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Huh. It would seem like, of all the things which should make it easy to generate the correct accessibility information, the pipeline of compiling a paper from s

by saurik 3y ago

Huh. It would seem like, of all the things which should make it easy to generate the correct accessibility information, the pipeline of compiling a paper from source code in LaTeX should nail it... maybe we should all pitch in to some pool to pay someone to put in the required effort to connect all the dots?

semi-extrinsic 3y ago
Kind of tangential, but it's also kind of surprising how difficult it is in LaTeX to make a plot of an equation. Say I have Equation \ref{eq}. Why can't I just say "plot \ref{eq} for x from -6 to 11" and get my graph? And yes, I know about pgfplots, PSTricks, TikZ etc. But in all those cases, I need to define the same equation twice, in different syntax to boot. It's kind of unsatisfying.
- fsh 3y ago
  TeX is a very arcane language, and it doesn't support floating point numbers. Few languages would be less suited for making a plotting library.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    Both pgfplots and PSTricks and TikZ are plotting libraries. It seems like it shouldn't be that hard to let them plot an equation written elsewhere in different syntax.
- IlliOnato 3y ago
  > Say I have Equation \ref{eq}. Why can't I just say "plot \ref{eq} for x from -6 to 11" and get my graph? Pretty much for the same reason you cannot press a word and get a pop-up dictionary definition in a paper book.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    To be clear, I meant in the LaTeX source code. And there I can already write code that plots equations, I just have to re-type the equation in a new syntax.
    - IlliOnato 3y ago
      TeX is about representation, not semantics, by design. To do anything useful with a function (like plotting) you need to get semantics. An often cited example: what is f(x+y) ? Is it function f with x+y as its argument, or constant f multiplied by (x+y) ? TeX gives you no clue. Or what is this i in your equation? Is it an index variable, or a square root from minus one? You as a human figure this out by looking at the context and using domain knowledge. So does a "TeX to HTML/MathML converter". It is ultimately built on heuristics, and cannot be otherwise. That's why I said basically "for the same reason a paper page is not interactive". It was designed this way! The goal of TeX was to generate beautiful printed page. The need for semantic structure was not anticipated. To do semantics you need a "semantic version of MathML", or a language used by Wolfram's product, etc.
jahewson 3y ago
Surprisingly it’s not easy, and depending on the field it can be quite challenging. The reason for this is that TeX captures the visual aspects of typesetting, not the semantic meaning of the mathematics. A simple example is ‘\sum’ which provides no way to capture the expression being summed over - because that’s not necessary for typesetting. That’s not the case in, say, MathML. Writing MathML is no fun though because mathematical formulae are visually ambiguous and we rely on the context to know how to read them, e.g. does ‘f(x - 1)’ mean function f called with argument x - 1, or does it mean variable f multiplied by x - 1?

by saurik 3y ago

semi-extrinsic 3y ago

Kind of tangential, but it's also kind of surprising how difficult it is in LaTeX to make a plot of an equation. Say I have Equation \ref{eq}. Why can't I just say "plot \ref{eq} for x from -6 to 11" and get my graph? And yes, I know about pgfplots, PSTricks, TikZ etc. But in all those cases, I need to define the same equation twice, in different syntax to boot. It's kind of unsatisfying.

fsh 3y ago
TeX is a very arcane language, and it doesn't support floating point numbers. Few languages would be less suited for making a plotting library.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  Both pgfplots and PSTricks and TikZ are plotting libraries. It seems like it shouldn't be that hard to let them plot an equation written elsewhere in different syntax.
IlliOnato 3y ago
> Say I have Equation \ref{eq}. Why can't I just say "plot \ref{eq} for x from -6 to 11" and get my graph? Pretty much for the same reason you cannot press a word and get a pop-up dictionary definition in a paper book.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  To be clear, I meant in the LaTeX source code. And there I can already write code that plots equations, I just have to re-type the equation in a new syntax.
  - IlliOnato 3y ago
    TeX is about representation, not semantics, by design. To do anything useful with a function (like plotting) you need to get semantics. An often cited example: what is f(x+y) ? Is it function f with x+y as its argument, or constant f multiplied by (x+y) ? TeX gives you no clue. Or what is this i in your equation? Is it an index variable, or a square root from minus one? You as a human figure this out by looking at the context and using domain knowledge. So does a "TeX to HTML/MathML converter". It is ultimately built on heuristics, and cannot be otherwise. That's why I said basically "for the same reason a paper page is not interactive". It was designed this way! The goal of TeX was to generate beautiful printed page. The need for semantic structure was not anticipated. To do semantics you need a "semantic version of MathML", or a language used by Wolfram's product, etc.

jahewson 3y ago

Surprisingly it’s not easy, and depending on the field it can be quite challenging. The reason for this is that TeX captures the visual aspects of typesetting, not the semantic meaning of the mathematics. A simple example is ‘\sum’ which provides no way to capture the expression being summed over - because that’s not necessary for typesetting. That’s not the case in, say, MathML. Writing MathML is no fun though because mathematical formulae are visually ambiguous and we rely on the context to know how to read them, e.g. does ‘f(x - 1)’ mean function f called with argument x - 1, or does it mean variable f multiplied by x - 1?