[Blindmath] math type accessibility with jaws screen reader,

Mon Mar 6 23:53:32 UTC 2017

Thanks Neil,

\varepsilon works for me.  I have started a text file called “LaTeX Notes” and put your message in it.---Doug Miron

From: Neil Soiffer 
Sent: Monday, March 6, 2017 3:20 PM
To: Doug and Molly Miron 
Cc: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics 
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] math type accessibility with jaws screen reader,

As you probably found, \cdot is the multiplication dot and \times is used for cross product.

There are two epsilons in TeX: \epsilon and \varepsilon. It's a bit confusing because they may not mean what you think. The Unicode description of them is:

\epsilon:  GREEK LUNATE EPSILON SYMBOL
\varepsilon: GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON

\epsilon looks very similar to the "element of" symbol.

I do see the problem in MathPlayer -- the Unicode corresponding to \epsilon (0x03F5) was accidentally commented out along with other more obscure characters. You can fix this by:
1. Open in your favorite text editor the file %programfiles%\Design Science\MathPlayer 2014\Rules\en\unicode.tdl [the path might be a bit different on your machine]
2. Find the line that contains 0x03F5,

3. Add a line before that line that has the end comment characters "*/" (don't include the quotes).

4. After the line with 0x03F5, add a line that has the start comment characters "/*".

5. Save the file (it may be read only, in which case use file properties to make it writeable)

Good luck,

Neil Soiffer

On Mon, Mar 6, 2017 at 12:44 PM, Doug and Molly Miron <mndmrn at hbci.com> wrote:

      Hello Neil and Louis,

  Well, I learned a few more things from you and Wiki books.  The removal of \dot must have fixed some other mistake.  From your syntax I suspected that I had the wrong kind of dot, which was true.  \dot produces an overdot, the notation for a time derivative.  What I found in the Wiki LaTeX book is a centered dot which means inner product, which is what I wanted.  It may be that I’ll need the cross or outer product sometime.  Is that what you get from \times?  NVDA and MathPlayer have some speaking issues, in particular, they won’t say either the MathType or mathml versions of epsilon.  It’ll be spoken from plain text, but not when converted.  I’m using Windows 10 and Word 2016.  What versions are you running?

  Regards,
  Doug Miron

  From: Neil Soiffer 
  Sent: Sunday, March 5, 2017 9:21 PM
  To: Doug and Molly Miron 
  Subject: Re: [Blindmath] math type accessibility with jaws screen reader,

  If you make an error, what I see is that whatever could be converted is converted and the illegal part is displayed in red. Alt+\ will take you back to what you typed in. I didn't try it with speech -- perhaps the speech is confusing.

  Also, \dot works for me. E.g, $\dot x$ or $\dot{x}$ both work. Note that there is a space after \dot in the first example.

  FYI: If you meant your email to go to more than just me, you didn't do a reply-all. It only went to me.

  Good luck,

  Neil Soiffer

  On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 6:18 PM, Doug and Molly Miron <mndmrn at hbci.com> wrote:

    Good day folks,

    I have been experimenting with the alt+[backslash] method for converting LaTeX to MathType.  As Neil says, you have to begin and end the equations  with the $ sign.  Also, if you are using JAWS and do the conversion you get an unreadable image, so NVDA is the way to go for this purpose.  If the conversion fails, a failure message appears and your original text has disappeared.  So what I’ve been doing is copying the text to  be converted to the clipboard so I can paste  it back if conversion  failure happens.  You don’t get a helpful error message, so what I’ve done is divide the math into shorter segments to isolate the problem.  My most recent problem was that \dot wouldn’t convert.  I haven’tgone back to this issue other than to remove it.  I need to find a sensible way to represent a vector dot roduc t, but I’ve been doing other stuff lately.  Good luck.      The number for Design Scien ce (MathType) help is

    DS help 1 (562) 432-2920 

    Regards,
    Doug Miron

    From: Neil Soiffer 
    Sent: Sunday, March 5, 2017 7:40 PM
    To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics 
    Cc: Doug and Molly Miron 
    Subject: Re: [Blindmath] math type accessibility with jaws screen reader,

    LaTeX is a full programming language; MathType only accepts a subset of common LaTeX math commands called TeXvc. Sorry, I didn't see a good manual that describes the commands in TeXvc -- if you need a manual, I suggest contacting support at dessci.com for more info. MathType looks for $...$ or \[...\] in Word as delimiters for TeX; I don't believe that you can change those.

        Neil

    On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 9:56 AM, Doug and Molly Miron via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:

      Good day Neil,

      Is there another way to convert LaTeX to MathType/MathPlayer?  The alt+[backslash] shortcut seems to ignore \begin{equation} and \begin{align}. If not, I can live with the $...$ method and add equation numbers myself. Can you give me a reference for math typesetting in LaTeX?  I have bookmarked the symbol tables  on the web, but I have  other questions and there are doubtless questions I'm too ignorant to ask.

      Regards,
      Doug Miron

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