latex:accessible math

latex:accessible math

[Littlefield, Tyler]

hello all:
I'm sorry for the clearly off-topic question here, but I was hoping 
someone might have some ideas.
I am responsible for homework in math class, and I have a couple 
options; first would be to sit with someone 2 hours a day or more and 
let them read mathlab, do the work, then read out everything so they can 
put it all in.
This is clearly not the best solution since it takes the time I have to 
do the problem plus double at least that much to get it all read and 
put  in properly.
My next solution would be to set up latex so that I can create pdfs and 
do the problems there.
I'm curious if anyone has had much luck with this. I started a document 
in Latex and did some work with it, but when I convert with rubber it 
does not work.
I'm also curious where a good starting point would be. Can I just 
install latex and go to work with the homework? Do I need a ton of other 
stuff?
Thanks,

-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
The aspen project: a barebones light-weight mud engine:
http://code.google.com/p/aspenmud
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.

Re: latex:accessible math

[Scott D. Henning]

Hello Ty,

I will tell you what I know of the  subject and hope that it helps you.

I always found LaTex mentioned when blind people needed to deal with 
math and started looking into it some time ago. Here is what I found.

It was developed to typeset  Mathematics for publication. These would be 
science and math articles. The typeset output is NOT accessible. I was 
not sure if you knew that from your post. The LaTex is accessible 
because it uses human readable syntax to produce the output. The output 
could be turned in to the teacher, you work in the LaTex. I would think 
that a sighted helper to make sure output is correct would be useful. I 
even wonder if the teacher could simply read the LaTex directly.

As for your use of "Rubber" I think you said, I don't know that one. 
Tell me more...I can do some research on the subject.

I will be happy to help you, contact me off list
shenning@durango.net

Scott

-- 
Scott D. Henning
Architectural Audio Design
PO Box 1372
Durango, Colorado 81302

Re: latex:accessible math

[Liz Hare]

Hello,

I would definitely suggest using LaTex for expressing math work. There 
is nothing else except maybe MathML that lets you specify exactly what 
things like equations and tables look like.

As mentioned before, the mathematical expressions in the .dvi or .pdf 
output are not accessible. However, when I produce reports in LaTex, I 
do check the PDFs because the text and tables do come through. So you 
can make sure nothing drastic happened to those elements of your work. 
You can OCR it into Word if you really want to check they layout 
carefully but I rarely have the patience to do this.

It would be ideal if your professors were familiar with LaTex and you 
could submit the .tex files themselves. That way, they could give 
feedback in raw LaTex format too, and you could understand it without 
needing a reader. I had one stats professor who did that with me.

It depends somewhat on your career goals. If you are going to keep doing 
math and science, the LaTex learning curve is worth it. There are tons 
of resources on the Web and if you find you've forgotten some minor 
detail, it's quite easy to use Google to get a quick answer. There are 
even more ways nowadays to convert between LaTex and other formats.

Liz

Liz Hare PhD
Dog Genetics LLC
doggene@earthlink.net
http://www.doggenetics.com

On 1/22/2013 9:06 PM, Scott D. Henning wrote:
> Hello Ty,
>
> I will tell you what I know of the  subject and hope that it helps you.
>
> I always found LaTex mentioned when blind people needed to deal with
> math and started looking into it some time ago. Here is what I found.
>
> It was developed to typeset  Mathematics for publication. These would be
> science and math articles. The typeset output is NOT accessible. I was
> not sure if you knew that from your post. The LaTex is accessible
> because it uses human readable syntax to produce the output. The output
> could be turned in to the teacher, you work in the LaTex. I would think
> that a sighted helper to make sure output is correct would be useful. I
> even wonder if the teacher could simply read the LaTex directly.
>
> As for your use of "Rubber" I think you said, I don't know that one.
> Tell me more...I can do some research on the subject.
>
> I will be happy to help you, contact me off list
> shenning@durango.net
>
> Scott
>

Re: latex:accessible math

[Littlefield, Tyler]

hellothanks for all the information. as long as i can use pdf that would work fine. I will check into it tonight for sure and see what i can do with it.
Thanks,

