[Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

Fri Nov 13 00:13:42 UTC 2009

Birkir, I live in Cary ... We should get together and do lunch some time.

Take care,
Sina

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Birkir Gunnarsson
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 5:44 PM
To: 'qubit'; 'Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics'
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

Hi Laura

Yes, we have a ViewPlus printer. Someone bought it and it has been sitting
around unused because no one knew what to do with it. Then mr Gartner
responded to a long email I sent him with questions and pointed me towards
his product, for which I am happy. Sadly I do not live there (no I don't)
but I work remotely from Raleigh, NC (my wife is doingher PHD in philosophy
and law at Duke University, I am an honorary baby sitter till January doing
this remotely, then starting my masters in International finance, where I
intend to test out my preferred math solution as well as others), so
basically it is very hard for me to test out things and questions and such.
I do go there for two weeks every 6 to 8 weeks for work and my next trip
will be in mid December and then I have to have a stradigy to tackle the
math problem and test it out.
I am still not sure if DosPlus is a complete system i.e. if it replaces
Nemith entirely or if it is a subset of the Nemith code. I do not know the
Nemith code very well and I am wondering whether I should bother learning it
at all or go straight with DotsPlus/LaTeX, but I suppose I will spend a week
or so with my manual and, at least, get a decent grasp of the ideology
behind it and be able to do basic questions and statistics using Nemith.
I will be doing a lot of regression and statistical analysis as part ofmy
masters though I do not intend on doing the very hardcore classes, if I get
a good finance job I will hire a math person to dig into those things, but
nevertheless I like reasonably complex math and will definitely enjoy
working with technology rather than readers.
I do apologize for this post being so personal and about me, I'll stick
better to sjbect and I also realize I should´ve made a separate topic for
this, it is one of those emails that were meant to be a simple question but
grew in the making.
Thanks very much for any ideas and hints.
-B

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of qubit
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:42 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

Hi Birkir and all --
You have some good alternatives; here are some thoughts:
I looked at a sample of DotsPlus myself some months ago and was very 
impressed -- it is not only easier to read than Nemeth, it also reflected 
the spatial layout of the print equations, and therefore made the tactile 
images understandable by sighted instructors.  But the only drawback is that

it would be impossible to capture this representation on a traditional 
braille display, which you probably know since you say Icelanders use 
braille displays extensively.  Also, the images in DotsPlus currently only 
print on a ViewPlus embosser -- which I'm sure is part of ViewpPlus' 
strategy, but it would mean that if you don't own a Tiger you'd have to get 
one in order to use DotsPlus.  (I personally would love to see DotsPlus 
succeed in spite of this -- it is so much easier to read than Nemeth, 
especially for those of us who didn't learn Nemeth at a young age). But I 
also would put in a petition for ViewPlus to knock down the price of a Tiger

to about 25% of it's current price...*smile* (I know, fat chance...but 
there's nothing wrong with asking...)

I haven't tried the other solutions so can't comment on them, although latex

is a good language to learn, because of its popularity.

So Birkir, does this mean you have moved back to Iceland?
Excuse the personal question -- I had a math prof in grad school from 
Iceland, who taught a class on complex analysis.  He was very supportive of 
my taking the class (I was a math major, with usable sight then), and he 
always verbalized what he wrote on the board so I could follow him. 
However, I don't know if it was his accent or my hearing, but it sounded 
like he pronounced c, g and z all as "she".  So I gave up that and hired 
someone to take notes and record class for me so I could listen and read the

notes later.

Well, happy computing.  I think it would be interesting if you posted your 
experience and decisions with respect to braille to this list.  I hope you 
find a good solution.
--le

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Birkir Gunnarsson" <birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com>
To: <andrew.stacey at math.ntnu.no>; "'Blind Math list for those interested in 
mathematics'" <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

Andrew (and all).

