[Blindmath] to read laTex

[Michael Whapples]

I possibly would say that it would be wrong for MathType to simplify the equations more. My reasoning is that the LaTeX mode of MathType is also for input and removing some of those braces could actually lead to a different visual appearance of the equation.

Its this reason of what happens when the equation is recompiled that I say LaTeX is really a good authoring system but not a reading system IE. what gives good output visually when compiled is not necessarily good for reading and vice versa.

Michael Whapples
On 28 Nov 2011, at 14:07, Ben Humphreys wrote:

> Same experience here converting Mathtype to Latex.  Reminds me of the obfuscated and boilerplate HTML created when converting a Word document to HTML vs writing HTML by hand.
> 
> Ideally, Mathtype would recursively simplify their Latex conversion before presenting to the end-user.
> 
> I have in fact written such a Perl script to do this for Mathtype to Latex conversions produced by my own Math professor.  But the pattern matching gets pretty difficult when extraneous curly braces are inserted here and there.  One almost needs a gramatical parser to simplify the expressions and THEN do a translation.
> 
> Ben
> 
> Att 08:28 AM 11/28/2011, you wrote:
>> I don't know that I would always recommend reading documents by reading LaTeX source. Depending on how it was produced depends on how clean it is for reading. I thought in the past this was a view I had formed on old memories which may be had been exaggerated in time, however recently I had to read some basic statistics stuff for a course, the equations were in word using MathType and so I used the macro for showing the equations as LaTeX. While the equations could be read, they were far from readable, excessive number of braces used, lengths of commands requiring scrolling the Braille display even for what should be a very short equation (probably in an official Braille code would be less than half my Braille display), etc, it all just distracted from what I needed to do and that was understand the equation. A quick note to Neil on MathType, while I have said excessive use of braces, I mean this in the context of reading, knowing LaTeX I fully understand why they are there and how they contribute to achieving the correct layout visually when compiled.
>> 
>> As Tim said, it would be useful to know what format might be desired from the LaTeX. If reading the original source, it might be desirable to do some simple substitutions to clean the LaTeX up. Tim, have you considered putting the substitutions you use into a script (eg. python or perl) which you then could let others use?
>> 
>> Michael Whapples
>> On 28 Nov 2011, at 12:58, Lucas Radaelli wrote:
>> 
>> > I think the best solution ever is read the LaTeX source file. You can
>> > find what each command means in some LaTeX wiki, and in my opinion,
>> > everything becomes clear.
>> >
>> >
>> > 2011/11/28, Tim in 't Veld <tim at dvlop.nl>:
>> >> Mayank,
>> >> If you can read lateX, you could understand the equations...? I normally
>> >> just read the lateX source in notepad and use the braille display.
>> >> Occasionally I'll introduce some shorthand to make it readable, such as
>> >> doing a replace command to replace \rightarrow with \ra in a document
>> >> about logic.
>> >>
>> >> What would you want to convert your lateX source to? If we know this
>> >> someone on the list could probably point you to the right conversion tool.
>> >> Tim
>> >> On 28-11-2011 11:17, MAYANK SHARMA wrote:
>> >>> hi all.
>> >>>
>> >>> I am Mayank, and am doing economics at graduate level.
>> >>>
>> >>> I have  a pretty basic question. I have a txt document where the
>> >>> equations are in LaTex. I am very new in dealing with laTex. I wanted
>> >>> to know from you all how to go about making sense of those equations.
>> >>> is there a particular program I need to instal in order to convert
>> >>> them??
>> >>>
>> >>> will be waiting for your responses.
>> >>>
>> >>> kind regards,
>> >>>
>> >>> Mayank
>> >>>
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