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 23, 2013, at 7:50 AM, Liz Hare <doggene@earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I would definitely suggest using LaTex for expressing math work. There is nothing else except maybe MathML that lets you specify exactly what things like equations and tables look like.
> 
> As mentioned before, the mathematical expressions in the .dvi or .pdf output are not accessible. However, when I produce reports in LaTex, I do check the PDFs because the text and tables do come through. So you can make sure nothing drastic happened to those elements of your work. You can OCR it into Word if you really want to check they layout carefully but I rarely have the patience to do this.
> 
> It would be ideal if your professors were familiar with LaTex and you could submit the .tex files themselves. That way, they could give feedback in raw LaTex format too, and you could understand it without needing a reader. I had one stats professor who did that with me.
> 
> It depends somewhat on your career goals. If you are going to keep doing math and science, the LaTex learning curve is worth it. There are tons of resources on the Web and if you find you've forgotten some minor detail, it's quite easy to use Google to get a quick answer. There are even more ways nowadays to convert between LaTex and other formats.
> 
> Liz
> 
> Liz Hare PhD
> Dog Genetics LLC
> doggene@earthlink.net
> http://www.doggenetics.com
> 
> On 1/22/2013 9:06 PM, Scott D. Henning wrote:
>> Hello Ty,
>> 
>> I will tell you what I know of the  subject and hope that it helps you.
>> 
>> I always found LaTex mentioned when blind people needed to deal with
>> math and started looking into it some time ago. Here is what I found.
>> 
>> It was developed to typeset  Mathematics for publication. These would be
>> science and math articles. The typeset output is NOT accessible. I was
>> not sure if you knew that from your post. The LaTex is accessible
>> because it uses human readable syntax to produce the output. The output
>> could be turned in to the teacher, you work in the LaTex. I would think
>> that a sighted helper to make sure output is correct would be useful. I
>> even wonder if the teacher could simply read the LaTex directly.
>> 
>> As for your use of "Rubber" I think you said, I don't know that one.
>> Tell me more...I can do some research on the subject.
>> 
>> I will be happy to help you, contact me off list
>> shenning@durango.net
>> 
>> Scott
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup

Re: latex:accessible math

[Scott D. Henning]

Hello,

The response about LaTex from Liz is right on. I actually use LaTex 
often for work that might be done in Word, once you get over the first 
hump to learn it and get some templates built, it is easy to re use 
them.  Since I am only legally blind, I can tell the output is really 
good and you are less likely to "break" the document in LaTex than a 
word processor that takes any keystroke or mouse move as a command.

If I can help, let me know. I do have some templates I could send and 
you could run them thru your LaTex and check if they work. They work on mine

Scott

-- 
Scott D. Henning
Architectural Audio Design
PO Box 1372
Durango, Colorado 81302

Re: latex:accessible math

[Jason White]

Scott D. Henning <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>The response about LaTex from Liz is right on. I actually use LaTex 
>often for work that might be done in Word, once you get over the first 
>hump to learn it and get some templates built, it is easy to re use 
>them.  Since I am only legally blind, I can tell the output is really 
>good and you are less likely to "break" the document in LaTex than a 
>word processor that takes any keystroke or mouse move as a command.

In 1998 I switched from WordPerfect (a word processor) to LaTeX for all of my
writing (aside from Web pages, which are prepared in HTML).

I much prefer LaTeX to a word processor. With LaTeX, I can tell exactly what
is in my document simply by reading the source text. The typeset quality is
better than that of a word processor, according to publishers and specialists
in typography who have used LaTeX for professional purposes. AUCTeX mode in
Emacs is a very convenient tool to reduce typing and make entry of the LaTeX
commands more convenient. LaTeX is actually a macro system built upon the
underlying TeX typesetting tool, and as such, it's programmable.

I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX. I wrote law school essays in LaTeX - no
mathematics involved in those. My CV is in LaTeX as well. Handouts for
university presentations can easily be written in LaTeX. There are classes and
packages for these and many other applications.

You can read the generated PDF file with braille or speech output to some
extent by converting it to text with the pdftotext tool.

As others have mentioned, there are numerous tutorials and sources of
documentation available online. You are welcome to ask me if you would like
some references to suitable material.

The only circumstance in which I would use a word processor is a situation
requiring collaborative editing of a document with a person who does not use
LateX.

Also, if you're preparing documents in LaTeX, you should learn how to use a
revision control tool such as Git to track changes to your work. Git is
especially good for this, as there is an option that will give you
word-by-word diffs rather than line-by-line, and it will even take TeX/LaTeX
syntax into account if you specify the right option.

RE: latex:accessible math

[Don Raikes]

Jason,

What special emacs modes/templates would be useful for working with latex?

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason White [mailto:jason@jasonjgw.net] 
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 2:47 AM
To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
Subject: Re: latex:accessible math

Scott D. Henning <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>The response about LaTex from Liz is right on. I actually use LaTex 
>often for work that might be done in Word, once you get over the first 
>hump to learn it and get some templates built, it is easy to re use 
>them.  Since I am only legally blind, I can tell the output is really 
>good and you are less likely to "break" the document in LaTex than a 
>word processor that takes any keystroke or mouse move as a command.

In 1998 I switched from WordPerfect (a word processor) to LaTeX for all of my writing (aside from Web pages, which are prepared in HTML).

