LOU_TRACE(1)

📦
version 3.39.0 · 14 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 lou_trace — the manual, but make it make sense

okay so bestie, welcome to LOU_TRACE(1) — a User Commands girlie from the Liblouis family. she's a little niche, she's a little iconic, and by the end of this page you two are gonna be besties fr fr 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

lou_trace — a tool to list all the rules that were used for a Braille translation. that's it, that's her whole job, and she does it beautifully 👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

lou_trace [OPTIONS] TABLE[,TABLE,...]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so like… this program is your little detective for Braille translation tables 🔍 she lets you examine and debug them — you hand her a table (or several, separated by commas, no big deal) and some input, and she prints out the list of applied translation rules for that input. liblouis tables, fully inspectable, chef's kiss. the way that this makes debugging actually possible? obsessed. ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -h, --help — display this help and exit. your little "what does anything mean" safety net 💫
  • -v, --version — display version information and exit. so you know exactly which era of liblouis you're living in 🕰️
  • -f, --forward — forward translation using the given table. moving onward and upward ⏩
  • -b, --backward — backward translation using the given table. going back the other way, no cap ⏪
  • --noContractions — Use no contractions. spell it all out, babe ✍️
  • --dotsIO — Display dot patterns. dots on dots on dots 👀
  • --ucBrl — Use Unicode Braille patterns. fancy unicode Braille, highkey gorgeous 🌈
  • --noUndefined — Disable output of undefined dot numbers during back-translation. if it's undefined, we simply do not speak of it 🙈
  • --partialTrans — Use partial back-translation. also, important heads up: If neither -f nor -b are specified, forward translation is assumed. so if you ghost the direction flags entirely, she just goes forward, periodt 💅

🦋 AUTHOR 🦋

Written by Bert Frees. we love a credited icon 💜

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? do NOT suffer in silence, bestie. report bugs to liblouis-liblouisxml@freelists.org 📧

Liblouis home page: <http://www.liblouis.io>

Copyright © 2024 Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (read that part twice, ngl — no warranty fr fr 💀)

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

The full documentation for lou_trace is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and lou_trace programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info liblouis

should give you access to the complete manual. go read it, it's giving "required reading" energy 📚✨

and that's the whole page, bestie — every flag, every path, every email, every legal line, all of it. nothing skipped, nothing invented. mwah 🎀

Liblouis 3.39.0 — September 2026 — LOU_TRACE(1) 💖 slay, and happy tracing ✨

📦 where this page comes from