[Blindmath] UEB again (was Braille code urgency)

[Birkir R. Gunnarsson]

Another thing to keep in mind re unique symbols representing numbers
is that there is considerable complexity in using the number sign "#"
to represent numbers, and requires increased complexity in
translations from print to braille etc, consider for instance the
treatment of 1b vs 12
in other words
#a b vs #ab
That is the obvious one, and then we need to decide how to treat
numbers after a /, super and subscript indicator numbers etc.
Of course this is old news to everyone on here, and I am not claiming
this is undoable or rocket science, but I believe that we need a
system that makes translation from print or computer math to braille
and back as simple as possible, and getting rid of the complexity
associated with these things is a huge value in itself.
On an unrelated subject.
Studies that I read regarding contracted vs uncontracted braille
definitely differe, baesd on the language, but in English I believe
they found space savings generally is only around 10%, hardly ever
over 20, and reading speed increases are between 10 and 18%.
This seems to be the best outcome in the languages that were studied,
as English seems to lend itself fairly well to contractions (lots of
fixed character patterns that can be abbreviated).
Finland and Norway are vehemently against the adoption of a contracted
code (in Norway there have been multiple attempts at creating one, but
now their braille authority advocates the abolishment of contracted
braille).
As someone who did not learn contractions till I was almost 20, but
being a braille reader since age 5, I find them cumbersome to deal
with and distracting, but that probably has more to do with me than
the contractions themselves.
But, again, I believe we could get wildly off topic with that
discussion, even if I find it fascinating.


On 12/4/11, Susan Jolly <easjolly at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Steve, I agree Braille has to modernize and take into account changes in
> print.  Luckily there has been very little change to the typeset
> representation of print which is well-reflected in how Nemeth represents
> math expressions.  So as far as math is concerned, Nemeth is clearly more
> print-like than UEB.
>
> Sina, when I first learned of the use of letters as numbers in UEB I
> researched the historical development of how digits are represented.  It
> seemed pretty clear that advances in mathematics occurred when numbers were
> given unique representations.  I no longer have my notes on that research
> but it seems plausible that there is a relationship between understanding
> and representation.
>
> UKAAF, which has just adopted UEB, quotes an average increase of 21% in the
> length of math expressions over BAUK.  They don't say how they determined
> this.
>
> SusanJ
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