MathML is a failed web standard • Hacker News Board

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#171

Post by laughinghan » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 12:33 AM UTC

spicyj wrote: post #10

asdfaoeu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way a sighted person does?

Yes, you could try to build algorithms that turn that markup into semantic meaning but now we're almost talking about computer vision. I don't think a solution like that is likely to ever work reliably, and it's better to encode the semantic meaning so that it doesn't need to be re-derived.

The other reply made the same point I'm about to make, but I think it's worth clarifying.

Specifically, just like a sighted person has to determine from context whether "a(b)" is function application or variable multiplication, a blind person can be asked to determine from context whether "a left-parenthesis b right-parenthesis" is function application or variable multiplication.

No AI or CV is required for such a reading algorithm. It's unfortunate that this reading algorithm doesn't quite match what two mathematicians would say if they were conversing with each other, but there's at least one good reason to believe this is still a useful reading algorithm: it's exactly the system used by blind mathematician Abraham Nemeth with his readers, called "mathspeak":

    The speech generated by this protocol is not exactly what a 
    professor in class would use, but it is absolutely unambiguous 
    and results in a perfect Nemeth Code transcription. It avoids 
    largely unsuccessful attempts by a reader to describe the 
    notation he sees, accompanied by the shouting and gesturing that 
    such attempts at description engender.

http://www.nfbcal.org/s_e/list/0033.html

(Nemeth notably created the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics, which is part of Unified English Braille and is probably the most widely used Braille code for math. MathSpeak hasn't enjoyed the same level of adoption, but only because there's no standard, MathPlayer, VoiceOver etc all have their own ad hoc rules for how to read math.)

(Strictly speaking the example I gave was a verbose variant of the system described in the email: http://www.gh-mathspeak.com/examples/NemethBook/?rule=18 ) [2]:

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#172

Post by ga6840 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 12:42 AM UTC

dginev wrote: post #169

ga6840 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. In NTCIR (main) dataset, I see many cases where does not contain an altext (and thus no TeX). I asked LaTeXML author Bruce Miller about this, he said LaTeXML will always put the same TeX string as an altext attribute on the . So I assume you guys are using some out-dated LaTeXML version? I really want to plead NTCIR to ensure the original LaTeX annotation is kept in main dataset, or please provide both MathML and…

1. Correct, the dataset was generated back in 2013 and will probably be regenerated for the next NTCIR issue. 2. There are annoying copyright issues with making the datasets available for public use. We're working with arXiv to resolve that, it's out of our control for now. It's a long-lasting frustration of mine that the datasets can't be simply made public. 3.You can omit anything you like from the MathML, there is…

Thank you for informing me on my first two questions, so now I understand NTCIR's problem.

At very first I tried to compare my results (MAP, recall, precision) with participants in NTCIR, but I take a lot efforts to get dataset, after which I find I cannot convert MathML back into TeX very confidently, most importantly, my parser-generated tree structure is fine-tuned and very dependent on TeX input, I cannot just take MathML tree structure directly, I need much more efforts than just importing an existing XML parser. Because of these, I can not compare my results with mainstream NTCIR researchers. But I definitely tried very hard, sadly I give up. If NTCIR someday can provide (even if request is needed) TeX data for competition, I will consider to (and able to, willing to) compare my results with NTCIR participants (in order to "prove" it).

Writing a TeX parser only for math search is not that difficult, I have written it, it parses most user-created document on math.stackexchange.com. Although I cannot convince you I get better results, I can argue parsing search-interested TeX subset is effortless (if you only care math-related TeX), I even opensourced my search engine TeX parser. Again, problem is not that easy to grab a XML parser and reuse it in my project, I believe a good math-aware search engine needs to get a tree structure very different from that a MathML structure represents, you get a tree by reusing MWS praser, so WHAT? That tree is not the tree I want, I need a lot effort to convert it, the easy way for me is to convert MathML back into TeX (Since I have already done that from TeX), sadly it turns out to be too complicated to worth giving a shot.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#173

Post by ga6840 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 12:57 AM UTC

ga6840 wrote: post #172

dginev wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Correct, the dataset was generated back in 2013 and will probably be regenerated for the next NTCIR issue. 2. There are annoying copyright issues with making the datasets available for public use. We're working with arXiv to resolve that, it's out of our control for now. It's a long-lasting frustration of mine that the datasets can't be simply made public. 3.You can omit anything you like from the MathML, there is…

Thank you for informing me on my first two questions, so now I understand NTCIR's problem. At very first I tried to compare my results (MAP, recall, precision) with participants in NTCIR, but I take a lot efforts to get dataset, after which I find I cannot convert MathML back into TeX very confidently, most importantly, my parser-generated tree structure is fine-tuned and very dependent on TeX input, I cannot just ta…

