[BlindMath] markdown

Tue Aug 18 21:59:24 UTC 2020

Hello Brandon,

Thanks for the ideas.

I wasn’t worried about the two styles of reference in the body of the work, but I’ll add the other style. I was more worried about the use of a bib file and ensuring its data was pulled in. I also didn’t worry about the pedantry of reference formatting, but given that uses an external file, it might get some attention in a future iteration.

As for perfecting the pdf: As far as I’m concerned, the need for anyone to use LaTeX to produce a pdf is now questionable, or at least it is questionable in many situations. In spite of the numerous efforts to improve a pdf, the best on offer is not acceptable in terms of accessibility. I’m not equipped to be part of that solution so I’m putting almost zero effort into it. If I want access from a LaTeX source, I process it into html.

I accept that there are things I can do in LaTeX that I can’t do so easily in markdown, but I haven’t needed to initiate a LaTeX document for over three years. In that time, I’ve initiated perhaps a dozen MS Word documents. In contrast, it would be a strange day that I don’t initiate a document in some form of markdown.

I feel that the pdf is the publishing world’s equivalent of the public transport system. It works for many people but it does not provide full  access to the world in which we live. There is no flexibility in the way it is used; you can choose to use it lots or not at all and life goes on. Unfortunately, access to the physical world and to information are different beasts. There are still situations when there is no alternative to a pdf, but those are wen someone else made the pdf; blind people don’t have to play that game.

In contrast, html and pub offer service more like  a taxi or uber. As long as you can find one, you get to go where you want when you want. You might not always like the vehicle’s style but you could choose to adjust your settings and next time should be better.

I’d like to reiterate my gold standard for access:
<starts>
Full access for a blind person applying techniques commonly taught in STEM related courses, either in educational or employment settings, as well as for the sheer pleasure of science, can only be verified if the following conditions are met in a way that ensures the blind person's independence and dignity.
1. All material presented by another party must be able to be read by a blind person using whatsoever hardware and software tools provide an equitable outcome as that attained by their sighted peers.
2. A blind person must be able to collect, analyse, interpret, and manipulate scientific data in order to answer scientific questions and communicate the knowledge gained from their results in a way that can be read by their sighted peers.
<ends>

To achieve the last point with independence requires the first point. At present, pdf does not cut the mustard.

To communicate with independence means we must be able to read our own work before we pass it to others. It seems to me that the results for the MS Word conversion were pretty good; printing that page-driven format to pdf offers more certainty to the blind author than we get from LaTeX at present.

Jonathan

From: Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2020 9:33 PM
To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics <blindmath at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Godfrey, Jonathan <A.J.Godfrey at massey.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: [BlindMath] markdown

Hello,
Two comments:
I didn't look at your bibtex file, but there are two methods for citations, inline and in-paper. If your citation is @Godfrey2020, you can either do  @Godfrey2020 in your paper, or do the citation at the end of the sentence like [@Godfrey2020]. For the last example, separate multiple citations with a ;. If you already said the authors name for the first type of reference, then you can do - at Godfrey2020, and you will only get the year shown in APA.

For PDFs, you need to use another engine to generate the PDF. Prince<https://www.princexml.com/download/> works quite well. The pandoc command would be something like:
pandoc -f markdown --strip-comments --pdf-engine="C:\Program Files (x86)\Prince\engine\bin\prince" --pdf-engine-opt="--tagged-pdf" --filter pandoc-citeproc inputFile.md -s -o outputFile.html

Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs<http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>

On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 7:20 PM Godfrey, Jonathan via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org<mailto:blindmath at nfbnet.org>> wrote:
Hello all,

I promised to get more information to people about using markdown.

I've discovered that my use of R means that I am getting the benefit of the added tools various developers have created. They only work inside R of course. <sigh>

Replicating the benefits outside R has proven interesting, and I think rewarding enough to suggest you take a look at the results (in html) and my findings at:

https://r-resources.massey.ac.nz/tutorials/pandoc/example1.html

This web page has a link to the file I started with.

All commands to convert from one file type to another start with "pandoc" which is a necessary installation if you intend to run the examples.

I put all of the commands shown into a single batch file so that it processes the whole lot at once. If you don't want to use a batch file then you'll need to type the commands out at a command prompt.

HTH
Jonathan

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