The Gardner–Salinas braille codes are a 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.
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.
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:
* 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.