HN Reader

> Switch the language on foreign terms and names so that screen readers can pronounce them in the right voice.

Screen reader user here. Don't actually do this, this is bad advice.

Just like a lecturer won't suddenly switch to a German accent when saying words like "schadenfreude" or names like "Friedrich Nietzsche", neither should a screen reader. Having your voice constantly change under you for no apparent reason is distracting more than anything else.

What you should do this for are longer pieces of text in a foreign language, like a multi-paragraph piece of text to analyze in a foreign language textbook.

Richard Zach et al. logic textbooks are a work of art: https://slc.openlogicproject.org.

Aside, I'd be happy to pay for great classic math textbooks in a well typeset edition.

Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces is one such example. The text is fantastic, but everything is too cramped and hard to read compared to a modern book from the 1970s onward.

A newer edition typeset in LaTeX would be great.

Typst( https://typst.app/) Is good Latex alternative which should be mentioned here. Their roadmap also features html as a target.

My current favorite option is Quarto [1]. It's basically a friendly wrapper around Pandoc [2], letting you write in Markdown (+ lots of Quarto-specific extensions) and render to LaTeX, Typst, multi-page HTML, EPUB, docx, and more.

[1] https://quarto.org/

[2] https://pandoc.org/

I think the neatest feature would be: the mathematician states the theorem in English (edit: with math symbols as needed), then he states the proof in English.

A post-Processor transform the proof into lean (with any official lib loaded). It is automatically verified. If something is missing, the post processor ask to write in English the missing parts. Iterate like this.

The lean proof is hidden in the final document, and can be displayed if needed. Or even, we get an English version that can be easily retransformed into lean at will.

Bonus point: we can query the document to give more details on part of the proof and it outputs (expanded) lean formatted as nice English.

Note: there is no need to have all the math self contained in the document, he can say to assume some theorem true to do his proof. And this would be reflected in English.

Another LaTeX to MathML option that I have had a good experience with is temml — it works in the browser or server side with Node.js. https://temml.org/

Accessibility is win-win because it helps more people access information and also has content creators thinking clearly about the quality of code and presentation.

For the articles on my website, I have a pretty janky workflow where I write a LaTeX document that I compile both to a PDF and (using Pandoc) to HTML, which I render with KaTeX. I've been in the market for a while for something that's less fragile but which can still produce both a PDF and visually appealing HTML output starting from a LaTeX source, and it seems like some of the ideas listed here might be what I want! Thanks for the link. (That said, if anyone has a particular recommendation, I'd love to hear it!)

Why do maths textbooks never explain how to read the equations? I've tried reading a few and before you know it there'll be some matrix stuff in, integrations or whatever and no explanation of how to read them in normal English like a maths teacher does.

They all seem to assume you're still at school rather than it being decades since you last had to read them. Even using Greek symbols - WRITE THEM OUT. Jeez, it's so elitist.

At my age I find this issue annoyingly predictable -- it suggests replacing LaTeX with something more modern and/or flexible. But that was the original idea behind LaTeX -- to replace what preceded it, create a portable comunication medium for mathematical expressions.

Not to discourage experimentation, but I would like to see some behavoral reserve and healthy skepticism before adding another layer to the mathematical expression enterprise. There's also this issue to consider: https://xkcd.com/927/ .

Uh ... where is it written that LaTeX can only provide pdf output?

Turn that around. Thought experiment. Say we work like pigdogs for 5 years and we completely replace all of Latex except the part that produces pdf. What value have we provided to users at that point?

I feel like there are enough free and semi-free textbooks to study just about anything I want. The limiting factor is my not so plentiful brainpower to actually learn new math stuff. There's no way I can possibly run out of textbooks.

"BookML: automated LaTeX to bookdown-style HTML and SCORM, powered by LaTeXML" https://vlmantova.github.io/bookml/

LaTeXML: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeXML :

LaTeXML emits XML from a parsing of LaTex with Perl.

SCORM is a standard for educational content in ZIP packages which is supported by Moodle, ILIAS, Sakai, Canvas, and a number of other LMS Learning Management Systems.