I much prefer LaTeX to a word processor. With LaTeX, I can tell exactly what is in my document simply by reading the source text. The typeset quality is better than that of a word processor, according to publishers and specialists in typography who have used LaTeX for professional purposes. AUCTeX mode in Emacs is a very convenient tool to reduce typing and make entry of the LaTeX commands more convenient. LaTeX is actually a macro system built upon the underlying TeX typesetting tool, and as such, it's programmable.

I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX. I wrote law school essays in LaTeX - no mathematics involved in those. My CV is in LaTeX as well. Handouts for university presentations can easily be written in LaTeX. There are classes and packages for these and many other applications.

You can read the generated PDF file with braille or speech output to some extent by converting it to text with the pdftotext tool.

As others have mentioned, there are numerous tutorials and sources of documentation available online. You are welcome to ask me if you would like some references to suitable material.

The only circumstance in which I would use a word processor is a situation requiring collaborative editing of a document with a person who does not use LateX.

Also, if you're preparing documents in LaTeX, you should learn how to use a revision control tool such as Git to track changes to your work. Git is especially good for this, as there is an option that will give you word-by-word diffs rather than line-by-line, and it will even take TeX/LaTeX syntax into account if you specify the right option.


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Re: latex:accessible math

[Liz Hare]

Auctex is the emacs mode for Emacs.

Liz Hare PhD
Dog Genetics LLC
doggene@earthlink.net
http://www.doggenetics.com

On 1/24/2013 12:33 PM, Don Raikes wrote:
> Jason,
>
> What special emacs modes/templates would be useful for working with latex?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason White [mailto:jason@jasonjgw.net]
> Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 2:47 AM
> To: speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> Subject: Re: latex:accessible math
>
> Scott D. Henning <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>> The response about LaTex from Liz is right on. I actually use LaTex
>> often for work that might be done in Word, once you get over the first
>> hump to learn it and get some templates built, it is easy to re use
>> them.  Since I am only legally blind, I can tell the output is really
>> good and you are less likely to "break" the document in LaTex than a
>> word processor that takes any keystroke or mouse move as a command.
>
> In 1998 I switched from WordPerfect (a word processor) to LaTeX for all of my writing (aside from Web pages, which are prepared in HTML).
>
> I much prefer LaTeX to a word processor. With LaTeX, I can tell exactly what is in my document simply by reading the source text. The typeset quality is better than that of a word processor, according to publishers and specialists in typography who have used LaTeX for professional purposes. AUCTeX mode in Emacs is a very convenient tool to reduce typing and make entry of the LaTeX commands more convenient. LaTeX is actually a macro system built upon the underlying TeX typesetting tool, and as such, it's programmable.
>
> I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in LaTeX. I wrote law school essays in LaTeX - no mathematics involved in those. My CV is in LaTeX as well. Handouts for university presentations can easily be written in LaTeX. There are classes and packages for these and many other applications.
>
> You can read the generated PDF file with braille or speech output to some extent by converting it to text with the pdftotext tool.
>
> As others have mentioned, there are numerous tutorials and sources of documentation available online. You are welcome to ask me if you would like some references to suitable material.
>
> The only circumstance in which I would use a word processor is a situation requiring collaborative editing of a document with a person who does not use LateX.
>
> Also, if you're preparing documents in LaTeX, you should learn how to use a revision control tool such as Git to track changes to your work. Git is especially good for this, as there is an option that will give you word-by-word diffs rather than line-by-line, and it will even take TeX/LaTeX syntax into account if you specify the right option.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
> http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>

Re: latex:accessible math

[Jason White]

Don Raikes  <speakup@linux-speakup.org> wrote:
>Jason,
>
>What special emacs modes/templates would be useful for working with latex?

AUCTeX mode, also BibteX mode for editing bibliography files. AUCTeX mode can
insert macros and environments into your LaTeX document based on keyboard
commands and completion. It can also display outlines, temporarily hide
markup, run TeX and related tools to generate PDF output, etc.

PS latex:accessible math

[Scott D. Henning]

Hello,

It occurred to me that I was imprecise...the text in pdf is accessible 
with some caveats, the math is not accessible. Because LaTex is designed 
to make output LOOK good, it does things to text that make it read as 
run on sentences or letter by letter in others. Hard to predict.

Scott

-- 
Scott D. Henning
Architectural Audio Design
PO Box 1372
Durango, Colorado 81302

Re: latex:accessible math

[Kitty Litter]

you should talk to Larry Baggett about this.

Re: latex:accessible math

[Littlefield, Tyler]

On 1/22/2013 7:08 PM, Kitty Litter wrote:
> you should talk to Larry Baggett about this.
>
I'm sorry, but I have no clue who that is...

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> Speakup@linux-speakup.org
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-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
The aspen project: a barebones light-weight mud engine:
http://code.google.com/p/aspenmud
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.