At a loss how to proceed

At a loss how to proceed

[David Arnold]

All,

Lately, I've had a number of discussions with the director of disabled
student services at our school regarding document preparation for the
visually impaired. As a result of these discussions, I am a bit lost as how
to proceed with the preparation of mathematics for the web and documents
for my course content.

I've paid a little attention to the develoment of MathML, but I've always
said "Who wants to code like that?" whenever I look at examples. However,
today I found:

http://www.dessci.com/en/company/press/releases/040722.htm

I now realize that software that reads web pages aloud it pretty important.
But how do I, in my limited time, prepare documents for multiple purposes?
Can I use Context to support all of our students at our school? Just how do
I proceed?

At a loss.

Re: At a loss how to proceed

[Matthias Weber]

I am afraid your question is to vague to be answerable.

Hence here are two pieces of information that might or might not be 
useful:


i) Mathematica 5.1 can convert TeX to MathML, at least
to some extent. So it should at least in principle be possible to
convert carefully crafted TeX files to MathML + XML.
I don't know whether one can make ConTeXt do that, too.
If yes, I am sure it is better than what Mathematica can offer.

ii) Proofread your web pages with lynx (text-only).
If you need formulas, use jpegs/pngs that have as a textual description
a text that will be read as you would read the formula (eg:
sum of 1 over n square for n from 1 to infinity equals pi squared over 
6)


But, again, I am completely at loss when thinking about your request,
which only shows how little we know and do.
Let me know if you find some useful solutions.

Matthias

On Dec 14, 2004, at 1:51 PM, David Arnold wrote:

> All,
>
> Lately, I've had a number of discussions with the director of disabled
> student services at our school regarding document preparation for the
> visually impaired. As a result of these discussions, I am a bit lost 
> as how
> to proceed with the preparation of mathematics for the web and 
> documents
> for my course content.
>
> I've paid a little attention to the develoment of MathML, but I've 
> always
> said "Who wants to code like that?" whenever I look at examples. 
> However,
> today I found:
>
> http://www.dessci.com/en/company/press/releases/040722.htm
>
> I now realize that software that reads web pages aloud it pretty 
> important.
> But how do I, in my limited time, prepare documents for multiple 
> purposes?
> Can I use Context to support all of our students at our school? Just 
> how do
> I proceed?
>
> At a loss.
> _______________________________________________
> ntg-context mailing list
> ntg-context@ntg.nl
> http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
>
>

Re: At a loss how to proceed

[Hans Hagen]

Matthias Weber wrote:
> I am afraid your question is to vague to be answerable.
> 
> Hence here are two pieces of information that might or might not be useful:
> 
> 
> i) Mathematica 5.1 can convert TeX to MathML, at least
> to some extent. So it should at least in principle be possible to
> convert carefully crafted TeX files to MathML + XML.
> I don't know whether one can make ConTeXt do that, too.
> If yes, I am sure it is better than what Mathematica can offer.
> 
> ii) Proofread your web pages with lynx (text-only).
> If you need formulas, use jpegs/pngs that have as a textual description
> a text that will be read as you would read the formula (eg:
> sum of 1 over n square for n from 1 to infinity equals pi squared over 6)

it all depends on where one starts: tex or xml; starting with pure tex, tex4ht 
may be a solution; on the other hand, when one starts with xml, one can use 
context to produce the pdf's and xst to make html documents.

Once you get accurstomed to it, editing in xml is not that bad and for math, 
there are math(ml) editors to make the complex formulas.

Hans


-----------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
               Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
      tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
                                              | www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: At a loss how to proceed

[darnold]

Hans et al,

OK, some questions.

You say "starting with pure tex," does this mean that if you start with
Context, then tex4ht is not an option?

Secondly, since I teach mathematics, anything I write is going to contain
a *lot* of mathematics and a lot of figures (graphs, etc). Is XML and
MATHML going to be painful in this case?

How can I get started with a small project or example, so I can determine
how to proceed? I think I can look at the latex followed by tex4ht
direction myself, but I could use some help with the second method, xml to
pdf via context and xml to html via xst. I really have no idea how to
proceed with this direction.

I could use some pointers, or even a small example, with math code and a
metapost graph or two.



> Matthias Weber wrote:
>> I am afraid your question is to vague to be answerable.
>>
>> Hence here are two pieces of information that might or might not be
>> useful:
>>
>>
>> i) Mathematica 5.1 can convert TeX to MathML, at least
>> to some extent. So it should at least in principle be possible to
>> convert carefully crafted TeX files to MathML + XML.
>> I don't know whether one can make ConTeXt do that, too.
>> If yes, I am sure it is better than what Mathematica can offer.
>>
>> ii) Proofread your web pages with lynx (text-only).
>> If you need formulas, use jpegs/pngs that have as a textual description
>> a text that will be read as you would read the formula (eg:
>> sum of 1 over n square for n from 1 to infinity equals pi squared over
>> 6)
>
> it all depends on where one starts: tex or xml; starting with pure tex,
> tex4ht
> may be a solution; on the other hand, when one starts with xml, one can
> use
> context to produce the pdf's and xst to make html documents.
>
> Once you get accurstomed to it, editing in xml is not that bad and for
> math,
> there are math(ml) editors to make the complex formulas.
>
> Hans
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>                                            Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
>                Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
>       tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
>                                               | www.pragma-pod.nl
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
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