What would you recommend to be an easy (or reasonably easy) beginner's guide
to Tex and LaTeX, LaTeX is what I am thinking specifically.
I amresonsible for choosing technology and teaching to get blind and VI high
school students and, hopefully, university students in my native country of
Iceland into math/science. Thre has been a close to 100% drop out or
switching rate away from science (of course we have very few students,
between may be 1 and 3 per year, so the population sample is tiny). Part of
this problem,I am convinced, is math text books. We sortof made our own
standard although we have never formally dfined it and the text and all
examples have to be more or less typed by hand and thus students tend to get
the material late ish with lotsof pressure to perform. Also there has been
no way for them to turn in clear and legible math home works, because they
use a similar system or invent their own rather than using an editr or
technology to create math documents they can turn in and discuss.
I managed my way through a rather math intensive fiancé program at
university this way until last year I finally adapted LaTeX for some of mmy
homework and it really made a huge difference.
Now it is up to me to figure out how to improve the situation.
As I see it there are three ways. To use "the good old" systems, may be
Nemith, lambds or GCSE (I believe tyat is what the UK math system is
called), to use pure LaTeX both for encoding books and teaching it to
students so they can compile or translate their homework, to w pdf file, .ps
file or other or to go with math ml and use math player and other
technologies and spoken math or combine it with Braille. There are solutions
such as DotsPlus I find very interesting too and I am not sure where it
falls into my mix of methods.
What seems to be to be a clear starting point though is that the students
need to be able to write professional documents and it seems like
understanding and learning LaTeX is essential to that, even if they use,
say, CahttyInfty (which I am about to try myself) it is still important to
understand what it generates. And for our brailling staff, ideally, they
need to try to push publishers to give us material in math ml or LaTeX, from
there we can, at least in part, use software to translate the material into
Nemith, math ml or leave it in LaTeX format for the student to read.
We have a unique situation in that all the Icelandickids have Braille
displays and Braille is a very common first approach to problems, since we
did not have Icelandic tts speech engine for the longest time and the one we
have developed now is not really good, also because any talking software we
get, such as MathPlayer, we'd have to translate and that is very expensive
(Icelanders speak excellent English so after, say, 2nd year of high school I
am sure all users would have no probem using the English version, still it
is official policy to provide as much material in Icelandic as possible).
>From this list I gather there is no obvious, single solution to this 
>problem
and my priorities, unless someone points me in a different direction, would
be to play with DotsPlus and find material I can use to teach students and
Braille production staff LaTeX. I'd be happy with other suggestions but it
seems like a reasonable start. For that I would very much like a book or web
page with easy introduction or manual for LaTeX, something akin to
programming books "for dummies" or teach yourself so and so in 24 hours, big
fan of those as a programmer.
Any pointers/thoughts/ideas would be welcome. We are in the unique position
to reinvent the system and I want to do things right, or as close to right
as possible.
Thanks
-Birkir

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Stacey
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 4:46 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Accessible LaTeX

Thanks for all the interesting replies!

Some of the comments, and the interview that was linked to by someone, made
me
wonder why I'm so obsessive about (La)TeX and why I don't want to give it
up.
I was particularly taken by that sentence in the interview about wanting to
enter a source that validates, and how he thinks that backslashes and braces
are just so wrong.  To me, that says that the person speaking is someone who
supports TeX-users rather than someone who writes copious documents in it.

For me, TeX is just so right!  And on so many different levels.  I've not
tried to think this through before so I may misstate my thoughts, but here's
a first go at why I like it so much.

Firstly, it is discrete.  When writing a document in (la)tex, then I hardly
notice that I'm writing anything other than the contents of the document
itself.  I don't need to worry about formatting, what it looks like, or
anything like that.  When I do need something more complicated, say
mathematics, then TeX discretely offers a nice simple way to do it.

Secondly, (as someone said in one of the replies) it is a programming
language.  When I need the power of TeX then it's there.  I can define
macros
to save my poor fingers: typing \R instead of \mathbb{R} is fantastic!  And
I can make it easy to change global settings, say by changing all
composition
of functions from right-to-left to left-to-right, and just know that
everything's going to be alright.  I can do really complicated stuff when
I need to.

Thirdly, as a mathematician then TeX is the epitome of design.  The process
"read, expand, read, expand" is exactly how we parse mathematics!  Keep
expanding the definitions in a proof until you reach something that you
understand.  So it's just beautiful that something so close to what I do
professionally is also at the heart of how I present the results.

So I'm not going to give up TeX without a huge fight.  No one's going to get
me to have input that can be "validated".  Yuk!  What a horrible phrase!
I want my mathematics to be validated, sure, but I'd like the freedom to
really mess up the paper in the meantime.

However, lest the mathml brigade lose heart, just because I'm going to go on
writing TeX for as long as I've a finger left to hit the keyboard with,
doesn't mean that I expect anyone other than me and TeX to read that.  Those
who say that they like LaTeX on the web have probably never tried reading
the
source of one of my papers!  What I expect they mean is some sort of
simplified LaTeX with no funny macros and the like.

As far as reading what I write is concerned, then I'm convinced by the
MathML
argument.  So for me, an ideal situation would be to have a decent, robust,
(La)TeX to MathML converter.  To my mind, MathML is an output language, like
PDF, PS, or DVI.  So I'm quite happy to compile my LaTeX documents into
MathML
to make them more accessible.  If only there were a converter that could
cope
with my macros ...

Andrew

PS As an indication of my level of TeX addiction, I even wrote the
invitations
to my daughter's birthday party using TeX.

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