RE: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: XSL implementation of DBTeXMath

[Peter Ring <pri at magnus dot dk>]

It's to some extent a matter of opinion whether an equation in LaTeX markup
is suitable for immediate human consumption. Most mathematicians that
typeset math papers and exchange math by email will be familiar with the
notation and will be able to read a bit of LaTeX; there is, to the best of
my knowledge, no better way to serialize math into ASCII bytes for human
consumption. 

It's _not_ doing anyone a favor to ask the author to invent a new textual
representation for each equation.

Kind regards
Peter Ring


-----Original Message-----
From: Jirka Kosek [mailto:jirka@kosek.cz]
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 2:33 PM
Cc: docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Re: XSL implementation of DBTeXMath


Ed Nixon wrote:
>
> At 11:30 AM 07/12/2001 +0100, Jirka Kosek wrote:
> <snip>
> I think that I'm understand you point there. But if someone wants to
> >read document with many equations he will probably have graphical client
> >and will be able to see equations as images and won't need text
> >alternative at all.
>
> I think the point you may have forgotten is that not everyone can actually
> *see* the output of a graphical client. They rely on alternative browser
or
> reader tools.

OK. But what is the defference between "E=mc square" and "E=mc^2" when
synthetised by some reader tool? I have no personal experience with such
tools, so may be I'm missing something. Using TeX equation in alt
element means that this TeX version of equation will appear as
alternative text on image.

                Jirka


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  Jirka Kosek                       
  e-mail: jirka@kosek.cz
  http://www.kosek.cz