SCORM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharable_Content_Object_Refere...

xAPI (aka Experience API, aka TinCan API) is a successor spec to SCORM for event messages to LRS Learning Record Stores. Like SCORM, xAPI was granted by ADL.

re: xAPI, schema.org/Action, and JSON-LD: https://github.com/RusticiSoftware/TinCanSchema/issues/7

schema.org/Action describes potential actions: https://schema.org/docs/actions.html

For example, from the Schema.org "Potential Actions" doc: https://schema.org/docs/actions.html :

   {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "Movie",
    "name": "Footloose",
    "potentialAction": {
      "@type": "WatchAction"
    }
  }

That could be a syllabus.

ActionTypes include: BuyAction, AssessAction > ReviewAction,

Schema.org > "Full schema hierarchy" > [Open hierarchy] > Action and rdfs:subClassOf subclasses thereof: https://schema.org/docs/full.html

What Linked Data should [math textbook] publishing software include when generating HTML for the web?

https://schema.org/CreativeWork > Book, Audiobook, Article > ScholarlyArticle, Guide, HowTo, Blog, MathSolver

The schema.org Thing > CreativeWork LearningResource RDFS class has the :assesses, :competencyRequired, :educationalLevel, :educationalAlignment, and :teaches RDFS properties; https://schema.org/LearningResource

You can add bibliographic metadata and curricular Linked Data to [OER LearningResource] HTML with schema.org classes and properties as JSON-LD, RDFa, or Microdata.

The schema.org/about property has a domain which includes CreativeWork and a range which includes Thing, so a :CreativeWork is :about a :Thing which could be a subclass of :CreativeWork.

.

I work with MathJax and LaTeX in notebooks a bit, and have generated LaTeX and then PDF with Sphinx and texlive like the ReadTheDocs docker container which already has the multiple necessary GB of LaTeX installed to render a README.rst as PDF without pandoc:

The Jupyter Book docs now describe how that works.

Jupyter Book docs > Customize LaTeX via Sphinx: https://jupyterbook.org/en/stable/advanced/pdf.html#customiz...

How to build the docs with the readthedocs docker image onesself: https://github.com/jupyter-book/jupyter-book/issues/991

ReadTheDocs > Dev > Design > Build Images > Time required to install languages at build time [with different package managers with varying performance] https://docs.readthedocs.com/dev/latest/design/build-images....

The jupyter-docker-stacks, binderhub, and condaforge/miniforge3 images build with micromamba now IIRC.

condaforge/miniforge3: https://hub.docker.com/r/condaforge/miniforge3

Recently, I've gotten into .devcontainers/devcontainers.json; which allows use of one's own Dockerfile or a preexisting docker image and installs LSP and vscode on top, and then runs the onCreateCommand, postStartCommand

A number of tools support devcontainer.json: https://containers.dev/supporting

Devcontainers could be useful for open textbooks in math-heavy disciplines; so that others can work within, rebuild, and upgrade the same container env used to build the textbook.

Re: MathJax, LaTeX, and notebooks:

To left-align a LaTeX expression in a (Jupyter,Colab,VScode,) notebook wrap the expression with single dollar signs. To center-align a LaTeX expression in a notebook, wrap it with double dollar signs:

  $ \alpha_{\beta_1} $
  $$ \alpha_{\beta_2} $$

Textbooks, though? Interactive is what they want.

How can we make textbooks interactive?

It used to be that textbooks were to be copied down from; copy by hand from the textbook.

To engage and entertain this generation.

ManimCE, scriptable 3d simulators with test assertions, Thebelab,

Jupyter Book docs > "Launch into interactive computing interfaces" > BinderHub ( https://mybinder.org ), JupyterHub, Colab, Deepnote: https://jupyterbook.org/en/stable/interactive/launchbuttons....

JupyterLite-xeus builds a jupyterlite static site from an environment.yml; such that e.g. the xeus-python kernel and other packages are compiled to WebAssembly (WASM) so that you can run Jupyter notebooks in a browser without a server:

repo2jupyterlite works like repo2docker, which powers BinderHub, which generates a container with a current version of Jupyter installed after building the container according to one or more software dependency requirement specification files in /.binder or the root of the repo.

repo2jupyter: https://github.com/jupyterlite/repo2jupyterlite

jupyterlite-xeus: https://jupyterlite-xeus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

> The obligatory TeXmacs mention.

It is only kind of true, PDF does everything that HTML does, with print quality, naturally one needs Adobe proper for the full feature set, as most readers only implement the standard partially, for various reasons.