technical diagram description system query

[Kirk Reiser]

Hi Michael: Thank you very much for your informative response.  I will
sift through the sites and documents you have provided with relish.
Some of them like the access2science.com URL I never knew of before so
hopefully they'll provide other good sources of materials.  They may
even be a good repository of whatever systems we finally come up with,
if any.

I have had a bit of interest from the community and am a tad surprised
there doesn't appear to be more information already available.  Maybe
I just haven't found it yet.



On Mon, 7 May 2012, Michael Whapples wrote:

> Hello Kirk and others who are interested,
> There are some who highly promote LaTeX for writing and reading technical 
> documents. I certainly say for those serious on using technical notation and 
> will make plenty of use then learning LaTeX can be a good investment, however 
> I would never promote it for reading (it really is a document preparation 
> tool) and also for many who may only encounter technical notation from time 
> to time it really isn't worth the investment (if learning it for the 
> technical notation is the only reason, I know some like using it for about 
> everything in which case you will be making great use of it).
>
> Another mark up system, I think meant to be easier to learn but I am unsure 
> whether so powerful is the asciimath notation (sorry I don't have a link to 
> hand but I am sure a quick search will find relevant stuff). Asciimath is 
> mainly used on the web but is therefore suitable for all platforms.
>
> Other more specialised systems exist like triangle and lambda, but I think 
> these may be a bit limited and the editors which were designed for them were 
> only developed for windows (not good for people here as its a linux list).
>
> A new system which John Gardner of ViewPlus is creating, and which I have 
> been involved with when he was thinking of it is called Linear Editing and 
> Authoring Notation (LEAN). A preprint of a paper by John Gardner on the LEAN 
> system can be found at 
> http://www.access2science.com/jagqn/More%20Accessible%20Math%20preprint.htm 
> and I personally feel the system is a good way forward. LEAN is unicode based 
> so should be simple enough for applications to work with. While at the moment 
> work has mainly been focussed on Windows screen readers, I could imagine it 
> working fine with others like Orca if someone made a suitable symbol 
> dictionary. I have been working on a greasemonkey userscript so that one 
> could read MathML equations in firefox using the LEAN system, that userscript 
> can be found at http://bitbucket.org/mwhapples/mathmlreader but I must worn 
> people its still work in progress.
>
> Finally there are other useful documents on the access2science.com website.
>
> Hope some of this has been useful.
>
> Michael Whapples
> On 04/05/2012 14:20, Kirk Reiser wrote:
>> Hello everybody: I am slowly over time posting this request to all the
>> mailing lists I know and think might be related to the topic.  I am
>> hoping to gather enough interest that we can develop standardize
>> systems and get some implementation.
>> 
>> 
>> One of the irritations I have whenever I'm reading something technical
>> in text is the lack of useful representation of scientific or
>> technical notation.  It happens in every book and document in every
>> format from ASCII text to HTML and even in documents such as MS Word.
>> To a small extent we have some rough accessibility with basic
>> mathematical texts because most character sets offer some amount of
>> arithmetic related symbols and they are often necessary for
>> programming and/or scientific calculations.  Even then representing
>> calculus or other higher mathematical concepts are not well worked out
>> and certainly not standardized in any way.  What there is currently is
>> a mixed bag of .tex mark-up or text representation of Nemith code
>> symbols.
>> 
>> I would like to attempt to find standardized or common textual systems
>> and pull them together in one place as a resource for other people
>> writing new materials or editing previously available documents to
>> easily use.  if there are no predefined systems, I would like to try
>> to build systems for each of the technical and scientific disciplines
>> for future writers and editors to use.  I would also like to put
>> together a group of volunteers to edit at least one text in each
>> discipline so visually impaired students and readers can get past this
>> frustrating situation.  We would make the books and papers available
>> through the bookserve project or other facilities if any are
>> interested in participating.
>> 
>> Some of the disciplines which I believe need systems found or
>> developed include: physics, chemistry, electronics, mathematics and
>> any others people feel should be considered.
>> 
>> If any of you know of any representational systems for any technical
>> or scientific disciplines please write or contact me in someway to let
>> me know about them.
>> 
>> If anyone is interested in being involved in gathering and developing
>> symbolic systems or discussing them also please contact me.
>> 
>> If you or someone you know might be interested in helping edit books
>> and papers using these symbolic systems, once again please contact me.
>> 
>> Depending on how much response I receive will determine what type of
>> on going communication I put together.  If you have suggestions for
>> that I'd like to hear them as well.
>> 
>> I can be contacted at kirk at reisers.ca or on the #speakup channel on
>> freenode.net.
>>
>>   Kirk Reiser
>> 
>> -- 
>> Kirk Reiser                The Computer Braille Facility
>> e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca        University of Western Ontario
>> phone: (519) 661-3061
>> 
>
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--
Kirk Reiser				The Computer Braille Facility
e-mail: kirk at braille.uwo.ca		University of Western Ontario
phone: (519) 661-3061