MathCAT

MathCAT is designed to eventually replace MathPlayer because MathPlayer is no longer supported. MathCAT generates speech and braille from MathML. The speech for math produced by MathCAT is enhanced with prosody so that it sounds more natural. The speech can be navigated in three modes using the same commands as MathPlayer. In addition, the navigation node is indicated on a braille display. Both Nemeth and UEB technical are supported.

MathCAT has a number of configuration options that control speech, navigation, and braille. Many of these can be set in the MathCAT settings dialog (found NVDA Preferences menu). For more information on these settings, see the MathCAT documentation. The documentation includes a link to a table listing all of the navigation commands in MathCAT.

Note: MathCAT is a general library for generating speech and braille from MathML. It is used by other AT projects besides NVDA. For information on the MathCAT project in general, see the main MathCAT Documentation page.

Who should use MathCAT:

Who should NOT use MathCAT:

MathCAT's rules for speech are not yet as extensive as MathPlayer's rules -- that may be another reason to stick with MathPlayer. MathCAT is being used as a testbed for ideas for MathML 4 that allow authors to express their intent so that ambiguous notations can be spoken correctly and not guessed at. I have held off on adding too many rules since the architecture of MathCAT is centered around using and inferring author intent and these are not fully settled yet.

MathCAT Update Log

Version 0.5.0

Version 0.4.2

Version 0.3.11

Version 0.3.9

Version 0.3.8

Braille: * Dialog has been internationalized for several languages (many thanks to the translators!) * Initial implementation of CMU -- the braille code used in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries * Fix some UEB bugs and added some characters for UEB * Significant improvements to Vietnamese braille

Other fixes: * Change relative rate dialog slider to have a maximum value of 100% (now only allows setting slower rates). Also, added step sizes so it is easier to raise/lower the rate significantly. * Fix eSpeak bug that sometimes cut off speech when the relative rate was changed * Improvements to Vietnamese speech * Fixed bug with OneCore voices saying "a" * Fixed some navigation bugs when AutoZoomOut is False (not the default) * Fix updating around language changes and some other dialog changes so they take effect immediately upon clicking "Apply" or "OK". * Added an "Use Voice's Language" option so that out of the box, MathCAT will speak in the right language (if there is a translation) * Several improvements for cleaning up poor MathML code

Version 0.3.3

This release has a number of bug fixes in it. The major new features and bug fixes are: * Added Spanish Translation (thanks to Noelia Ruiz and María Allo Roldán) * Modified navigation so that it starts zoomed in one level * Added cntrl+alt+arrow as a way to navigate tabular structures. These keys should be more memorable because they are used for table navigation in NVDA. * Worked around NVDA bug for eSpeak voices that caused them to slow down when the relative MathRate was set to be slower than the text speech rate. * Worked around a OneCore voice problem so that they will speak the long 'a' sound.

There are lots of small tweaks to the speech and some bug fixes for both Nemeth and UEB.

Note: there is now an option to get Vietnam's braille standard as braille output. This is still a work in progress and is too buggy to be used other than for testing. I expect the next MathCAT release will contain a reliable implementation.

Version 0.2.5

Version 0.2