Could a equation OCR system like [1] be combined with a screen reader? It seems to support asciimath
In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
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Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#12It would be nice to have this thread as a "collection" place for different open textbooks. I personally use OpenStacks, they're quite good. https://openstax.org/
The thing that disappoints me about Openstax is that, while they're free/libre, they don't seem to be open source anymore. They used to provide access to the raw XML (CNXML) used to generate the books, but I can't find that anywhere. It would be nice if there was something like OpenStax, maybe even a fork of it, that could be held in a Git repo and anyone could make pull requests.
It looks like they're transitioning/have transitioned to editing the books with Google Docs:
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#13Oh, I had never thought about this. Thanks, shall see what I can do. I never thought the latex source would make any sense to anyone but me
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#14> thank you, thank you
You are very welcome. Glad to help. :-)
(I'll just say that the TeX Users Group is very interested in improving the PDFs that LaTeX outputs in this regard, and has projects in this direction. They are at https://www.tug.org.)
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#15I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.
In other countries textbooks are cheap because (as you say) the subject matter is more or less agreed-upon so there are just a few different textbooks largely distinguished by the quality of the writing and presentation.
In the US students are treated as a captive audience and publishers work hard to get professors and education authorities to specify particular books, which are then sold at a very high mark-up. The incentives ought to be purely academic but in practice are often material or financial.
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#16This is pretty interesting. You should also consider cross-posting this request in other teaching communities, for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teachingresources/
https://www.reddit.com/r/edtech/
https://www.reddit.com/r/matheducation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ScienceTeachers/
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#17It would be nice to have this thread as a "collection" place for different open textbooks. I personally use OpenStacks, they're quite good. https://openstax.org/
Openstax is the best source of extremely high-quality alt descriptions I've ever found.
If you need inspiration for good alt descriptions of STEM / computer science / software engineering related images, just look at how Openstax does it. I'm a screen reader user myself and I'm very impressed.
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#18[deleted]
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#19When I publish my book, I will also publish the source. Knowledge is universal. Praise all the authors who release their sources.
I publish all my code these days as Open Source.
Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks
#20I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.
I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about?
I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?