math program

[john white]

This may not be quite on the topic of discussion for this list. However, it's part of an email which I received on a list which I am running myself.

latech i'm not sure i think the complete name is language technology or something like that. a linux user told me about it. she's a computer science major not blind but into developing speech software for the blind primarily. but which would be more affordable. her thesis right now is on writing a software that would read math symbols. she sits in my classes in grad school and asks me how symbols would best be read to a blind person. anyway about the program. she says it's the one used for printing math textbooks. the presentation is really nice to look at she points out, and it's easier to type stuff like greek symbols and equations. i used to write math symbols using math type doesn't work well with jaws so i have to memorize command sequences. with most math softwares, if you wish to write a symbol say the greek letter capital alpha, you need to go to a list of symbols like the greek alphabet and select it from there with latech. i'm told that you just have to type something like / and then alpha with a capital a. once you're familiar with the format of the input it would of course be easier to type in math as compared to memorizing that the symbol in a set is this or that. but since jaws can't read the output, most of the equations that is i would need to refer to the input text with all those codes to proofread my work.

Now my question is this and I can refer this back to the lister who wrote me this email.

1 Are their any screen readers which would work with the linux program mentioned here?
2 Does anybody know if there are any adaptive tech companies interested in developing anything with the linux operating system?

I am aware that adaptive technology companies are not very much into command line interfaces.

Personally, I would love to see a portable note taking device with linux as an operating system. To get one of these, the demand would of course need to be there.

So what do others think?

I hope that this person that sits with this blind person in the class, writes a good program and it lives up to any promises.

Having done an accounting course, I can tell you that it was frustrating not having a program which would work completely with a screen reader. Well, that is apart from Lotus which used doss. But doss is dead for better or for worse.

Also I have heard of this program, but never used it, and haven't got the first idea of how it works.

John White.