Semantic preserving bijective mappings for expressions involving special functions between computer algebra systems and document preparation systems
Aslib Journal of Information Management
ISSN: 2050-3806
Article publication date: 31 May 2019
Issue publication date: 13 June 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Modern mathematicians and scientists of math-related disciplines often use Document Preparation Systems (DPS) to write and Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) to calculate mathematical expressions. Usually, they translate the expressions manually between DPS and CAS. This process is time-consuming and error-prone. The purpose of this paper is to automate this translation. This paper uses Maple and Mathematica as the CAS, and LaTeX as the DPS.
Design/methodology/approach
Bruce Miller at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed a collection of special LaTeX macros that create links from mathematical symbols to their definitions in the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF). The authors are using these macros to perform rule-based translations between the formulae in the DLMF and CAS. Moreover, the authors develop software to ease the creation of new rules and to discover inconsistencies.
Findings
The authors created 396 mappings and translated 58.8 percent of DLMF formulae (2,405 expressions) successfully between Maple and DLMF. For a significant percentage, the special function definitions in Maple and the DLMF were different. An atomic symbol in one system maps to a composite expression in the other system. The translator was also successfully used for automatic verification of mathematical online compendia and CAS. The evaluation techniques discovered two errors in the DLMF and one defect in Maple.
Originality/value
This paper introduces the first translation tool for special functions between LaTeX and CAS. The approach improves error-prone manual translations and can be used to verify mathematical online compendia and CAS.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG Grant GI-1259-1).
Citation
Greiner-Petter, A., Schubotz, M., Cohl, H.S. and Gipp, B. (2019), "Semantic preserving bijective mappings for expressions involving special functions between computer algebra systems and document preparation systems", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 71 No. 3, pp. 415-439. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2018-0185
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited