Re: [EXTERNAL] a minimal core intent proposal

Murray,

Your example is among the very many inappropriate unicode-name to 
speak-aloud-name. This will keep coming. E.g. probably most arrows are 
like that too.

But the script capital p does not correspond to anything I feel is 
widely known in books with formulæ. So it is probably too much to 
expect to make this into a minimal intent proposal. I might be biased 
with some math culture though.

“Just add configurability” is what is needed for such cases, I 
think.

Paul

On 11 Nov 2022, at 1:35, Murray Sargent wrote:

> Yes, our Unicode list consists of default names. The names can be 
> overruled by using intent. Very interesting that other folks have used 
> ℘ for things other than elliptic functions. It’s a good looking 
> symbol 😊 But I really don’t think “script capital p” is a 
> good name even in an intent string since ℘ isn’t a capital. And 
> calling it script confuses it with the math script and math 
> calligraphic p’s. Maybe var script p. Slightly analogous to 
> varepsilon (ε) vs epsilon (ϵ).
>
> Thanks,
> Murray
>
> From: Deyan Ginev <deyan.ginev@gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2022 3:56 PM
> To: Murray Sargent <murrays@exchange.microsoft.com>
> Cc: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>; David Farmer 
> <farmer@aimath.org>; www-math@w3.org
> Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: a minimal core intent proposal
>
> Hi Murray and Neil,
>
> I agree that we should assemble a complete list with appropriate 
> Unicode names, and try to keep it sterile from possibly 
> domain-specific assumptions about what a character may or may not be 
> useful for. Neil used the nice tagline of "self-describing", which 
> would be a nice aim. I'm happy to offer help in doing the manual labor 
> collaboratively here.
>
> Nevertheless, I have to disagree about where we draw the lines of what 
> should and should not be assumed by convention.
>
> If a ℘ is used to mean "weierstrass-p", it really needs an intent 
> annotation.
> "script-capital-p" is the appropriate baseline for higher-education 
> documents without any intent markup, such as the current state of the 
> arXiv HTML5+MathML corpus.
> Some examples:
> - in arXiv:0812.1728, the variable ℘ is a "nonempty collection of 
> subsets"
> - in arXiv:1904.08618, the variable ℘ is "an irreducible polynomial 
> of positive degree"
> - in arXiv:2110.06614, the sequence of variables in ℘_1 to ℘_s are 
> "prime ideals".
>
> Stephen W. offered a lovely list of examples where an msup is not a 
> power. I will also remind that there are about 40 examples of msup 
> notations that different from "power" in the current Intent Open 
> spreadsheet.
>
> Any set of defaults that over-asserts its assumptions will be 
> considered as non-standard in my eyes. Such notation grammars are 
> certainly useful, but belong under a tight umbrella headings. For 
> example, "℘" defaulting to "weierstrass-p" is reasonable only in an 
> explicit context of "elliptic functions".
>
> Greetings,
> Deyan
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 6:36 PM Murray Sargent 
> <murrays@exchange.microsoft.com<mailto:murrays@exchange.microsoft.com>> 
> wrote:
> Re speech for Unicode math symbols, their Unicode names provide a 
> useful start and may be what we want. But due to stability 
> considerations (Unicode names cannot be changed), some names are not 
> what we want. A glaring example of this is the Weierstrass p (℘) 
> which has the unfortunate Unicode name “SCRIPT CAPITAL P”. It’s 
> neither upper case nor script; it’s its own thing, namely 
> Weierstrass p or \wp in TeX. Amusing piece of history: in our laser 
> theory papers and books, my physics colleagues and I used ℘ as the 
> base of electric-dipole matrix elements and called it “squiggle”. 
> It’s #296 in the American Institute of Physics Style Manual.
>
> I can supply the English names of 360 math symbols that our software 
> speaks. There are quite a lot more Unicode math symbols, but they are 
> pretty obscure. It’s probably worth creating a complete list. I 
> think I can get the names for about 18 other languages as well in case 
> we want to get into localization. I also have names for the ~1000 math 
> alphanumerics.
>
> Thanks,
> Murray
>
> From: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu<mailto:soiffer@alum.mit.edu>>
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2022 2:55 PM
> To: David Farmer <farmer@aimath.org<mailto:farmer@aimath.org>>
> Cc: www-math@w3.org<mailto:www-math@w3.org>
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: a minimal core intent proposal
>
> We discussed this some at the meeting this morning. My proposal 
> included a statement that there should be a list of common intent 
> names to help authoring software know what to do. If is kind of buried 
> at the start of the document, so I've added a section calling that out 
> more clearly. For Unicode, it does mention that we should provide a 
> default speech (actually "meaning") table for Unicode chars typically 
> used in STEM documents.
>
> I have also added an "Internationalization" section that raises the 
> question of  who/what should be responsible for internationalization 
> of non-core intents. That includes non-core concepts (in my proposal) 
> for things like "absolute-value". I suspect this might be a hot button 
> topic.
>
>     Neil
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 4:26 AM David Farmer 
> <farmer@aimath.org<mailto:farmer@aimath.org>> wrote:
>
> Let's consider absolute value.
>
> Is it this document, or somewhere else, that tells me to use
> the string "absolute-value" when I am specifying that?
>
> |X| can also mean determinant, cardinality, order, or length.
> Maybe not all of those are K-12 or K-14, but I think those should
> all be in core because they are reasonably common.  I am suggesting
> that as a general principle.
>
> Similarly, the draft mentions (a,b) as an open interval, but it
> could also be an ordered pair or a point in the Cartesian plane.
>
> Not sure if you are asking for specific instances, but one of my
> go-to examples is the LaTeX \times, which in K-14 can be
> multiplication
> cross product
> "by" as in 3-by-3 matrix or 10-by-12 foot room.
>
> A bit past K-14 it can be direct product or cartesian product,
> so by the principle I suggest above, those intents should also
> be in core.
>
> In biology, × is used to indicate a hybrid of two species, but
> maybe we don't care about that.
>
> On Wed, 9 Nov 2022, Neil Soiffer wrote:
>
>> I wrote a proposal for simplifying what goes into intent core. It 
>> ended up being sort of an "AT requirements"
>> document for core. If I extend it a little further to include what AT 
>> should do with "intent" (currently just
>> presumed everyone knows), it would be the basis for an actual AT 
>> requirements document (or appendix). It also
>> serves to let authors/authoring software know what they can count on 
>> as default behavior by AT.
>>
>> The proposal contains some open questions, but I believe it is 
>> fleshed out enough that it is understandable and
>> actionable (let's do this/don't do this). It extends what I put in 
>> Deyan's intent spreadsheet and also has
>> explanations. It will be the basis for the third agenda item on 
>> Thursday.
>>
>>     Neil
>>
>>
>>