[Blindmath] Translating documents with MathML into Nemeth (CORRECTION)

[Birkir R. Gunnarsson]

Susan

Quick question, is Nemeth set up for interacting with English Computer Braille?
Whe using a braille display with a screen reader one may assume a
large portion of the users will be using computer braille rather than
contracted Grade II braille as their defult text setting, and at least
some (myself included) would hate to have to look at contracted
Braille outside of the math islands.
Besides, the audio feedback will help disambiguate the textual content
from the math, at least to some degree. There may still be cases where
this is a huge concern, but the advantage to this is also that other
languages may be able to use Nemeth braille for math embedded in those
documents.
I would not want to see Nemeth braille encoding force additional
restirctions on the rest of the text, which would greatly reduce its
universal appeal.
I've masterred the basics of Nemeth, and this is more advanced, so
feel free to point out my misatkes or if I am simply stating something
that makes no sense to you, I am more than happy to learn.
Cheers
-B

On 7/18/11, Neil Soiffer <NeilS at dessci.com> wrote:
> MathPlayer only translates the math islands.  That will lead to some
> strangeness/problems, but hopefully the problems will be minimal and not
> disruptive.  If you can get the screen readers to support Nemeth, I'll have
> to bow and kiss your shoes as your powers greatly exceed mine :-)
>
> MathPlayer does pass along in its interface to liblouis whether an equation
> is an inline or display equation, but I don't remember whether liblouis does
> something different for those cases.  I don't believe liblouis is very good
> with 2d display/alignment at the moment.  John Boyer is very proactive about
> fixing bugs in liblouis, so if people start using it, it will get better
> quickly.
>
> Neil Soiffer
> Senior Scientist
> Design Science, Inc.
> www.dessci.com
> ~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Susan Jolly <easjolly at ix.netcom.com>wrote:
>
>> Neil,
>>
>> Thanks for pointing out my mistake.
>>
>> I'm still not positive I understand what MathPlayer 3 will be doing. My
>> specific question is whether MathPlayer 3 will convert just the math
>> islands
>> (math expressions in MathML) or the entire document.  If the former, then
>> I
>> understand why the screenreader needs the capability to accept mixed
>> content, i.e. print text it needs to translateto braille plus braille math
>> (or braille anything really) that has already been translated and needs to
>> be passed through unchanged.
>>
>> However, if MathPlayer is only translating the math islands I have a
>> concern. Nemeth is actually a complete braille system with its own rules
>> for
>> formatting and for translating non-math text as well as math.  The rules
>> for
>> translating non-math text are similar but not identical to those for
>> standard contracted English braille (EBAE).  The reasons for these
>> differences in the translation of text, many of which differences depend
>> on
>> context, are necessary in order to avoid ambiguity.
>>
>> Also, Nemeth treats embedded and displayed math somewhat differently, just
>> as MathML and LaTeX do.
>>
>> BTW, I've discovered a potential source of a variety of tests of Nemeth
>> translation capability.
>>
>> The BANA June 2001 UEBC Sampler 2 can be downloaded from this page.
>> http://www.iceb.org/ubcbhdr.**html <http://www.iceb.org/ubcbhdr.html>
>>
>> The ubcb2brf.zip file contains the braille math translations.  You'll have
>> to do a bit of sorting as the braille on the lefthand pages is Nemeth
>> while
>> that on the righthand pages is an older version of UEBC.
>>
>> The ubcb2wpd.zip file contains WordPerfect files.  I discovered that if I
>> changed the file extension to .doc and opened the file in Word 2007 (under
>> Vista) that the print source appears in text boxes.  I imagine that it
>> wouldn't take too much effort for a sighted person who is facile with
>> MathPlayer to convert at least some representative examples to electronic
>> print math.
>>
>> Susan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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