8 ms·
Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.
by krapht 9y ago
Nope, because plain-text is incompatible with centuries of mathematical notation.
- Numberwang 9y agoThere are plain text versions for that as well.
- syndev 9y agoWhich example did you have in mind?
- vortico 9y agohttp://asciimath.org/ http://asciimath.org/ is the best one I've seen, by far.
- grondilu 9y agoNot sure it's so simple. Is LaTeX plain text? Officially it is, but by the same standard so is PostScript or PDF. Truly the limits are blurry. Even assembly code has an ASCII representation.
- vlasev 9y agoWell, plain LaTeX is quite readable, so IMO, it's good enough of a compromise. It does get difficult with a lot of parentheses though.
- partycoder 9y agoUnicode has some symbols. But there is limited ability to arrange them freely. e.g: representing a continued fraction in plain text seems a very futile exercise.
- Pxtl 9y agoSubscript and superscript are the bigger problem than fractions, also larger-than-one-line parentheses. Fractions can be aped in the ugly approach of dashes just like how Markdown underlines headers.
- pfortuny 9y agoMatricial data is quite hard to explain well in a non-graphical mode, though.
- com2kid 9y agoThe "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics" standard[0] can do this just fine. :) a_0+1/(a_1+1/(a_2+1/(⋱+(1/a_n ) ))) Past that into an editor that accepts the spec, and you'll get something like http://imgur.com/a/7hBwv http://imgur.com/a/7hBwv Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful! [0]http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf
- Pxtl 9y agoI'm curious about that one - was the space necessary?
- com2kid 9y agoI just tried it out in Word, apparently it isn't. :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- partycoder 9y agoPDF and OOXML are also open specifications. Try to implement them though, you will run into a lot of issues.
- ezoe 9y agoThen, mathematical notation should be simplified.
- partycoder 9y agoWhat do you think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sULa9Lc4pck
- krapht 9y agoPerhaps we should also all learn Esperanto as well, since English is such an inefficient and inconsistent means of communication.
- phailhaus 9y agoHave you tried? You start to run into trouble the moment you have fractions and exponents.
- edtechdev 9y agoThere's been some work on english language versions of mathematical expressions, which at the very least can help with accessibility. Handbook for Spoken Mathematics (1983) http://web.efzg.hr/dok/MAT/vkojic/Larrys_speakeasy.pdf http://web.efzg.hr/dok/MAT/vkojic/Larrys_speakeasy.pdf MathPlayer https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ https://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ TalkMaths http://talkmaths.sourceforge.net/ http://talkmaths.sourceforge.net/ Language and Mathematics: Bridging between Natural Language and Mathematical Language in Solving Problems in Mathematics http://file.scirp.org/pdf/CE20100300008_45591409.pdf http://file.scirp.org/pdf/CE20100300008_45591409.pdf
- posterboy 9y agoI am not sure that is a good idea. The reduced entropy of our writing system, as easy to learn as it is, doesn't work very well with the density of mathematical formulas. If anything, I would favour more symbolic formulas.
- pyre 9y agoIf you distribute things in Markdown with (e.g.) MathML markup, then the reader can format that nicely for display, with PlainText / Markdown being the distribution format.
- emodendroket 9y agoI think it really stretches the definition of "plain text" by the time you need a parser.
- posterboy 9y agoI don't think it does, as I thought the title refered to the ubiquitous "view source" web tech compared to binary blobs.
- Pxtl 9y agoThis. My wife is a math teacher, and the piss-poor experience of writing mathematical notation outside of MS Word keeps them stuck on Word. As much as she and I love LaTeX's math notation, she can't get her departmentmates onboard with that kind of syntax. They need to maintain notes, guides, tests, quizzes, etc. and basically running a team OneDrive is really the only option because all the alternatives utterly fail a group of non-technical mathies.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoTry Lyx. It's a front-end for LaTeX. It's UI for math notation is very similar to MS Word's. (IIRC - I used them about a decade apart.)
- com2kid 9y agoFun fact! Microsoft Office has two internal math formats, one of them is Ecma Math[0], the other the other is the "Unicode Nearly Plain-Text Encoding of Mathematics"[1], it is a Unicode standard and uses only Unicode standard characters. It has the unfortunate property of being hard to type on its own (the integral character isn't on most people's keyboards), but it is pretty easy to read as just plain text. If you copy an equation out of Word you'll get something like this: ∫(x^2/2) [0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-and-ecma-math-omml/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2006/10/06/mathml-a... [1] http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/UTN28-PlainTextMath-v3.pdf Disclaimer: I work @Microsoft improving on some math features, and we are the main implementors of the spec. Which makes me sad, since it is an open spec and it is really powerful!
- microcolonel 9y agoIt's alright, somebody has to do it first. Though you shouldn't be surprised that a specification written by an employee at Microsoft is still primarily implemented at Microsoft. Maybe it could be integrated into the Unicode shaper (HarfBuzz/Uniscribe/AAT) with a language code for "maths".
- skellera 9y ago
- ape4 9y agoUse FORTRAN.
- pmlnr 9y agoYou need be a little more detailed with this.
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y agoTeX users would like a word. Of course, that requires learning TeX notation for those reading it without an interpreter.
- Pxtl 9y agoYeah, go teach a 60-year-old math teacher to use TeX.
- catshirt 9y agowhy would someone with 40+ years of math experience have such a hard time learning a new notation?
- bjt 9y agoAssuming they have something that already works for them, lack of motivation.
- LunaSea 9y agoBecause knowledge about maths is independent of computer and programming literacy.
- catshirt 9y agoif we use a liberal definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's just as much a requisite for math as it is TeX. if we use a conservative definition of "computer and programming literacy", then it's not a requisite for either. markup languages are not programming languages. most people have some familiarity with some markup language.
- gizmo385 9y agoI don't think their assertion is that someone with 40+ years of math experience would have difficulty learning new notation, it's that LaTeX is composed of a lot more than straightfoward notation. LaTeX can get pretty complicated pretty quickly. While it's basic math notation is quite fantastic, it's the basic document formatting that I think would give most people trouble when learning.
- pera 9y agoActually, the standardization of most symbols from mathematics and logics that we use today happened in the 20th and late 19th centuries. In my opinion, with UTF-8 one can represent most formulas in a very readable way, and also many diagrams. But if more expressive power is required, plain text TeX is available.
- k__ 9y agoAsciiDoc with inline LaTeX?
- ptr_void 9y agomarkdown (pandoc compatible) + mathjax mathematical notations within dollar sign is future proof. Easily convertible to html/pdf etc, easily readable in raw.
- est 9y agoTo be honest, human math notations is a weak type system combined with confusing single letter variables. Some kind of plain text math notation using numpy expressions would be cool.
- xyzzyz 9y agoThe single letter variables are opposite of confusing: they bring simplicity and clarity. This is not programming, where if an integer represents a destination address, you can meaningfully call the variable destination_address (or destinationAddress or dest_addr or whatever). In math, an integer is often just any integer, and rewriting formulas to replace "i" with "any_integer" will not make them any clearer. If math notation is unclear to you, it's only because you spent little time learning and using it. Mathematicians care about clarity even more then you, as they actually do indeed spend large parts of their lives reading and writing math. They are very quick to adopt new notation, if it brings meaningful benefits over the old one -- for example, the commutative diagrams and category theory language is now commonplace in all fields of algebra and topology, because it is much easier to draw a diagram and claim it commutes rather than name all the maps involved and write down all the equalities.