More good points, Adam...
At this stage, I can't say that formats bother me greatly, although clearly we need to think about them.
We do have to start with Wikidata but I wonder whether we should also be looking at our wiki of functions. Could we consider a mathematical expression as a symbolic representation of an executable function?
I like the idea of a Wikipedia that will actually compute the result of a function it is telling you about, not least because editors could verify that the syntax is correct by testing the function. But if some expressions are executable, that broadens the question of format. To have a string that could be copied into a spreadsheet, for example, would be an interesting function for many. So I'm wondering how far you can get by "labelizing" JSON objects with computer language labels rather than natural language ones. So our "multiply" function is "labelized" "=PRODUCT" and E=PRODUCT(m,POWER(c,2))... or E=m*c^2...?
Thinking only about text, I think we are bound to take a broader WMF-wide view because we should at least consider how we can meet the requirements of each and every Wikipedia, without ignoring sister projects like Wikiversity. That's not to advocate a free-for-all, but if we increasingly represent the semantics of mathematical expressions, rather than their typography, this gives us something that can be represented more meaningfully in Wikidata and, from there, expressed in natural language as well as in a variety of symbolic and even functional forms.
I happen to think it will also aid reuse of functions from the wiki, but I haven't given that idea much thought.
Best regards,
Al.
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Natural Language and Mathematics Generation (Adam Sobieski)
2. Re: Loose notes (Andy)
3. Re: Loose notes (Arthur Smith)
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2020 18:23:03 +0000
From: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com>
To: Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com>, "General
public mailing list for the discussion of Abstract Wikipedia (aka
Wikilambda)" <abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Abstract-wikipedia] Natural Language and Mathematics
Generation
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Charles,
There is also MathML to consider. Work is underway at the W3C with respect to a new version of MathML, MathML4 [1][2]. Work is underway with respect to adding MathML support to Chromium [3][4].
Instead of LaTeX, MathML could be the way to go.
Best regards,
Adam
[1] https://www.w3.org/community/mathml4/
[2] https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml/
[3] https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5240822173794304
[4] https://mathml.igalia.com/
From: Charles Matthews via Abstract-Wikipedia<mailto:abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, August 3, 2020 1:53 PM
To: General public mailing list for the discussion of Abstract Wikipedia (aka Wikilambda)<mailto:abstract-wikipedia@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Abstract-wikipedia] Natural Language and Mathematics Generation
On 03 August 2020 at 16:50 Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com> wrote:
By utilizing <math>LaTeX</math> elements in an XML-based intermediate output format, one could simply copy that mathematical content to the resultant output wikitext [3]. Wikitext utilizes this same convention for mathematical expressions [3].
Whether or not to include mathematics in Abstract Wikipedia is an important decision to make at a future point. Choosing to include mathematics would entail discussions about representing mathematical knowledge on Wikidata. It would entail discussions about how specific senses of certain words have mathematical meaning. It would entail discussions about how algorithms should determine when to use mathematical and scientific notations and when they should, instead, use paraphrases with the semantic content expressed using natural language. These are just some of the discussion topics which would arise should we desire to include mathematical and scientific notations in Abstract Wikipedia articles.
I'm disagreeing with much of this.
On LaTeX: while it is "industry standard", I'd like to draw attention to a point made in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula#Rendering: "Latex does not have full support for Unicode characters, and not all characters render."
It goes on to suggest that Vietnamese, for example, would not be well catered for, in terms of its diacritics.
I appreciate that we are only talking currently about scoping, and high-level initial planning. But given AW's objectives, this is not a good sign, and I don't think we should just assume that LaTeX as an incumbent gets waved through. It is pre-Web, and something closer to HTML would be preferable, in my view.
My background is in mathematics, and began my Wikipedia career writing mathematics articles. There are certainly issues, such as prose/notation balance. Mathematical language is heavily overloaded, from the disambiguation aspect. But I'm not really recognising the landscape of issues set out there.
Charles
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