[Blindmath] Question about doing math in notepad

[Dasha Radford]

Hi,
Is There anyone in the Raleigh Durham area who might be willing to teach the 
LaTeX mark-up language?
I am a high student, a sophomore to be precise. I am totally blind and 
taking first year algebra.
Any help that could be tendered would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Daria
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ben Humphreys" <brh at opticinspiration.org>
To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Question about doing math in notepad


> Daria
>
> I've been struggling with this same question myself.  Here is what I've 
> found so far.
>
> On first glance, the simplicity of entering and reading back math in 
> Notepad seems compelling given the learning curve, complexity, and 
> drawbacks of the alternatives. But Notepad falls apart very quickly 
> because:
>
> 1.  It is not a word-processor.  Therefore, support for fonts, special 
> characters,equations, and other useful formatting is missing.
>
> 2.  There is no agreed-upon structure for defining equations. So a screen 
> reader will not read them back to you in the way you'd like.  For example: 
> x^2 would not be pronounced "x squared"
>
> 3.  Without an agreed upon protocol for entering equations, your content 
> is stuck in Notepad forever, never able to be repurposed for the web or as 
> a PDF viewable by others.
>
> Another approach, using Microsoft Word with its built-in equation editor 
> or the more powerful Mathtype add-in sounds interesting. This method has 
> the benefit of producing good looking equations, special symbols, pretty 
> formatting, sharing documents with others,  and being rendered to MathML 
> for the web.  MathML is interesting because, in theory at least, JAWS will 
> read equations like a human, so x^3 is pronounced "x cubed" etc.
>
> However, as best I can tell, Equation editor and Mathtype are not 
> accessible with JAWS.  And while the MathReader add-in for IE is supposed 
> to allow JAWS to read MathML on web-pages, it does not work with IE9 (or 
> in my experience IE8) and certainly not with Firefox.  That may be 
> changing soon but I wouldn't hold my breath if my homework depended on it.
>
>
> Then there is the Nemeth code.  The problem here is that only a fraction 
> of students know it and no mainstream math or science teachers know it. 
> So even if the student can make use of Nemeth, it's going to require an 
> extra translation step to convert back to a format an instructur can read 
> and grade.
>
> The best solution I've identified so far is called Latex.  It's a document 
> markup language that can be run through a document preparation program to 
> render output to many formats, such as PDF, MathML, your printer, or 
> whatever format comes next. It's used by many folks in math and 
> engineering to produce technical documents, papers, and textbooks.  It may 
> very well be used by your math instructor to render his or her own 
> assignments.
>
> Latex allows you to write ordinary text files containing English words for 
> math symbols. For example:
>
> sqrt{4} = 2.
>
> Latex positions and sizes the square root symbol for you when the output 
> is rendered.
>
> Latex may be entered in any text editor, including Notepad, but there's a 
> compelling reason for blind folks to use the Edsharp editor.  Pressing F12 
> while in Edsharp turns on "Process Latex" mode. This mode allows JAWS's 
> SayLine method to read equations like a human would, so for example: x^2 
> is pronounced "x squared."  Cool!
>
> Here's a sample Latex file:
>
> \documentclass{article}
> \begin{document}
>
> I am a math homework assignment.
>
> 1. I am x squared:
>
>  $ x^2 $
>
> 2. I am a polynomial:
>
>  $ 4x^3 + 3x^2 + x - 1  $
>
> 3. The circumference of a circle is:
>
>  $ C = 2 \pi r $
>
> 4. I am a fraction:
>
>  $ \frac{3}{64} $
>
> 5. I am a sample sum:
>
>  $ \sum_{i=1}^{+\infty} $
>
> \end{document}
>
> Note that equations are surrounded by dollar signs so Latex knows to 
> italicize them and make other adjustments appropriate to equations. 
> Symbols are preceeded by a \ character.  Parameters to functions such as 
> \frac are surrounded by curly braces { and }.  Superscripts are preceeded 
> by ^ and subscripts aare preceeded by _.
>
> Paste everything between the \Document... and \End{Document} including 
> those lines into edsharp, hit F12, and enjoy having things pronounced 
> nicely by JAWS.  Save the file to test.tex for rendering in the next step.
>
> To render the above Tex document, you'll want to download MiKTeX, a 
> standard Latex distribution for Windows.  Go to
>
> http://miktex.org/2.9/setup
>
> and search for
>
> Basic MiKTeX 2.9" Installer
>
> then tab to the Download link.
>
> Once MiKTeX is installed, run a command prompt, change to the directory 
> where your test.tex file is stored and type:
>
> pdflatex test
>
> This should produce a test.pdf file which should be rendered beautifully 
> for turning into your instructor or other sighted users.
>
> P.S. I realize this last part about running a command prompt and changing 
> directories may be confusing to the typical Windows user and I believe 
> there is a drag-and-drop method which can be used instead.  More on that 
> another time.
>
> Other areas for research include the possibility of entering Latex 
> commands directly into Microsoft Word equations.  And how to plot graphs 
> on a cartesian coordinate system for printing and producing tactile 
> drawings.  At present, SVG and Iveo seem like only part of the solution.
>
> Ben
>
> At 09:48 PM 8/18/2011, you wrote:
>>Hi,
>>I am about to start school on Monday and I was wondering about doing math 
>>in the notepad application that comes with all computers. More specificly 
>>how to do things like fractions, square, square-routes, and also how to 
>>find a list of the different math signs and how to use them with a regular 
>>qwerty keyboard and a computer using Jaws.
>>Thanks,
>>Daria
>>_______________________________________________
>>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/brh%40opticinspiration.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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/dasha95%40nc.rr.com
>