[Blindmath] LaTex to Nemeth?

Sat Aug 29 20:54:37 UTC 2009

Michael,
I've got a demo copy of DBT 10.7 on my system. I don't know if Duxbury has 
come out with and update version yet. .
Jessica
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] LaTex to Nemeth?


> Hello,
> What I will try and do (I was planning to do this anyway to try and feed 
> back to Duxbury systems and see how they respond) is to download the 
> latest version (unfortunately I will be stuck with a demo version) and see 
> what results I get.
>
> Unfortunately I don't know what version(s) my previous experience was 
> with, it was the university who owned the license and so I never had 
> direct access to the software being used (they did assure me it was the 
> latest version of DBT at the time).
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 29/08/09 15:11, Jose Tamayo wrote:
>> Hello Michael,
>>
>> Would you provide versions of DBT that you have encountered the 
>> conversion
>> inconsistencies  with.  It would interest me as I am working on acquiring
>> some of these tools for supporting my Math endeavors.
>>
>> thanks in advance,
>> Jose Tamayo
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
>> On
>> Behalf Of Michael Whapples
>> Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 5:19 PM
>> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
>> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] LaTex to Nemeth?
>>
>> Hello Mary,
>> As you said Duxbury does claim to support translation from LaTeX, but in
>> my experience when translating to British Braille it really didn't work
>> well and it sounds like you are getting a similar outcome for nemeth.
>> Here are some of the issues I found, only a very limited subset of the
>> LaTeX commands were actually supported, certain parts of LaTeX could
>> result in Duxbury just stopping translation at that point (I can't
>> remember whether this was due to poorly coded LaTeX or a particular
>> command), unknown parts of LaTeX didn't warn the user of Duxbury about
>> the unknown LaTeX and the Braille may contain nonsense at that point or
>> worse it may just lack that part of the document (IE. the Braille would
>> be valid but the content would be incorrect so the reader wouldn't have
>> a clue from the document alone that something is missing), and I am sure
>> there were plenty more problems which would just get tedious to list
>> here. Even the documentation which comes with Duxbury is lacking for the
>> LaTeX support part, it tells you to use scientific notebook to prepare
>> the LaTeX but even SN will produce LaTeX not supported by Duxbury. As
>> you may have guessed, Duxbury isn't a system I would even consider for
>> producing maths Braille from existing documents.
>>
>> I don't know about the Tiger products for producing actual Braille
>> output, but as I understand it you would need to convert the LaTeX
>> document to word format. I am sorry I don't know of what software would
>> be suitable for this, it may be that mathtype includes a feature for
>> importing LaTeX but I think I will have to say you will either need to
>> look around for yourself or wait for another list member to say how this
>> conversion may be done. One thing you should consider when taking this
>> route is that as you have the extra step of converting the LaTeX to word
>> format, errors may be introduced at this step and so may not be a fault
>> of the Tiger software, so try a few conversion applications, or may be
>> even try a few documents originally created in word and mathtype before
>> passing judgement on the Tiger software. I did see the dotsplus side of
>> the Tiger software and was very pleased with the output it produces.
>> Dotsplus seemed easy to learn and if you only want this to be something
>> to fill in until the student knows LaTeX so that they can work directly
>> in LaTeX then this may be good.
>>
>> I am not so familiar with software to produce nemeth as I live in the UK
>> so use the British Braille code, but here are some suggestions of
>> various software packages which may be of interest.
>>
>> Liblouisxml can produce nemeth Braille output, however this takes mathml
>> input so you would need to use a LaTeX to mathml translation application
>> (eg. tex4ht or ttm). Again like with the conversion to word document
>> format from LaTeX you may want to try a few LaTeX to mathml conversion
>> packages (having tried both tex4ht and ttm I can say they do produce
>> different output, although they both seemed to work reasonably well for 
>> me).
>>
>> While on the topic of mathml, it may be worth you considering to convert
>> the LaTeX documents to that anyway as then the documents can be made
>> accessible on the web (eg. internet explorer users can use mathplayer
>> with a screen reader like window-eyes or JFW).
>>
>> Although you said about wanting to translate the document for embossing,
>> the following may be useful should the students have a Braille display
>> (I would highly recommend they consider one if they will be working
>> directly in LaTeX and maths). Anyway the website is
>> http://latex-access.sf.net and this can be used with JFW to have Braille
>> and better speech output while editing LaTeX (it isn't designed for
>> document translation as it doesn't deal with numbering references, etc).
>>
>> Hope some of this is useful.
>>
>> Michael Whapples
>> On 27/08/09 20:09, Mary J Ziegler wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I recently joined this list to learn ways to better ways to make math
>>>
>> accessible to blind students at MIT.    Today, I have a very specific
>> question:
>>
>>> What's the best path to convert a LaTex document to Nemeth Braille?   We
>>>
>> have both Duxbury and the Tiger Software Suite, but neither seems to be 
>> able
>> to translate the LaTex to Nemeth.   Is it possible with one of these
>> applications?   Both mention the use of either Scientific Notebook 
>> (Duxbury)
>> or MathType (Tiger): is there a way to do it through those applications?
>>
>>> FYI - While our long term goal is to have our students learn and read
>>>
>> LaTex directly, as it's used widely here anyway, for students that are 
>> not
>> up to speed on LaTex and already read Nemeth, I'd like to be able to 
>> emboss
>> in Nemeth.
>>
>>> Can anyone advise me on what's doable here, and, if yes, how?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Mary
>>>
>>> ____________
>>> Mary J. Ziegler
>>> Team Leader,  Accessibility and Usability
>>> MIT Information Services and Technology (IS&T)
>>> ATIC Lab Room 7-143
>>> 617.258.9328
>>> maryz at mit.edu
>>>
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>>
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