Subject: Re: Equation Editor. (fwd)
From: Caolan McNamara (cmc@stardivision.de)
Date: Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:04:20 CDT
At 16:16 05.09.00 +0200, Karl Ove Hufthammer wrote:
>Be careful. MathML is meant for describing what something *is*, not how it's
>displayed. Here's an (TeX) example:
>
>f(a+b)
>
>Does this mean f as an function of (a+b) or f multiplied with (a+b). It's
>impossible to tell. But if this is written in MathML, it's unambiguous. This
>means that it can be processed algebraically in another program (e.g.
>Mathematica) or rendered in several ways (e.g. as speech). The equation
>editors
>I know about are based on visual presentation ((La)TeX too).
StarMath is algebraic, with the option of inserting the symbols just as
symbols
as well, obviously simple to export to MathType and a complete pain in the
ass to
import it.
>One solution I would like for an AbiWord equation editor is a way to create
>*good* content MathML using a "verbal" language. One program which uses
>this is
>Dave Raggett's (the editor of the HTML specification) EZMath. Here you write
>mathematics like you would speak it, and it outputs (good) content MathML.
>
>The quadratic formula:
>x = {-b plus or minus sqrt {b^2 - 4ac}}/2a
Well you'll like starmath then, the starmath equivalent is...
x = {-b plusminus sqrt {b^2 - 4ac}}/2a
Where I think it falls down is that with grouping you cannot easily see
which {
is with }, the standard programming problems apply, and as the equation
gets larger
and matrices and other more verbose constructs make their appearance it gets
difficult very fast, Nevertheless these are visual interface issues,
primarily I
am concerned with the file formats under the hood of all this. The starmath UI
interface will remain but the native format will hopefully move to MathML,
Ill have
a bit of a think during the implementation about preserving closer the
users intent
when importing from visual based ones.
>Trigonometrical functions:
>sin {2x} = 2 sin x times cos x
sin {2x} = 2 sin x times cos x
Certainly theres a similarity, perhaps a similar root interface is behind both
apps.
>Limits:
>{limit as x tends to infinity of integral from 0 to x wrt y of e^y^2} =
>sqrt pi
>/ 2
This is probably,
lim csup {x rightarrow infinity} int from 0 to x y(e^{y^2} )} = sqrt pi / 2
though this is more limited because I personally don't construct math
verbally,
seems like we need a "tends" word. Isn't there though some issues as to
peoples
languages ?, this language isn't localized as far as I know in StarMath,
its always
pseudo english, and at even from my (native speaker) perspective some of the
terminology is different even from what I would use, though thats more likely
a personal thing. So a graphical interface would negate some of those issues.
If you would like to continue this, perhaps we should move it over to the
OpenOffice
discussion group ?
C.
-- Herein are personal opinions, you'd want to be crazed to consider these official positions of StarOffice/Sun or even vaguely congruent.
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