Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.dsp
Subject: Re: Communicating DSP Equations
Message-ID: <464@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 25 Sep 89 14:54:42 GMT
References:  <1989Sep20.195449.3833x@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <7070001@hpnmdla.HP.COM> <459@eedsp.gatech.edu> <668@suntops.Tops.Sun.COM> <19237@gatech.edu> <34990@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 35

In article <34990@apple.Apple.COM> malcolm@Apple.COM (Malcolm Slaney) writes:
>In article <19237@gatech.edu> ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried III) writes:
>> does anyone have an idea for a way to share equations [...]
>>Personally, I would advocate TeX/LaTeX for communicating equations.
>
>I think Mathematica notebooks are a better medium for distributing signal
>processing ideas.

Unfortunately, while both TeX/LaTeX and Mathematica would be nice,
this won't work for Usenet articles. Only a small percentage of the
readers of your articles have either of these packages. Also, even if they
did, it would be very inconvenient to shift articles from a normal
news reader (like 'rn' or 'vnews') into these packages for proper display.
Furthermore, of the people who have access to such packages, they don't
always have access the instant they're reading them. For instance, right
now I'm dialed up to work from home. And lastly, this subject has been
debated frequently in groups like sci.math and sci.electronics without
ever reaching a consensus; there's no particular reason to think that
things will be different in sci.dsp.

Some people just go ahead and use LaTeX in their articles anyway, which 
I think is a real shame, because it's much harder to read than plaintext
ASCII formulae.

>An example of this type of document is a report titled "Lyon's Cochlear Model,"
>which I wrote to describe some of the research we are doing at Apple.  I used

A very interesting paper it is, too, and thanks again.

I think it's great that you're championing use of Mathematica. It's just
premature to ask for use of it as a standard distribution format.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary