Owen Densmore wrote: > How would I search for > an equation on the web, and how could I "grep" through a set of > papers using a regular expression containing mathematics? > > The semantics of mathematical notation has to be considered in regex > as well: a*b is the same as b*a, and the regex engine would have to > know that. > > XPath/XQuery would work pretty well for regex-like queries of hierarchical MathML (XML) expressions. The bigger problem is getting people to publish it. As a starting point, arXiv archives and parses LaTeX, which it renders to PDF. A system like arXiv that is set up to process user input for a search engine could be elaborated to do, for example, LaTeX -> MathML conversions (just for the sake of making search systematic) and over time to encourage authors to provide MathML input that was machine readable by Mathematica, etc.
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
