Re: [EXTERNAL] auto-boxing

Hello all,

> Deyan: any tool changes the user

indeed so.

> Deyan: no tool should auto-box

Well… unless someone insists that this makes sense to protect users 
from ill selection. That was the thought that Murray rendered below, it 
is quite normal.

> Neil: the problem is not MathML

well… unless MathML insists on having (lots of) mrows, e.g. because 
intents are better AT-interpreted there. I think I remember Deyan 
indicating that LaTeXML is creating a lot of them. I am under the 
impression that the draft that Deyan circulated about “minimally 
structured MathML” is going to be related to that.

The box that I got came automatically because of my brackets… it was 
not surprising at all and breaking it was the problem.

This is about questioning the fact that most MathML should have these 
many boxes. If yes, then maybe they should be user-visible or maybe not. 
If they are visible, should they impact selection? I remember that we 
were proud to have OpenMath-term-respecting-selection in ActiveMath. And 
this example shows situations where this is undesirable, at least 
without breaking.


Paul


On 11 Jul 2021, at 20:23, Murray Sargent wrote:

> In 
> OfficeMath<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/murrays/officemath> 
> if you select a math-object start delimiter, end delimiter, or 
> argument separator, the whole object is automatically selected. Is 
> this what you mean by auto boxing? For example, if you select the 
> start delimiter of a delimters object (that used for parenthesized 
> expressions and the like), the whole expression is automatically 
> selected. The rationale is that the object won’t then be corrupted 
> when copied or deleted. As Neil points out, this choice isn’t part 
> of the MathML specification. But I think it’s good UI. It’s 
> discussed a bit more in the post Math 
> Selection<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/murrays/math-selection> 
> , a post you inspired me to write way back in 2007 😊
>
> Murray
>
> From: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2021 12:45 PM
> To: Paul Libbrecht <paul@hoplahup.net>
> Cc: www-math@w3.org
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: auto-boxing
>
> Paul,
>
> I don't think I understand your issue:
>
>   *   If the MathML generated by the new expression is wrong, that is 
> simply a bug.
>   *   If you are saying that you don't like the way Word's editor or 
> some other editor works with selection/copy/paste, that's a UI issue 
> and is independent of MathML. Some editors might only allow certain 
> edits, and others might be more free. E.g., Mathematica's editor (full 
> disclosure, I wrote that one) is completely freeform wrt to linear 
> notations. It seems that Word's editor won't allow selection of part 
> of the interior of parens that extends beyond the parens; that's not a 
> MathML limitation and might be considered a feature by some (only 
> allow syntactically meaningful selections?)
> I think a simple way to break up the first expr is to select all of 
> it, copy/paste it to the right and then delete the contents of parens 
> as appropriate. Seems pretty easy and quick. Then add a '2' in front 
> of the '5's (could have done this first and saved inserting a char). 
> Of course, everyone's editing style differs.
>
> In the end, I'm not clear why this is a MathML issue but I am likely 
> misunderstanding your issue.
>
>     Neil
>
>
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> On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 8:28 AM Paul Libbrecht 
> <paul@hoplahup.net<mailto:paul@hoplahup.net>> wrote:
>
> Hello dear list,
>
> I had a funny demo yesterday in my lecture.
>
> I had input the following in Word: P(T<-t∨T>t)=0.05:
>
> [cid:image001.png@01D77646.2C751D60]
>
> However, a colleague that watched indicated I should rather split the 
> probability measures in two which I started:
>
> [cid:image002.png@01D77646.2C751D60]
>
> Splitting the formula by using cut and paste was not possible anymore, 
> because an automatic box (an mrow I assume) had appeared inside the 
> first bracket. Only partial cut and paste was possible.
>
> So it was easier to re-input the whole or abandon the change; I chose 
> the second ;-). Word has influenced my mathematical discourse!.
>
> A few discussions around intents seem to imply that these boxes are a 
> natural requirement which is understandable from the perspective of a 
> navigation through the formula or read-aloud or a selection-aware 
> presentation_. I would like to agree with that but this implies that 
> some boxes will bother the mathematical discourse.
>
> I believe that similar issues are met in other environments (in 
> particular TeXmacs has very deep box-nesting.
>
>   *   Should users expect “box manipulations” so that the boxes 
> become correct?
>   *   Should they be told to care?
>   *   Are there situations where boxes would overlap?
>
> paul