RE: Draft Node: Fill in the Blank

BTW, I had mentioned the need for such fill-in-the-blank cells way back
when I was involved with the Math WG in the late 90s. Ironically, I
could not get anyone interested in it at the time. I do have one comment
on the proposal.

 

In the proposed markup, it appears there is no way to distinguish
between (a) content that is intended only to be the blank's rendering
(e.g., underlining) and (b) content that is added that is to be
interpreted as filled-in math (ie, the "answer" in a test). It would be
nice for a processing program interested in the meaning of the
mathematics (e.g., an answer checker) to safely ignore the former but
not the latter. 

 

Paul

 

From: neil.soiffer@gmail.com [mailto:neil.soiffer@gmail.com] On Behalf
Of Neil Soiffer
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 11:48 AM
To: www-math@w3.org
Subject: Draft Node: Fill in the Blank

 

Several interesting issues came up when the structure guidelines I
mentioned in previous email were being developed. One of those was how
to represent in MathML "blanks" that should be filled in by a student.
The main issue for the DAISY guidelines was how to let assistive
technology know that something was a blank so it could be spoken
appropriately, but any solution should also work for online assessment
(etc) in general, not just for those using assistive technology.  To
address "fill in the blanks", the MathML Working Group has come up with
a draft note: 
http://www.w3.org/Math/Documents/Notes/blanks/fill_in_the_blank.html

There are several open questions (see the end of that document), and we
would appreciate feedback on both those questions and on the proposal in
general.  Please send comments and questions to this email list.

Let the discussion begin,

Neil Soiffer
Senior Scientist
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com
~ Makers of MathType, MathFlow, MathPlayer, MathDaisy, Equation Editor ~