[BlindMath] LaTeX Spacing Question

Tue May 15 06:41:47 UTC 2018

Hi Sarah and others.

LaTeX generates an image for printing that has a smooth margin on both left and right sides of text columns, except for small indents for paragraphs starting, and whatever size indent for the last line of a paragraph.

It does this because the output format for LaTeX documents is still thought of as a printed page, even if that page view is to be shared electronically and never in hardcopy.

The pretty columns are created by adding minute additional spacing between words and even letters of words if necessary so that the right edge of all characters on the ends of all lines are vertically aligned. The inclusion of mathematical expressions makes this a  little more challenging as each expression is handled as a letter not a word, that is, it does not get spaced out to help the line alignment.

There are also rules to help avoid single lines of paragraphs and headings being separated from other text. In this case, the inter-line spacing is expanded ever so slightly.

There is a risk that the algorithm that handles the spacing cannot handle a mathematical expression going into the margin, but this also happens for words whose hyphenation isn't known. Jason is right that you can add manual hyphenations in the text, but it is usually better to set the right hyphenation pattern in the preamble.

Unfortunately, the log files for LaTeX are quite ugly reading; yes, very accessible text, but far from simple language, and often not very helpful. You need to leave any job related to formatting and manual adjustment to the very end. Tinkering along the way takes time and may well become redundant as the document gets changed.

There are some very useful tools for altering the width of the text and the various margins, but manually altering these is often trickier than using someone else's template.

I guess the thing that I now find myself asking is "how important is that page constraint thing that using LaTeX does to create an inaccessible pdf?" I make sure I can read the content by pushing most of my LaTeX into HTML (using tex4ht) or just using markdown if the version wanted by my audience is HTML anyway.

I still believe there is a place for LaTeX of course. Markdown can only get you so far, and most markdown users do not know how to get the fancy things LaTeX users do all the time (cross referencing, equation numbers and the like). Those things are crucial for longer documents such as theses and in my opinion, much easier in the end (for a blind person) than MS Word. I think it's strange how many people think LaTeX has a steep learning curve; I suspect that many of them have forgotten how long it took to get used to MS Word at the very beginning, or after MS decided to fundamentally alter the look and feel.

Enjoy the journey. It is worth it.

Cheers,
Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of White, Jason J via BlindMath
Sent: Tuesday, 15 May 2018 8:55 a.m.
To: sarah.jevnikar at gmail.com; Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>; 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List' <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: White, Jason J <jjwhite at ets.org>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] LaTeX Spacing Question

A suggestion that may help: read the logs generated by LaTeX and pay attention to warnings about over-full or under-full boxes. If the lines warned about contain text rather than mathematics, you can often fix the problem by adding discretionary hyphens with the \- command. I'll leave it to those who use LaTeX for mathematical typesetting to comment on the case of long expressions.

I'm not aware of any word processor that offers such warnings of formatting problems that would generally only be apparent visually. I fixed at least one line that appeared prominently in the right margin of a draft of my Ph.D. thesis by looking at the LaTeX log. Consider it an unintended accessibility feature.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Sarah 
> Jevnikar via BlindMath
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2018 4:42 PM
> To: blindmath at nfbnet.org; 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List'
> <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Sarah Jevnikar <sarah.jevnikar at gmail.com>
> Subject: [BlindMath] LaTeX Spacing Question
>
> Hi all,
> I am finally taking a serious plunge into LaTeX. About time, I know... 
> I've found it's not as bad perhaps as I feared, thanks to some great 
> resources already listed here over the years.
>
> What I do find challenging is spacing, and I'm hoping you can help. 
> How can I be sure a line isn't too long visually? If there is a 
> specified line length, how would documents with LaTeX as their source 
> display nicely on mobile devices?  What's the difference between an 
> in-line equations on their own line and display equations? In 
> Practical LaTeX there's reference to a "thin space". How have those of 
> you who are virtually completely blind and users of LaTeX handled 
> layout? For some reason I thought this would be easier with a mark-up language than Microsoft Word, but it would appear I was mistaken.
>
> Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Sarah
>
> Thank you,
> Sarah
>
>
>
> ---
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