[Blindmath] LaTex to Nemeth?

Sun Aug 30 19:09:25 UTC 2009

Hello all.

I invite anyone who is experiencing problems with the LaTeX to braille processing in Duxbury's DBT to send me one or more samples of the problematic LaTeX files. My email address is 

caryn at duxsys.com

This discussion thread on the list started with a message from Mary Ziegler. It was very helpful that Mary sent a copy of a problematic LaTeX file for us to examine at Duxbury. A frequent item in this LaTeX file that was causing problems in the braille was the use of a pair of dollar signs on a separate line, to start or end set off mathematical notation. I think this may be common in files created with InftyReader. I sent Mary a revised file to be used by DBT's LaTeX importer, to take care of this problem. Since that was just on Friday, Mary hasn't had a chance to get back to us on the results yet. This file is not in our shipping software, DBT 10.7 SR1. But I'd be happy to send it to other DBT users who need it, even if you are using a current demo copy of DBT.

It's really important for us to learn about things that aren't working right. Imagine that your teacher says, "Are there any questions about problem 14?" If you and your classmates are totally confused about problem 14 but nobody raises their hand, perhaps because they are too discouraged, that doesn't help the students or the teacher. But if a student speaks up about problem 14, that can help the whole class. In the case of producing braille from LaTeX with DBT, you can be helpful to the larger community by sending us your problem files. Thanks very much.

Sincerely,
Caryn

Caryn Navy
Duxbury Systems
Phone: (978) 692-3000, ext. 310
E-mail: caryn at duxsys.com
Web: www.duxburysystems.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Neal 
To: 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics' 
Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] LaTex to Nemeth?

The current shipping version of DBT WIN is 10.7 SR1.

Neal
-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Whapples
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 3:36 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blindmath mailing list
>> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>      
> Blindmath:
>    
>>      
>
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/mwhapples%40aim.c
> om
>    
>>
>>      
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Blindmath:
>
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/jtblas%40hotmail.
> com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Blindmath:
>
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/mwhapples%40aim.c
om
>    

_______________________________________________
Blindmath mailing list
Blindmath at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
Blindmath:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/neal%40duxsys.com

_______________________________________________
Blindmath mailing list
Blindmath at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for Blindmath:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/caryn%40duxsys.com