Constructing the quasi-prefix form



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Constructing the quasi-prefix form

  The recognizer processes the mathematical content to construct the quasi-prefix form described in s:quasi-prefix. For example, given the input $a+b$, LISPIFY produces

[LVerbatim574]

Converting a list as shown above to prefix form is a simple exercise and can be found in most programming language texts. Our implementation is based on the infix to prefix converter in the text on Common Lisp by Winston and Horn[+] [HW89].

Function inf-to-pre performs the infix-to-prefix conversion. The input to this function is a list of math objects that have been processed using the classification given in s:classification-math. Each element of this list is a math object with content and attributes but no children. Note that the contents of the attributes are first converted to quasi-prefix form. For example, when recognizing [tex2html_wrap5378], the input is first converted to a list of five math objects containing the quasi-prefix representation for [tex2html_wrap5380], +, [tex2html_wrap5384], + and [tex2html_wrap5388] respectively. This is achieved by collecting the attributes that appear on each math object and processing their content recursively. Converting such a list to prefix form is now no different than processing [tex2html_wrap5390].

We now extend this algorithm to handle ambiguous mathematical notation. Conventional parsing techniques fail, since written mathematics does not adhere to a rigorous set of precedence rules. For example, the expression [tex2html_wrap5392] means [tex2html_wrap5394] rather than [tex2html_wrap5396], even though function application is normally assigned the highest precedence. Moreover, [tex2html_wrap5398] means [tex2html_wrap5400] rather than [tex2html_wrap5402]. We have taken many such anomalies into account.

The precedence table for operators t:precedence lists operators in ascending order of precedence. Only one operator is shown at each level.

  [table585]
Table: Precedence table for mathematical operators.

Functions define-precedence and remove-precedence allow the user to modify the precedence table. These, however, are not for use by a casual user of AsTeR , since changes to the precedence table without a clear understanding of the recognition algorithm can cause unexpected behavior.

As pointed out earlier, precedence rules alone are not sufficient to handle written mathematics. We adapt the algorithm by using the following heuristics:



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TV Raman
Thu Mar 9 20:10:41 EST 1995