The Gardner–Salinas braille codes are a proposed method of encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. The most common form of Gardner–Salinas braille is the 8-cell variety, commonly called GS8. There is also a corresponding 6-cell form called GS6.[1]
The codes were developed as a replacement for Nemeth Braille by John A. Gardner, a physicist at Oregon State University, and Norberto Salinas, an Argentinian mathematician. However, 15 years later Nemeth code was still the standard, with no further change .[2]
The Gardner–Salinas braille codes are an example of a compact human-readable markup language. The syntax is based on the LaTeX system for scientific typesetting.
See also: Braille and Braille music.
The set of lower-case letters, the period, comma, semicolon, colon, exclamation mark, apostrophe, and opening and closing double quotes are the same as in Grade-2 English Braille.[1]
Apart from 0, this is the same as the Antoine notation used in French and Luxembourgish Braille.Sources disagree on 0. Both claimed forms are presented above. The second is the ISO form. Note however that ISO is concerned only with a one-to-one assignment between 8-dot braille and ASCII, and so has no particular connection to Gardner–Salinas braille.
GS8 upper-case letters are indicated by the same cell as standard English braille (and GS8) lower-case letters, with dot #7 added.
Compare Luxembourgish Braille.
Dot 8 is added to the letter forms of International Greek Braille to derive Greek letters:
The single quotation marks are the ASCII back tick ` and apostrophe '.
* Encodes the fraction-slash for the single adjacent digits/letters as numerator and denominator.
* Used for any > 1 digit radicand.
** Used for markup to represent inkprint text.
The difference between the two underline markers is not explained.