[Blindmath] Missing and unwanted pauses in MathPlayer output

[David Andrews]

This message, and the whole thread is entirely appropriate for this list.

Happy counting!

David Andrews, List Owner

At 04:01 AM 4/14/2011, you wrote:
>Hi
>
>First, please let me know if this message is not appropriate for this list.
>
>I've found that MathPlayer sometimes gets pauses wrong, even with 
>MathML generated by MathType.  Here's an example, from a sample file 
>Sarah Jevnikar posted to this list on 3 April.
>
>What one should get is - number of ways to arrange 9 books ...
>MathPlayer plus Jaws10 gives - numberofwastoarrange 9 books ...
>
>The last example misses the spaces between the words.  Here's 
>another example, taken from a source file for an Open University 
>course.  It has extra spaces, this time inside numbers.
>
>What one should get is - 0.1498 plus 0.0741 plus 0.4293 plus 0.0280 
>plus 0.2218
>MathPlayer plus Jaws gives -  0. 1498  plus 0.0 741  plus 0. 
>4293  plus 0.0 28 0  plus 0. 2218
>
>Sarah's sample file does not have these problems, even though also 
>produced using Word plus MathType plus MathPage.
>
>That said, from my tests it seems that MathPlayer can do a pretty 
>decent job of generating speech text provided the MathML that comes 
>in is just right for that purpose.  (These tests used an evaluation 
>copy of MathFlow, which Design Science kindly provided.)
>
>In both cases the problems is spaces between characters.  It seems 
>to me that errors here are fairly easy to detect and correct if you 
>can see the text, but not if you can only listen to it.
>
>The rest of this message is a brief technical explanation.  In the 
>first example MathPlayer ignores the non-breaking space characters 
>between the words.  Hence the funny pseudoword wastoarrange, which 
>should be ways to arrange.  In the second example MathType has 
>grouped the digits and decimal point in a strange way and MathPlayer 
>does not correct this grouping.
>
>
>Best regards
>
>
>Jonathan
>
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>