
# *** Embosser definition unchanged since 05/20/20xx
# no escape sequences used
{
MaximumCells = 42
MaximumLines = 26
BreakLimits
CanDoInterpoint
a Form "Cards" = 50 x 30;30 ; SinglePage ; 14 x 8 ; 14 x 8
Form "10_n" = 85 x 100 ; SinglePage ; 34 x 22 ; 32 x 22
Form "11_n" = 85 x 110 ; SinglePage ; 34 x 25 ; 32 x 25
Form "11_w" = 115 x 110 ; SinglePage ; 42 x 26 ; 40 x 25
d Form "12_n" = 85 x 120 ; SinglePage ; 34 x 28 ; 32 x 28
d Form "12_w" = 115 x 120 ; SinglePage ; 40 x 28 ; 40 x 28
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}