Minutes: MathML Full meeting 29 June, 2023

 Attendees:

   - Neil Soiffer
   - Louis Maher
   - Dennis Müller
   - Bruce Miller
   - Paul Libbrecht
   - Stephen Watt
   - Bert Bos
   - David Farmer
   - Murray Sargent

<https://sandbox.cryptpad.info/code/inner.html?ver=5.3.0-rc1#cp-md-0-regrets>
Regrets
<https://sandbox.cryptpad.info/code/inner.html?ver=5.3.0-rc1#cp-md-0-agenda>
Agenda
<https://sandbox.cryptpad.info/code/inner.html?ver=5.3.0-rc1#cp-md-0-1-announcements-updates-progress-reports>1.
Announcements/Updates/Progress reports

TPAC *(11–15 Sept) reg is now open:
https://www.w3.org/2023/09/TPAC/Overview.html. Fee waivers are available,
no questions asked. fees go up after July 15

NS: There will be no meeting next week due to the US July 4 holiday. The
next meeting will be on Thursday, July 13.

NS The W3C is reorganizing.

PL: Our vision of long division is perfect for the Urdu and Punjab
languages of India.

BB: ‘AC review’ (for ‘Advisory Committee’). Since W3C doesn't have a
Director anymore, it is now the team as a whole who decides that a charter
is ready for review by the W3C members. Our internal ‘strategy team’
already did a review for internationalization, accessibility, security and
privacy issues, and now a dedicated task force checks that everything else
is correct.

I sent the charter to that task force a few days ago (because I was on
holiday until last Friday and there was no time to do it before) and am now
waiting for their decision. So far they found some editorial issues, which
I already fixed. As soon as I have their conclusion, I can ask our
Communications team to send email to the Advisory Committee, asking them to
fill a survey about the new charter.

Four weeks later I will ask the same task force to evaluate the results of
the survey. The expected outcome is that they conclude that the members
support the charter, in which case I will ask the Communications team to
send another email to our members, this time to invite them to join the new
group. Another, less likely, outcome is that some W3C member objects to the
creation of the group, in which case we'll need to start negotiations to
try and remove that objection. And yet another unlikely outcome is that no
member shows any interest in answering the survey and we have to conclude
that there is no support for the group. But to avoid that, I'll ask all W3C
members who are currently represented in the Math WG to not forget to fill
the survey.
<https://sandbox.cryptpad.info/code/inner.html?ver=5.3.0-rc1#cp-md-0-2-core-list>2.
Core list

   1. Work on growing the list for core concepts/functions
   <https://w3c.github.io/mathml-docs/intent-core-concepts/> and core
   properties <https://w3c.github.io/mathml-docs/intent-core-properties/>

From NS here is DG's list of intent values
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EsWou1K5nxBdLPvQapdoA9h-s8lg_qjn8fJH64g9izQ/edit#gid=1358098730

SW: I see transpose there, but I don't see Hermitian transpose.

NS: So, this is a core list, and I don't think Hermitian transpose belongs
in the core list.

We had a discussion about the difference between usage of something and
about the spoken version of something. We had a discussion of when the word
"of" would be spoken.

MUS: If you think about accessibility, you want brevity, so you probably
wouldn't put the oven unless it's a complicated argument.

NS: I would think what we'll just end up doing is, instead of having
separate entries for absolutely every trig function, we'll just list them
all out in 1 one place.

BM: If we are going to be adding to the core list because of slight
differences in speech, the list will explode without really a very good
justification.

BM: We can use the nasty forms of intent to force "of" to be there or leave
it to the AT. We should not be prescriptive about "ofs" in the core list.

NS: Just now let us get the names and numb er of arguments down.

NS: Go with the default fixity.

SW: I agree with Murray's comment that sine is a function, but when we
typeset them they are in upright font. Is that because it is an operator or
because it is a multi-letter name? Secondly, there are many small
communities who read mathematics differently. As a simple example, log base
2 of x or log 2 of x. As these speech templates are put in, do we need some
real data collection instead of one person's opinion? Do we expect the
official version of our list to be based upon some study?

NS: DG did spend time looking at studies. We do not have the resources to
have studies.

SW: I don't know whether we have a distinction between operators and
functions. That's a general question.

SW: Don't we need a method to indicate a pause in our templates because it
really is punctuation as part of the speech grammar?

NS: MathCAT pauses a lot but the translators will not accept this. Pausing
is punctuation.

NS: We should not bother with pausing because the translators will not use
pauses.

DF: Pausing is not in our scope. How you pronounce log base 2 versus an
index is not ours to specify. The AT needs to handle this.

NS: Who wants to propose names?

NS: We should list out all the trig names. Not the variants of each
concept. The concept names are not necessary the way it is spoken: sine
versus sin.

BM: If the concept name is sine it does not need to be in the core list.

PL: I'm all for sin because this is used in all technical documents.

NS: We shouldn't have a specific one for square and cube, we should just
have power and let the AT figure out what to do about it.

NS: If we spell it out, then the AT does not have to do much work.

NS: We have concepts and speech templates.

MUS: There are 2 columns here. There's a concept in their speech template.
And you put in the concept, just use the real math name.

*CONSENSUS* We use the common name such as Sin, versus the spelled-out name
such as sine, and that would apply for log and logarithm too.

NS: Wants core concept names we can add to the list.

We will walk down DG's list.

The agreed upon names were:

absolute value, angle, approximately, array, average, fraction, remainder,
and a root.

Aligned equation is a property we use on a table instead of a concept name.
The term "approaches" will be considered. NS did not know why the term
"area" was used. Units are properties. NS: did not know why the term
"focus" was used.

PL: The A function is often used for area in French.

NS: Is this something that needs to be in core? Is this very common?

PL: No.

NS: Decided he had a problem with the sheets he was looking at.

*ACGTION* We need a new link for DG's list.

NS: I claim that: greater than, more than, less than, equal to, and not
equal to, don't need to be in core because these are operators and so We
could have a list of how we speak operators, but I don't see this being
particularly useful.

NS: If something has parentheses or brackets around it, does it need a name?

NS: A pair of parentheses does not have a core concept associated with it.
It is just a grouping.

*ACTION* NS: It would be great if somebody spent some time coming up with
their own list. Someone should go through DG's list and see what core
concepts should be added.

This list would be based on two things:

NS: One is the trig functions in general.

If a function such as trigs or logs has a real name, or common use name,
let's just pick one of those and use it. As opposed to the way it would be
spelled out.

The second thing to base a core concept list would be the if it's an MO
type situation where we're just talking about how do you pronounce the
operator then we leave that to the AT, then it would just be if somebody
wants to force a or speech on it, they would give the speech for the
operator itse