Richard Fateman wrote:
> Your project is impossible except in a trivial sense.
Yes, I know. :-)
> In the trivial sense, you can convert a tiny subset of each of
> these languages to the other. Or you could convert such a subset
> to MathML.
This tiny subset should be enough first. I only need expression for the
first time.
> Such a "translation" could be accomplished in a few weeks with
> any parser generator tool if the languages were LL(1) or LALR(1).
> Which they are not.
That's what I'd like to do. All of the expressions --- I mean here
algebraic expression, e.g. sin(exp(x^2-ln(a/b)*1/cos(c))) --- are "easy"
languages.
> For a larger class of expressions in any of the languages, your
> task may be as hard as translating between Hungarian and English,
> but much less useful.
:-)
> >
> > We'd like to use this parser/converter in Webmathematics Interactive,
> > however it is a common problem to convert formulae in general.
>
> It happens when someone wants to convert an already written
> program from one system to another, but at least some of this
> is inevitably done by hand. I don't think this is a common
> problem requiring an automatic solution. I suggest you read
> about mathml.
There *are* programs which really need formula conversions. I mean word
processors (AbiWord, KWord, OpenOffice.org) or graphical, function
plotting software which may have export possibilities (MathPlot, GtkPlot).
However, this task seems to be very simple if one is an expert in using
parser generators (I'm not --- I have to learn it first). I also think
about an internal format, maybe this should be MathML. Thank you for your
suggestion. :-)
Regards, Zoltan