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Re: mathml to plain text | audio?

Hi David,

I'm currently developing a system that converts MathML expressions to Text
and later on Audio.
At the moment it only converts simple mathematical expressions but I'm
hopping that my master thesis (starting October) will be a boost to the
project.
Also it currently works only for the portuguese language. You can find a
demo in: http://lpf-esi.fe.up.pt/~hfilipe/projecto/mathml.html .

There are several groups working in MathML transformation, unfortunately
only a few people seem concerned with the audio rendering of mathml.
Also, there aren´t many studies that prove how should we read a mathematical
expression. Some readings, as you well said, can have lots of mistakes.
The more complex the expression, the more difficult it is for you to read
it. Therefore some navigational tool has to be provided.

Now, about the tools you asked:

You can try MathPlayer 2.0 from DesignScience. It has a Speak function that
uses a TTS, but it only works as a pluggin for IE. -
http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/ .

You can also look into the T.V. Raman's work about ASTER.-
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/raman/aster/demo.html .
However ASTER works for Latex documents. Nevertheless, you can transform
Latex to MathML (see http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/textomml.html ).


Best regards,

Helder Ferreira
http://www.fe.up.pt/~hfilipe


PS: I might have more links and references that might interest you... but I
don´t have my notebook here. I'll send them to you later.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <David.Pawson@rnib.org.uk>
To: <www-math@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 12:52 PM
Subject: mathml to plain text | audio?


>
>
> www.daisy.org is a group of organisations who produce smil based
> 'talking books'. Synchronised text and audio for blind and partially
> sighted people.
>
> We are starting to look at incorporating mathml into our schema,
> and that's fine for producing braille, just hard work.
>
> However, for 'spoken' math(s), it presents a problem  of automation.
> For more complex stuff, human readers tend to make mistakes, hence
> synthetic speech is often used.
>
> Put simply, mathml isn't 'readable' in its XML format (my view :-).
> Certainly if serialised it wouldn't sound very good via a TTS engine.
>
> I'm informed others have looked at mathml to 'plain text' transforms,
>  perhaps with paragraph level formatting.
> I'm wondering if any such transforms are available open source, or could
> be licenced to the daisy group for our readers?
>
> Any pointers appreciated.
>
> Regards DaveP.
> www.rnib.org.uk
>
> Not subscribed to this list, so please copy me in.
>
>
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Received on Tuesday, 1 June 2004 08:30:58 UTC