[Blindmath] Translating documents with MathML into Nemeth

[Neil Soiffer]

I want to correct a misunderstanding about MathPlayer.  MathPlayer 3 will
incorporate liblouis in it and will convert MathML on the fly (in real time)
to Nemeth code.  No pre-translation is needed.  Screen readers need to ask
for the braille (currently none do), but the functionality will be in
MathPlayer 3.

Neil Soiffer
Senior Scientist
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~




On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Susan Jolly <easjolly at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> Let me make sure we aren't talking apples and oranges here.
>
> There are two ways to translate print to braille, which I'll call realtime
> processing and batch processing.
>
> Realtime processing is used only with braille displays and requires
> software that can translate print electronic documents such as web pages in
> realtime. Screenreaders often have this capability as do some models of
> braille displays. This realtime processing essentially works line-by-line so
> it does not (to my knowledge) produce proper document formatting or handle
> planar layouts.
>
> However, the realtime translators I am aware of only handle narrative or
> literary text. I do not know of any software than can provide realtime
> translation of electronic mathematical expressions (whatever format) to
> Nemeth (or other) braille math.  I'm not sure this would even make sense in
> all situations.
>
> My understanding is that it is the intent of apps like MathPlayer to
> pre-translate math expressions from MathML to Nemeth with the idea that a
> properly configured screenreader could pass this pre-translated braille math
> directly to a braille display while at the same time providing the correct
> realtime translation of any surrounding non-mathematical text.  While this
> would likely be readable, it would not necessarily follow all of the Nemeth
> rules including but not limited to the rules for linebreaking which depend
> on both semantics and the cells per line in the braille display.
>
> Batch processing is used to generate electronic braille documents which are
> treated as paged media where the formatting depends on the specified cells
> per line. The generated electronic braille document can be either displayed
> on a braille display or embossed.  (Of course, if one is reading electronic
> braille on a braille display, it is essential to ensure that this is done in
> translate off mode since it is already translated!) My understanding is that
> there can be problems if one uses a braille display to read an electronic
> braille document that has been formatted for a line length different from
> that of the display but I could be wrong.  I suspect this would be more of a
> problem for mathematical expressions than for text.
>
> So now the question is whether there are batch processors that can
> translate from LaTeX or from HTML+MathML to Nemeth or other braille math
> codes?  There are a number of processors including DBT, TSS, and liblouis
> which can do this to some extent.  However, I don't think there is any
> current translation software that can produce perfect braille math
> automatically. In fact, there isn't any current software that can produce
> perfect contracted American English braille.
>
> I'm getting ahead of myself here but I was going to suggest that the
> members of this list set up some well-designed test input for these
> applications. Good test input is preferably short which means that a lot of
> separate input files are needed to provide complete coverage.
>
> Susan
>
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