| Mathematics Hypertext Project |
The founding paper on the project, "The Future of Mathematical Text", has been published online in the Journal of Digital Information.
The present effort is a prototype text which attempts to demonstrate the advantages of a hypertext organization and which grapples with the problems of how to organize a variety of mathematical theories in a coherent, effective fashion.
The mathematical text and the graphics follow the WWW standards for MathML and scalable vector graphics. You may need to set up your browser to display mathematical text and vector graphics. It only takes a few minutes - see the page on setting up your browser here.
We make heavy use of two Javascript programs developed by Dr. Peter Jipsen, named ASCIIMathML.js and and ASCIIsvg.js. These tools enable us to easily write and edit mathematical text and vector graphics, and they have wide applicability beyond this text. The only difference with our version of ASCIIMathML.js and ASCIIsvg.js is that we display mathematical text in black type instead of red.
The text has two main types of pages, named book text and core text. Book text, which has a blue line across the top, follows a linear progression with a table of contents page, links to each section, and arrows to link to the next section, previous section and back to the table of contents page. Core text, which has a red line across the top, are independent pages on a given subject and link to other core text and to book pages.
Internal to the text, we use two types of structured links, the inner link and the outer link. The inner link, represented by a single arrow (`bb(rarr)`), means the the linked text will return back to the link. Text following the link may be viewed as an expansion of the current text, or as a footnote. The outer link, represented by a double arrow (`bb(rArr)`), indicates that the text following is a new topic, and will not return to the current text.
The very simple graphical design of this text is built with Javascript functions in the file mhp.js . The design is intended to be spare and unobtrusive.
This text will be continually rewritten, as sections are expanded and as new organizations are tried out.
Other documentation:
Ten Ways of Looking at Real Numbers - slides
and paper
Describes the core text on real numbers, as of April, 2005.
A Hypertext on Linear Algebra - abstract
and poster
Describes the linear algebra portion of the text as of March, 2006.
Contact: Robert Mayans, Department of
Mathematics/Computer Science/Physics, Fairleigh Dickinson University
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