[Om] Mathematical Vernacular in formulae

[Professor James Davenport]

On Tue, January 25, 2011 5:59 pm, Lars Hellström wrote:
> Professor James Davenport skrev 2011-01-25 17.42:
>> On Tue, 25 Jan 2011, Lars Hellström wrote:
>>> My gut feeling for the \text part is that this is an alternate markup
>>> for
>>> some combination of formal symbols, and should be encoded as such,
>>> i.e., as
>>> the value of some hypothetical altenc/vernacular symbol. Totally
>>> ignoring the
>>> cd's of symbols, that would make the \text part equivalent something
>>> like:
>> certainly nice if one can do it, but quite often one uses text becuase
>> there aren't standard symbols for what one wants, I fear.
>
> As long as some CD defines the symbol it should be OK. Or is your point
> that OMDOC documents must be able to employ undefined concepts?
The latter.

>>>       <OMS name="logical-and"/>
>> By this do you mean the usual<OMS cd="logic1" name="and"/>
>> or something else?
>
> The usual "and", yes. (I simply didn't have the time to look up what
Fine.
> standard
> CD defines it. Same thing with "set-in" and "lambda". I don't know how
> well "concat-text" can be identified with anything standard.)
Good question.
>>>     </OMATTR>
>>>     <OMA><OMS name="set-in"/>
>>>       <OMV name="a"/>  <OMV name="T"/>
>>>     </OMA>
>>>     <OMA>
>>>       <OMATTR>
>>>         <OMATP>
>>>           <OMS cd="altenc" name="vernacular"/>
>>>           <OMBIND>
>>>             <OMS name="lambda"/>
>>>             <OMBVAR>
>>>               <OMV name="term1"/>  <OMV name="term2"/>  <OMV
>>> name="term3"/>
>>>             </OMBVAR>
>>>             <OMA><OMS name="concat-text"/>
>>>               <OMV name="term1"/>  <OMSTR>  terminates for</OMSTR>
>>>               <OMV name="term2"/>  <OMSTR>  with</OMSTR>  <OMV
>>> name="term3"/>
>>>             </OMA>
>>>           </OMBIND>
>>>         </OMATP>
>>>         <OMS name="terminates-for-with"/>
>> And this, of course, is a symbol we don't (currently) have.
>
> But any author using the concept in an OM-enabled document ought to create
> a definition of it if none already exists.
If we knew what it meant - I didn't, and still don't.
>>>       </OMATTR>
>>>       <OMV name="P"/>
>>>       <OMV name="a"/>
>>>       <OMV name="b"/>
>>>     </OMA>
>>> </OMA>
>>>
>>> At least for the most common uses of text within math, namely logical
>>> conjunctions, this should be the natural way to go as it allows tools
>>> ignorant of natural language to process the formula.
I absolutely agree that, WHERE it works, it has that, truly important
advantage.

James Davenport
Lecturer on XX10190 and CM30070
Hebron & Medlock Professor of Information Technology, University of Bath
OpenMath Content Dictionary Editor and Programme Chair, OpenMath 2009
IMU Committee on Electronic Information and Communication
Council of the British Computer Society
Federal Council, International Foundation for Computational Logic