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In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

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Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#21

Post by miki123211 »

Many books/websites let you view the Latex code, despite not technically being open source. If a website uses MathJax, you can change the renderer to "plain source" by opening the context menu on any math equation. "Paul's Math notes"[1] is a good example, and a really great free website for college-level math.

If you're a screen reader user, the context menu may not open for reasons unknown. Try routing your mouse to the equation and simulate a right mouse click, that should do it. Moving your focus to the equation with the tab key may also be an option. Alternatively, you can just use Voice Over for MacOS, it can do it just fine.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#22

Post by detaro »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
dehrmann wrote: post #9

I 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 I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated".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?

Not all subjects have the luxury of being so isolated from changes in the real world.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#23

Post by lightveil »

miki123211 wrote: post #21

Many books/websites let you view the Latex code, despite not technically being open source. If a website uses MathJax, you can change the renderer to "plain source" by opening the context menu on any math equation. "Paul's Math notes"[1] is a good example, and a really great free website for college-level math. If you're a screen reader user, the context menu may not open for reasons unknown. Try routing your mouse t…

Yup, I have been using this extensively. Paul's notes are something I forgot to mention-I referred to them almost daily, back when I was taking the equivalent of Calculus 1, and they're still very useful now that I'm taking differential equations.

Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work on OpenStax-I can't get LaTeX, all I can get is MathML, and that's not very easy to read. There's a way to navigate the math (using something called mathplayer), but it's quite inefficient as compared to LaTeX, specially as I go into higher math. The books are still very, very good, though.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#24

Post by WalterBright »

detaro wrote: post #22
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not all subjects have the luxury of being so isolated from changes in the real world.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope.

Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#25

Post by lightveil »

jimhefferon wrote: post #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 .)

Oh, that's very good to hear! I'll definitely get in contact. I won't be able to, for the next two months or so, but after that I should have some free time when I can test/contribute with code/whatever else is required. (Hopefully, if this gets done, publishers that use LaTeX for typesetting might automatically offer accessible PDFs as well.)

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#26

Post by jimhefferon »

lightveil wrote: post #25
jimhefferon wrote: post #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 .)

Oh, that's very good to hear! I'll definitely get in contact. I won't be able to, for the next two months or so, but after that I should have some free time when I can test/contribute with code/whatever else is required. (Hopefully, if this gets done, publishers that use LaTeX for typesetting might automatically offer accessible PDFs as well.)

Sometimes being a resource for developers, as someone who could be asked, can be valuable. Anyway, good luck with your studies!

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#27

Post by pgalvin »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
detaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all subjects have the luxury of being so isolated from changes in the real world.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

It is laughable to suggest that history does not change. Even studying history at the equivalent of high school had me comparing secondary sources from the 1960s, to the 1990s, to just a couple years prior. History, or rather our interpretation of it, is constantly evolving.

I expect it is the same for most of the humanities.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#28

Post by lightveil »

pbsds wrote: post #11

Could a equation OCR system like [1] be combined with a screen reader? It seems to support asciimath [1]: https://mathpix.com/ocr

this looks interesting, and I think would be perfect for the kind of stuff I deal with. Unfortunately, the pricing looks less interesting (about $100 for a 1000 page pdf, if I'm reading it right, although possibly I could attempt to break the pdf up into pages which have the math). There was an older solution for this which costs about $200 as a whole.

Stuff like this exists, and is possibly pretty reasonable monetarily, but not being in the U.S., exchange rates hit me hard.

I've bookmarked this and will look into this more, though, thanks!

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#29

Post by WalterBright »

pgalvin wrote: post #27
WalterBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

It is laughable to suggest that history does not change. Even studying history at the equivalent of high school had me comparing secondary sources from the 1960s, to the 1990s, to just a couple years prior. History, or rather our interpretation of it, is constantly evolving. I expect it is the same for most of the humanities.

> is constantly evolving

Being an amateur historian myself, most of that smacks of political fashion. The (very) shallow view of history taught by K-12 doesn't need to change. The War of 1812 hasn't moved to 1814 yet. Hitler still lost WW2. Edison still invented the first practical lightbulb, despite all the attempts to dethrone him :-)

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#30

Post by dehrmann »

WalterBright wrote: post #24
detaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all subjects have the luxury of being so isolated from changes in the real world.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

> Foreign languages

This reminds me of how Wheelock's Latin is the introductory Latin textbook. It's 65 years old and still in use.

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