Hi Jim,

One of the main problems is bracketing.  This problem occurs in
computer languages.  One solution is to use key words at beginning
and end of bracketed text.  For example in one language, the word at
the beginning is reversed at the end, thus if.. fi.

For maths we could have some simple word brackets:
        Sum             Mus
        Prod            Dorp
        Top             Pot
        Bottom          Mottob
        Frac            Carf
and so on.

These could supplement the normal rounded brackets.  When spoken
by a text-to-speech system, rounded brackets would generally
be ignored.  (Some TTS systems might slightly lower and speed up
the voice for parenthetic text.)

There would also need to be conventions on speaking the signs.
The forward slash would be read as "over", single star as "times",
double star as "to the power", hat symbol as "and", the letter v as
"or", period as "point", the combination of plus and minus as
"plus or minus", etc.

Example:
        x = Top ( Sum (A+B-C) Mus ** Frac (-1/3) Carf ) Pot /
        Bottom ( Prod (D*E*F) Dorf +4 ) Mottob

The speech could be improved by comma and semicolon punctuation:

        x = Top ( Sum (A+B-C) Mus, ** Frac (-1/3) Carf, ) Pot; /
        Bottom ( Prod (D*E*F) Dorf, +4 ) Mottob.

This is just an idea which would put minimal requirements on the
text-to-speech system, hence low cost.

Cheers,

John
--
In message  <[log in to unmask]> Jim Rebman via
[log in to unmask] writes:

>>audio does not suffice if I cannot hear it.
>>
>... and even if you can hear it, once you go beyond a very small
>handful of terms and variables it very rapidly degrades into a useless
>stream of dribble. Certainly not suitable for anything but casual
>listening.  Audio plots of functions can, on the other hand, be
>extremely useful.
>
>I believe that the plain ASCII text solution that Alan has decided
>to adopt is the most prudent at this time.  As Richard said, technology
>and ideas are not the limiting factor here -- money is.  I have looked
>at a whole lot of web sites with mathematical content, and I can say
>that the Drexel Math Forum pages are the only ones that I have been
>able to use without extraordinary means.  I don't have Duxbury, and I
>find LaTeX to be possibly the most inaccessible document format I have
>ever dealt with..

--
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