Hi Dennis,
Dennis E. Hamilton schrieb:
I'm interested in your long-term task. I think that would be useful
to do. I'm willing to work on that with you, especially if there is
no hurry.
That is great. My current state is very early: looking around and
collecting information, and trying to understand the source code and get
a structured view on it.
From my side, there is no hurry. I have still my daily
job as teacher and therefore most things I do for OpenOffice (or ODF) I
do in the holidays. And outside the holidays I am often time-poor, which
you notice from my slow reaction. So please do not expect quick
improvements.
I'm happy, that you already contribute ideas. Find some comments inside.
I don't think there is any operator precedence in StarMath 5.0, which
is why it is important to use explicit { ... }. It would be
interesting to know what the rule for implicit multiplication might
be also, concerning the "2b" in a+{2b}. That should be easy to
check, and also to determine how clean unary versus binary operations
are distinguished.
I need to find a way to read the generated node tree. The errors in the
MathML export might originate in the filter or in an insufficient node
tree.
I'm not clear that a grammar is easy to derive in the sense of BNF.
One way would be to try enough of the operators, brackets, etc., and
see how they map. One could also look at the parser in the code.
Before going too far down that road, perhaps the OpenOffice Forums
have something in their collection of material.
You are right. Forum and mailing list have different users.
I expect that the parser is relatively simple with many reserved
works, providing more of a markup notation than a formula notation.
(I suspect the result is presentation of a formula more than it is
something that can be interpreted as a formula in the sense of
evaluation or symbolic manipulation.) I just looked at the
commands.src file in AOO/trunk/main/staremath/source/ and I think
that tells you a lot about the grammar. I couldn't find anything
about the attributes. Experiments may be needed there.
My thinking is that there are some useful tests to run. In
particular, will OpenOffice Math work properly on an ODF Formula
document that has no annotation? (I.e., the StarMath portion is
missing.) If the StarMath is required, there is a pretty significant
defect in either ODF 1.2 Part 1 or in the implementation, since there
is not enough information for someone to interoperate one way, the
other, or both.
The defect in not in ODF. ODF refers to MathML 2.0 and has no own
specifications. From point of standardization, OpenOffice should not
write StarMath into ODF documents, but use it only for the old OOoXML
format. MathML 2.0 itself is well maintained by the W3C. Therefore I
think that all problems have their origin in the implementation in
OpenOffice.
You can test the import filter without generating .odf documents, when
you start Math module and then use Tools > Import formula. You need a
complete .mml document, a <math>..</math> fragment will not work.
Seamonkey (Firefox) shows .mml documents without plug-in, so a
comparison exists. Currently I have not installed Amaya (unfortunately
W3C stopped development), but Amaya is suitable for comparisons too.
The other way is of cause to simple delete the annotation. I had done
that, when I tested, whether the MathML part of my introduced colors works.
If OpenOffice Math will open a MathML that has no (recognizable)
annotation, you could check the example you have, and others, by
seeing what StarMath AOO shows when such a MathML is loaded.
That would provide information for deducing the grammar. In
particular, it would help understand where {...} are needed for some
of the attributes, how brackets and {...} interact, etc.
Is this interesting?
Such starting would result in a collection of test files, which are
needed later on anyways. Therefore it is surely useful. It might result
in a lot of issues.
Kind regards
Regina
- Dennis
-----Original Message----- From: Regina Henschel
[mailto:rb.hensc...@t-online.de] Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2014
00:18 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org Subject: Re: grammar for
StarMath
Hi Dennis,
thank you for looking at it. But I'm looking for a BNF or other form
of derivation rules or any kind of informal specification.
The exported MathML is known to have structural deficits, for example
'a + 2 b' will result in <mrow> <mi>a</mi> <mo
stretchy="false">+</mo> <mn>2</mn> </mrow> <mi>b</mi> which is a
structure '{a+2} b', where it should be a structure 'a + {2 b}'.
It is a long-term task (in which I'm interested) to get a better
representation of the formulas in MathML and so be able to drop
StarMath. And therefore I'm looking for some developer information
about StarMath. If such does not exist, the way through examining
code and examples will be harder.
Kind regards Regina
Dennis E. Hamilton schrieb:
I have an incomplete result. You may have already explored this.
First, saving an AOO Formula (.odf) as a StarMath 5.0 Formula
(.smf) does not seem to be exported. There is no import for it
either.
You can still save as an OpenDocument.org .sxm formula or an ODF
Formula (.odf). They are nearly identical.
Both .sxm and .odf are Zip Packages and nearly identical. In
particular, the content.xml is a MathML formula that has a StarMath
5.0 formula as an annotation. It is exactly the same formula that
you end up editing in the lower window of the Apache OpenOffice
Math (or LibreOffice Math) application. So the upper window shows
the MathML rendering, and the lower window shows the StarMath 5.0!
And the content.xml carries both.
In effect, the Elements Tool and the hand editing that you do is
creating StarMath that is then displayed via MathML in the upper,
graphical-formula window.
That doesn't provide the StarMath grammar except by example, but it
is a way to build them experimentally and see.
Finally, this led me to the Help Topic "Math formula editor" and
click the Formulas link to get to "Welcome to the OpenOffice Math
Help" page. The subtopic "Formula Reference Tables" seems to be
the key. The color function is under "Attributes".
StarMath uses {...} for precedence/grouping control in the same
manner as TeX and LaTeX formulas.
We can probably figure out the grammar by making examples of all
the operators and other oddities.
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