[om] OpenMath and Imaging

[Manfred Riem]

Vilya Harvey wrote:

> Manfred Riem wrote:
> > One question about XSL in Java, how is it generally implemented, do I
> > get a Canvas, can I select the sub-parts of an given equation. Can I
> > move part of an equation on-the-fly?
>
> Now that I've thought about it a bit more, it would seem that XSL is not
> so ideally suited to your problem. I'm starting to think that you're
> pretty much on the right track with your original suggestion. You could
> have a companion file for each of the CDs which contained the presentation
> information you need about every symbol in that CD (which is actually the
> recommended approach for presentation info, according to the recent drafts
> of the OM specification). Calling it a stylesheet language is probably a
> bit misleading though. :-)

You're right, sorry for the misleading info. I should have called it
something
else, but nothing else came to mind at the time. Maybe presentation language
would have been a little less misleading.

> >From an earlier message:
> > The second question I've got is more towards the
> > 'stylesheet' language: "What kind of parameters
> > should I expect?" So far I've only specified the
> > general parameters like
> >         1. Font (size, style, color).
> >         2. Background
> >         3. Abbreviation style.
>
> If you were feeling energetic, you could implement all of the CSS
> properties [1]. That's a fairly comprehensive list and you could use a
> standard stylesheet format too. I *think* there is at least one freely
> available CSS parser, but I could be wrong; if not, writing one shouldn't
> be an overly complex task. Implementing all of the properties in your
> renderer is a different matter, of course.
>
> If you're not feeling quite *that* energetic, then the list you have is
> probably a decent starting point.

Will look into that. Thanks for the URL.


> One question: in your proposed system, what would be the operator (or
> image class or whatever you want to call it) for rendering things in a
> function notation, like f(x)? The closest I could see in your list was
> this:
> > Type 1 operator:
> >         renders a 'vector' with begin 'symbol' and
> >         end symbol' and (optional) separator 'symbol'
> but for a function you also need to render the function name; it would
> also be nice if the begin and end symbols were optional (so you can omit
> the brackets around the argument to a single parameter function, for
> example).

That's one of the things about the CSS style language. It will have to
include some syntax for disabling rendering of part of the parameters.
If that doesn't cover it I'll have to include a new operator.

> Finally...
> Are you sure that the JAI library is what you want to use? When I
> responded to your original post, I hadn't made the connection between that
> acronym and the Java Advanced Imaging API. I don't see how that provides
> the features you would need. Surely the AWT, possibly with some of the
> Java 1.2 extensions (java.awt.font, java.awt.geom, etc.), or Swing is more
> appropriate?

Well, for one. The JAI library supplies me with exporting capabilities in
an orderly manner. Second, I can do on-the-fly imaging with it, so I can
change a part of the render-tree on-the-fly. And for complex equations
this makes my life in programming the editor easier. Also remote rendering
could be done too. And the style language can be implemented through the
parameter class specified with JAI-images.

> Hope this is helping...
> Vil.

It sure does. Thanx.

Greetz,

Manfred Riem
Computer Science Student
Eindhoven Unversity of Technology.

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