technical diagram description system query

Wed May 9 13:46:04 EDT 2012

Hello,
The idea behind access2science was the lack of information out there on 
how to make STEM subjects accessible. I know that John Gardner is 
willing to have information from people to add to the site.

Michael Whapples
On 09/05/2012 15:45, Kirk Reiser wrote:
> 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
>