Lastly, I am more than childish to complain NTCIR and refuse submit a paper, I give up putting unworthy and duplicated effort on implementing a MathML parser that generates the expression tree I need (this step is the most difficult, rather than just parsing XML), instead, focusing on finding another conference to publish my efforts, it turns out my paper (a demo) get accepted in ECIR 2016, so glad I did not waste too much time on NTCIR, otherwise I would have missed ECIR.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#174

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

dginev wrote: post #168

ga6840 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is "really need". In fact, there is also the possibility we want to highlight a portion of an image, copy a subimage, etc, but did our HTML tag designed like the way I mentioned? I am the author of a math search engine OPMES (tkhost.github.io/opmes), the search engine works pretty well without the knowledge of DOM structure of math expression. Actually MathML makes a lot inconvenient during OPMES developm…

So, if you can give me an ill-designed analogy, you think you're making a valid point? Images are not mathematics, they have nothing to do with mathematics. If you take a look at SVG, you may be shocked to find you can do just as much decomposition of principle components as you can do with any DOM, just the way MathML allows you to. Please substantiate the "works pretty well" claim about your search engine with some…

[deleted]

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#175

Post by ga6840 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 1:54 AM UTC

dginev wrote: post #168

ga6840 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is "really need". In fact, there is also the possibility we want to highlight a portion of an image, copy a subimage, etc, but did our HTML tag designed like the way I mentioned? I am the author of a math search engine OPMES (tkhost.github.io/opmes), the search engine works pretty well without the knowledge of DOM structure of math expression. Actually MathML makes a lot inconvenient during OPMES developm…

So, if you can give me an ill-designed analogy, you think you're making a valid point? Images are not mathematics, they have nothing to do with mathematics. If you take a look at SVG, you may be shocked to find you can do just as much decomposition of principle components as you can do with any DOM, just the way MathML allows you to. Please substantiate the "works pretty well" claim about your search engine with some…

We can argue all day about if should be like or a , but I do not think I am wrong about asking whether we really need to manipulate a math expression. I just said "it makes sense to me" to write "\frac a b" does not necessarily mean I stand firmly for making this way. If you think there are cases we need manipulate AND we indeed need to sacrifice HTTP length (Internet transmission time) and simplicity to enable math expression manipulation, that is totally fine. I admit your points and will still argue for my points, I do not believe there is an evident truth for this issue we argue (so as this thread). It is still OK. However, I should point it out I am quite confident in terms of hand-writing "\frac a b" more quickly than other people who use whatever advanced richtext editor they want to write its MathML alternative. You can still doubt how many people want write HTML by hand, but shorter HTML is not bad at everything, many high-volume websites get benefits from it. Think about a very hot math Q&A website in the future, being able to handle a lot request, math rendering computation on client side is a logical solution. In this case, MathJax makes a lot sense. I will agree we can adopt a solution that define short and convert into lengthy MathML at client side, in this case we both do not have to compromise.

As for my "works pretty well", please refer to my answer in another thread below. To be concise, I use subjective words on search engine effectiveness because NTCIR makes it difficult to compare my TeX search engine with "MathML search engine". But I have already shown better efficiency of my engine compared to Tangent, and an important factor is Tangent have to use LaTeXML to parse every TeX back to MathML. Without considering NTCIR, I am willing to make a comparison (probably after done my new version search engine) with some open-source established math engine (e.g. Tangent) on effectiveness and efficiency based on some corpus with both MathML (used by Tangent) and TeX (used by my engine) annotation.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#176

Post by spicyj » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

laughinghan wrote: post #171

spicyj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you could try to build algorithms that turn that markup into semantic meaning but now we're almost talking about computer vision. I don't think a solution like that is likely to ever work reliably, and it's better to encode the semantic meaning so that it doesn't need to be re-derived.

The other reply made the same point I'm about to make, but I think it's worth clarifying. Specifically, just like a sighted person has to determine from context whether "a(b)" is function application or variable multiplication, a blind person can be asked to determine from context whether "a left-parenthesis b right-parenthesis" is function application or variable multiplication. No AI or CV is required for such a re…

That's interesting, thanks for the references. I wonder if this is applicable to screen readers as well as Braille?

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#177

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

spicyj wrote: post #176

laughinghan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other reply made the same point I'm about to make, but I think it's worth clarifying. Specifically, just like a sighted person has to determine from context whether "a(b)" is function application or variable multiplication, a blind person can be asked to determine from context whether "a left-parenthesis b right-parenthesis" is function application or variable multiplication. No AI or CV is required for such a re…

That's interesting, thanks for the references. I wonder if this is applicable to screen readers as well as Braille?

Oh, I was talking about screen readers the whole time, except for an aside that the speech rules system I was discussing was created by Nemeth who is known for his Braille system. Other than that though, I wasn't talking about Braille at all.