- From: William F Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
- Date: 09 Apr 2003 06:51:32 -0400
- To: www-math@w3.org, www-voice@w3.org
[I suggest that follow-ups be directed to www-math@w3.org only.]
Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net> writes:
> Equations are not very usable when read linearly, even when spoken
> by a live mathematician. They must be regarded as complex
> expressions rather than linear text. Letting the user walk the
> expression tree is the way for them to be able to get their ears
> around the structure that is at hand.
Q1. Do you have text representations of examples of such expression
trees?
Q2. Do you think that content MathML is rich enough for this or do you
have something more in mind?
This issue is certainly related to issues surrounding the design of
author-level markup, because for author-level markup to be sane for
translation to content MathML it must expand to such an expression
tree.
It will be a hard sell coaxing general authors to have new content
up to this standard, given that the present is typified by PDF made
from TeX/LaTeX source as found at arxiv.org.
In addition to the possibility of optimal non-visual rendering,
however, authors may look forward to:
1. better online indexing of their articles.
2. better online searchability for their articles
(though few realize that searching TeX source for
math involves luck).
3. better interface between online article content
and mathematical software on a user's platform.
The road there still looks rather long because of the need for author
markup that will be an attractive choice for authors who are now very
happy with their smooth access through TeX/LaTeX to visually pleasing
PDF.
-- Bill
Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2003 06:51:36 UTC