Re: Can someone read these line "aloud"
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg127052] Re: Can someone read these line "aloud"
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:09:05 -0400 (EDT)
- Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com
- References: <jsbt1n$6on$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 6/26/2012 1:48 AM, McHale, Paul wrote: > Can anyone help me with proper Wolfram "lingo"? If you were reading these aloud to someone, what words would you use? For instance. I have heard "/; " or "/." is pronounced "given that". Not sure which. Is there any list of the verbal equivalents? Well, which is it? I think neither reflects the proper meaning of rule application etc. So my answer is: neither . > > > list /. x_ :> SuperStar[x] /; x > 9 sure. ReplaceAll of list and RuleDelayed of Pattern of x blank and Condition of SuperStar of x when Greater of x and 9. This is yet another reason to use FullForm, from which the above is a trivial modification. You can have a program speak this out loud in some browsers equipped suitably. see http://www.w3.org/TR/voice-tts-reqs/ or see tts (text to speech) add-ons for implementation. I think you need to decide how to vocalize the mathematical expression f(x,y) or Mathematica f[x,y]. It could be f of x and y or for special forms you might use different filler words. Thus Table{q,{i,a,b}] would by default be Table of q and list i and a and b, but could be improved as, say, Table of q using iteration for i from a to b. If you want to speak a*(b+c+d) you need to be able to distinguish Times of a and Plus of b and c and d from a*(b+c)*d Times of a and Plus of b and c and d perhaps by Times of a and Plus of b and c EndPlus and d. You could also try to improve some of the other vocalizations from the default, even going so far as to vocalize Times[a,b] as "a times b". and a*(b+c)*d as a times quantity b plus c end times d. You may be disappointed that I haven't told you how to pronounce /; and :>, but I think that kind of pales in comparison to the fact that you can't unambiguously speak expressions with ordinary arithmetic without some help. There is a modest literature on TTS for math, starting from the Aster program. I think that the default TTS program for Mathematica, assuming a speech API is available, would be less than 1/3 a page of code. An alternative is of course to spell everything out like ay asterisk open paren bee plus see plus dee close paren slash dot x blank right arrow blah blah. There are worse alternatives like using MathML, OpenMath, ... RJF >