[Blindmath] Reading and Writing Math

Sat Apr 14 15:34:59 UTC 2012

John

Brilliant piece of work. I am reviewing it.
I'd be happy to alpha test (not that I am a math genius, but I am
currently working on an Icelandic translation of MathPlayer with a
math PHD guy, who has gotten very interested in spoken math as a
result, and would be a very good sounding board for this notation in
my opinion).
I'd also be happy to broadcast this work through my position within
the European Blind Union (on their Access to Technology Committee, and
write a few articles for them), for what it is worth, which may not be
much.
So are you actively working with Neil and Design Science to have this
notation work out-of-the-box with MathType's LaTeX set of translators
already, or is that something you are planning to do?
I have always believed in the power of 8-dot braille when it comes to
math, sadly with very very few supporters, apart from yourself. I am
glad to see things are moving on this front. Having 255 different
patterns vs 63 (leaving out the widespace) just offers so many more
possibilities and helps eliminate all the difficulties of mapping a
print math character or notation to multiple braille symbols and back,
something that is a significant shortcoming, in my view, of all the
major braille math notations.
-B

On 4/14/12, John Gardner <john.gardner at orst.edu> wrote:
> Hello Ryan, the translators are written in Python, simply because it is the
> only language I know well enough.  It could certainly be written in other
> languages, but if in Javascript, it probably needs to be optimized lots
> better than I could do it.   I'm no software engineer for sure.
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Ryan Hemphill
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2012 5:09 PM
> To: john.gardner at orst.edu; Blind Math list for those interested in
> mathematics
> Cc: Brad Momberger
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Reading and Writing Math
>
> This is very interesting.
>
> As I stated on this board upon getting in, I am working on a Browser/Screen
> Reader/Platform (Win/Mac) compatible reader that also translates into
> Braille (unicode).  While I like your idea, do you plan on providing any
> open source that will do your translation in JavaScript?  If so, we could
> consider eventually dove-tailing your work into our product at some point
> and would be happy to give it a shot.
>
> Ryan
>
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 2:54 PM, John Gardner <john.gardner at orst.edu> wrote:
>
>> Hello all, sorry to be slow in joining the recent threads on
>> reading/writing math -I've been travelling.  In my view, the
>> fundamental difficulty in "making math accessible" is that there is no
>> compact user-friendly linear format for doing so.  Latex is widely
>> used but is certainly not compact, and MathML is nearly impossible to
>> read/write in raw form.  A good braille math code may be great for
>> reading math (provided of course you are one of that small minority
>> who can read it) but all current codes are too fragile to use for
>> authoring.  After years of talking about this problem, I have finally
>> decided to try to do something about it.  I call it LEAN Math. LEAN is
>> actually an acronym for Linear Editing and Authoring Notation.
>>
>> In essence LEAN defines a set of special unicode characters for
>> special things like start-fraction, middle-of-fraction, end-fraction,
>> sub-, super-, under-, over-script indicators, etc.  One can view it as
>> a very compact form of Latex or MathML.  It is inspired by Triangle
>> and Lambda notations but fully unicode based.  I have written a MathML
>> to LEAN and LEAN to MathML translator and, and it is possible now to
>> display and author anything that can be written in MathML 3.0
>> (presentation format only for now).
>>
>> When fully debugged, the LEAN system will be introduced first in
>> combination with MathType in MS Word as a fully audio-accessible
>> reader/editor.  I intend to make it available within a few months.
>> And it will be free and open source.  Presently  it is useful only in
>> audio, but one could develop 8-dot braille notation that makes it
>> braille accessible too.
>>
>> I am writing a paper on LEAN that will be available in preprint form
>> within a couple of weeks.  I hope that some people on this list will
>> be willing to have an early look at this new notation and provide
>> feedback before the paper is submitted.  It sure would be good to get
>> the notation right at the very start!  You can find a zip file at
>> http://www.access2science.com/mathml/LEANMath.zip that contains a Word
>> file with explanations, a Windows font, and screen reader speak files
>> for Window-Eyes and NVDA.  I'll be happy to make a Jaws file if
>> somebody can tell me the location of the speak file in Jaws.  I'll be
>> looking for alpha testers of the translator soon as well, but I still
>> have some polishing and debugging to do first.
>>
>> John Gardner
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blindmath mailing list
>> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> Blindmath:
>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/ryanhemphill.em
>> ail%40gmail.com
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Shipping is a Feature...Perhaps the Most Important Feature.
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Blindmath:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/john.gardner%40orst.e
> du
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blindmath mailing list
> Blindmath at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindmath_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Blindmath:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindmath_nfbnet.org/birkir.gunnarsson%40gmail.com
>