[Blindmath] problems reading PDF scientific documents

Thu Jun 7 18:15:48 UTC 2012

Thank you, Michael,

Nam
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
<blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 10:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] problems reading PDF scientific documents

I am sure there was another page giving more details on how to export from 
mathtype in word, however I think the following page should still help:
http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/author/creatingpages.htm

Michael Whapples
On 7 Jun 2012, at 15:47, Duong Tuan Nam wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> Can you instruct me how to put math document out to HTML with MathML by 
> MathType?
> Nam
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Whapples" <mwhapples at aim.com>
> To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
> <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 5:28 PM
> Subject: Re: [Blindmath] problems reading PDF scientific documents
>
>
> I personally have not used infty reader, however I have heard from some 
> people that they have found it useful. One such person is John Miller, who 
> I think is more likely to be found on the NFB-science list he may be on 
> this one. I have also met people here in the UK who have used it and said 
> they had some good results.
>
> However infty reader is an optical character recognition (OCR) package, so 
> it isn't guaranteed to get everything 100% correct and quality of results 
> is highly dependent on the quality of the original document. I think OCR 
> is the only way currently PDF will be made accessible for maths, even the 
> maxtract project I mentioned said that they cannot get all the information 
> they need by parsing the PDF document. I believe there may be some work on 
> including maths in a PDF in an accessible form, however that probably is 
> years away from completion and will require the PDF to be created in the 
> correct way so won't work for current PDF documents.
>
> As for converting Word documents to LaTeX, its not something I have really 
> done. I do know there is software out there but I haven't tried any. 
> Normally if I have needed to read maths in a Word document I have used 
> MathType from design science, which can either put the document out to 
> HTML with MathML which can be viewed in internet explorer with math player 
> and a screen reader, or you can get it to toggle the equations within the 
> word document to be in LaTeX notation (the rest of the document is still 
> normal word stuff, the equations are the only thing in LaTeX notation).
>
> As for the price of MathType, may be your college/university has a license 
> for it which you could use, if not the student license of MathType isn't 
> too bad on price.
>
> Also while on accessibility of Word and maths, I believe Design science 
> have created some software to allow word documents with maths to be 
> exported as daisy books. I don't know what cost on this is like or how 
> well it works as I haven't used it. Obviously you would also need a daisy 
> reader which is capable of maths content (I believe GH-player and 
> Dolphin's daisy reader both can do this, there may be others).
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 6 Jun 2012, at 00:06, Géssica Michelle dos Santos Pereira wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your advice
>>
>> Michael,
>>
>> Do you think the infty reader really works? I've tried the trial
>> version, but the result is so strange... it means there are characters
>> left. Is there anything that I have to do before processing the pdf
>> documentt? I've got another proble now.It only recognizes the
>> alfanumerics characters and not the Maths characters, I don't know
>> why, but the out file is a "pdf2txt" instead of "txt.
>> Could you also tell me how you do to convert Word format to LaTeX too?
>> I've tried the Grindeq, but I think it doesn't recognize all the
>> document.
>> Thank you for the  clue on the new software , I will be watching.
>>
>> ***
>>
>> Lucas,
>>
>> Exactly! I'm from Curitiba! =)
>> In the graduation phase the teachers translated the documents for me, 
>> some
>> thing like this: an integral became I [i, j] f(x) dx...
>> But now I'm taking the master degree, there are lots of materials to
>> read, we can't keep translating like that.
>> And take this: what to do when the teacher doesn't know LaTex?
>> Of course, let's keep talking!
>>
>> ***
>>
>> José,
>>
>> I've seen other softwares in the same line, I mean, softwares to edit
>> LaTeX documents... but how to solve  the reading problem?
>>
>> ***
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Géssica Michelle
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2012/6/1, Michael Whapples <mwhapples at aim.com>:
>>> Hello,
>>> Further to that last message, one of the projects I am aware of which is
>>> working on the problem of accessing maths in PDF is maxtract and the
>>> blog for it can be found at
>>> http://researchblogs.cs.bham.ac.uk/math-access/category/maxtract/
>>>
>>> This is work in progress and I don't know when they plan to have
>>> something usable out.
>>>
>>> Michael Whapples
>>> On 31/05/2012 10:36, Michael Whapples wrote:
>>>> On 31/05/2012 01:26, Lucas Radaelli wrote:
>>>>> Hey Jessica,
>>>>>
>>>>> If you are from Curitiba we are from the same city! :)
>>>>>
>>>>> I have got a lot of problems in this area too. Specially in Brazil
>>>>> where it seems that nobody understands about that to give us a hand.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What my teachers have done during graduation was create the scientific
>>>>> documents already in LaTeX, and they offered the normal pdf to other
>>>>> students. The program that michael mentioned I have never used yet,
>>>>> but gonna check it out. I did not oppenned the website yet, but I am
>>>>> almost sure that it is more than 500 dolars... I hope that I am wrong!
>>>>>
>>>>> You can send me a mail too, we can keep in contact to finde solutions
>>>>> together here in Brazil.
>>>>>
>>>>> Greetings!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 2012/5/30, Michael Whapples<mwhapples at aim.com>:
>>>>>> The infty reader www.inftyproject.org may help. I understand other
>>>>>> things
>>>>>> are being developed but this the only working solution for now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Michael Whapples
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sent from my iPod
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 30 May 2012, at 22:24, Géssica Michelle dos Santos
>>>>>> Pereira<gessicamichelle at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I am Gessica, from the south of Brazil, with visual impairment, 
>>>>>>> having
>>>>>>> difficulties in reading PDF scientific documents, when they show
>>>>>>> formulae.. I use screen reader Jaws and I've heard that LaTeX or
>>>>>>> MathML might be useful but would you know how to convert the PDF
>>>>>>> documents into these formats? .....moreover...how to use them?  I
>>>>>>> wonder if you could help me find the solution.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Gessica Michelle
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>> Yes, unfortunately the infty reader software is expensive. It is worth
>>>> noting though that infty reader is OCR software for maths, so could
>>>> put printed maths from paper into an electronic format such as LaTeX
>>>> or MathML as well.
>>>>
>>>> Hopefully one of the other projects I know of will allow access to PDF
>>>> at a lower cost.
>>>>
>>>> In many cases the PDF is created from another format such as LaTeX so
>>>> it might be worth contacting the author to see if they can provide the
>>>> document in another format.
>>>>
>>>> Michael Whapples
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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>
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