Fwd: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006

Fwd: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006

[David Arnold]

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All,

I just received this from our disabled students' center.

What is needed is a simple way to convert a Context document into a  
format that can be "read" by these MathML players.

Are we anywhere close to such a conversion?

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Love, Ken" <Ken-Love@Redwoods.edu>
> Date: June 1, 2006 10:14:37 AM PDT
> To: "Arnold, David" <David-Arnold@Redwoods.edu>
> Subject: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006
>
> Hi Dave:
>
> A student with a reading disability has requested an alternate  
> version of the Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006. Jean Lawry told me  
> that the Math faculty is creating the book, to give to students on  
> a CD. I think that is just great! My task is to put that into a  
> format that the student can listen to. Assuming that your CD  
> doesn’t have all the info in audio files, one strategy is that I  
> can scan the print version (Jean said there will be one), and  
> extract the text. The problem—as with all Math books to this point— 
> is that the scanning software doesn’t do math. Tracey ordered the  
> site license for MathType, so I could re-create the math line by  
> line. Much easier for me would be if the equations are already in a  
> format that can be converted to be read by MathPlayer, such as  
> MathML. One option is a flavor of .tex that Scientific Notebook can  
> handle, that can be exported as .XHTML. Please give me a heads-up  
> on how you’re making the book, so I can plan ahead.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken Love
>
> High Tech Center
>
> X4557
>
>
>


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Re: Fwd: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006

[Aditya Mahajan]

On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, David Arnold wrote:

> All,
>
> I just received this from our disabled students' center.
>
> What is needed is a simple way to convert a Context document into a format 
> that can be "read" by these MathML players.
>
> Are we anywhere close to such a conversion?

There is some work for latex documents. Have a look at
http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/raman/aster/aster-toplevel.html

I do not know if this can be extended to handle context.


Aditya



>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: "Love, Ken" <Ken-Love@Redwoods.edu>
>> Date: June 1, 2006 10:14:37 AM PDT
>> To: "Arnold, David" <David-Arnold@Redwoods.edu>
>> Subject: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006
>> 
>> Hi Dave:
>> 
>> A student with a reading disability has requested an alternate version of 
>> the Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006. Jean Lawry told me that the Math 
>> faculty is creating the book, to give to students on a CD. I think that is 
>> just great! My task is to put that into a format that the student can 
>> listen to. Assuming that your CD doesn?t have all the info in audio files, 
>> one strategy is that I can scan the print version (Jean said there will be 
>> one), and extract the text. The problem?as with all Math books to this 
>> point?is that the scanning software doesn?t do math. Tracey ordered the 
>> site license for MathType, so I could re-create the math line by line. Much 
>> easier for me would be if the equations are already in a format that can be 
>> converted to be read by MathPlayer, such as MathML. One option is a flavor 
>> of .tex that Scientific Notebook can handle, that can be exported as 
>> .XHTML. Please give me a heads-up on how you?re making the book, so I can 
>> plan ahead.
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Ken Love
>> 
>> High Tech Center
>> 
>> X4557
>> 
>>

Re: Fwd: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006

[Mojca Miklavec]

On 6/1/06, David Arnold wrote:
>
> All,
>
> I just received this from our disabled students' center.
>
> What is needed is a simple way to convert a Context document into a format
> that can be "read" by these MathML players.
>
> Are we anywhere close to such a conversion?

I doubt that you can convert a ConTeXt document into XML (MathML or
whatever) directly. I don't know how complex your documents are, but
some poeple do write in XML and process their documents with both
ConTeXt and "whatever turns XML into HTML".

The nice part about ConTeXt is that you don't need any additional
effort to process XML or MathML, but you do need some more effort to
write equations in MathML or the whole text in XML. However, in such
cases it might be worth doing it and might need less work than
"scanning the book, extracting text, retyping equations, etc. ..."

http://pear.math.pitt.edu/mathzilla/itex2mmlFrag.html can convert "TeX
math" into MathML for example - if you need a simple way to write your
equations - and there are probably plenty of MathML editors as well.
(There are some links present on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML
and on many other pages.)

Hans has also written support for OpenMath, but I'm not sure if
math-to-speech converters support that already.

Didn't try it out, but the link that Aditya pointed out seems
interesting as well.

Mojca

Re: Fwd: Math 120 textbook for Fall 2006

[Hans Hagen]

Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>
> Hans has also written support for OpenMath, but I'm not sure if
> math-to-speech converters support that already.
>   
open math is normally converted to presentational or content mathml 

for conversion, content mml (or openmath) would be best since they retain the structure cq. mathematical concepts while for tex/presentation mml it's a kind of gamble what the formula represents 

we currently are involved in a project where math is dealt with as follows: 

- open math for complex math (converted to content mml) 
- simple inline elements for things like variables, numbers, coordinates (this makes entering easy); this is converted automatically to open math and from that to content mml [the open math is needed for web based variants of the math method]
- optionally we will provide methods for entering math in calculater math syntax
- there is a plugin model (on top of content mml) that permits cultural enhancements 

[we document this in a manual that is put alongside the mml ones on the website; an ongoing effort] 

conversion is automatic using the ctx features of texexec

the content is edited in a scite based environment, by the authors themselves [high quality pdf as well as highly interactive and dynamic math in html are the outcomes] 

Hans 

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