February 11, 2021

Accessibility Evaluation: Open University and RNIB

Summary In February 2020 the UK's Open University (OU), working with the The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), produced a practical report on accessibility of mathematical content. This post provides a high level precis of the report. Its focus is on helping you which part of the report, if any, are relevant to you. I hope it encourages you to read this well-written report on carefully considered research.

February 11, 2021

Accessibility Tools

This is a quick tour of some accessibility tools and other resources. This blog post here is one of three posts made today, all on accessible maths. The other posts are Blind Math News and Accessibility Evaluation: Open University and RNIB. For more on the TeX Hour see contact. Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online (TALM0) TALMO wrote: As a result of Covid-19 it is increasingly likely that for UK Higher Education the start of the 2020/21 academic year will commence with online delivery.

February 3, 2021

Latex math on social media

Social media This post is about writing math formulas in LaTeX, for use on social media web-sites such as math discussion forums. We focus on the experience users have, particularly those who've not used LaTeX before. There's much more to social media than Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn. There's specialist sites such as forums, wikis and Q+A sites (such as StackExchange). There's even a social media site (recommended) for all about apples, pears, plums, and cherries - and orchards where they are grown (URL is below).

January 21, 2021

Blind Math News

Summary We look at some recent posts on the Blind Math mailing list. My main conclusion as a TeX developer is that many on that list prefer accessible HTML to accessible PDF. This is something that TeX developers need to be aware of. If you're interested in this topic you're invited to drop in to my TeX Office Hour (every Thursday evening 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time). The Blind Math list The National Federation of the Blind is the largest and oldest organisation led by blind people in the US.

January 21, 2021

Multi Author Docs

Summary We all know that TeX has large use cases, such as research math and physics. This post is about how TeX might help some small niche use cases. We study one example, and suggest how it might scale to others. The scaling depend on non-TeX software and systems, such as web frameworks, and server / cloud computing. Introduction We're social creatures. Mostly, we live in communities. We speak and listen.

January 10, 2021

Happy Birthday Don Knuth

Happy Birthday Don Knuth, author of The Art Of Computer Programming and creator of the TeX typesetting system is 83 today. Happy Birthday Don. Thank you for TeX and everything else. You're warmly invited to join me online to celebrate Don's life and work. The virtual party is on Thursday 14 January, 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time. Here's the zoom details Don Knuth celebration party Meeting ID: 785 5125 5396 Passcode: knuth TeX Office Hour During the lockdown I'm holding a TeX Office Hour every Thursday evening, from 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time.

January 6, 2021

New Year's and Christmas Fun

About This is the first of a series of occassional pages on fun. It might be jokes and humour. Or puzzles. Resolutions My New Year's resolution, besides staying alive, is to finish reading Procrastination for Beginners. Once done with that some self-improvement: The Bluffer Guide to Self-Knowledge. Tom Gauld I very much enjoy the Tom Gauld's wry cultural cartoons on The Guardian newspaper. Here's a couple of recent ones I've really liked:

December 10, 2020

Tex Office Hours

Why TeX Office Hours? The UK TeX Users Group is close to folding. It is a closed (paid membership only) organisation. I think it's time for an open to all UK TeX grouping. To help set this up, I'm holding a TeX Office Hour every Thursday 6:30 to 7:30pm, until the end of March. I'm also happy to discuss Python, mathematics and other matters, but TeX (and MathJax) has priority.

December 9, 2020

Importance of Typography

The question Last week a member of UK TUG asked me, by email, what were my top 5 beautiful books produced using TeX. I think you might be interested in my answer. Here it is, lightly edited. The answer Thank you for your email. Your question surprised me, probably because my experience and history is different from yours. The book Concrete Mathematics (by Graham, Knuth and Patashnik) is for me special.

December 9, 2020

UK TeX users — from here to there

We've got just 15 weeks! Summary The UK Tex Users Group (UK TUG) is in perhaps terminal decline. For several years a poorly attended AGM and distribution of DVDs was all it did. That's here, where we are. I want to be somewhere better. That's there. Less of the original paying-membership and print-centric model. Less focus on paper and PDF typography. More focus on web pages, interaction and accessibility. And open-membership.