[HN Gopher] Mathpad: A mathematical keypad for students and prof...
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Mathpad: A mathematical keypad for students and professionals
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-05-25 10:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| eviks wrote:
| Interesting idea! Though since it doesn't have a more ergonomic
| keypad-like layout, but repeats the slanted mistake of default
| keyboards, and requires software companion, what's the advantage
| over adding math layers to your current keyboard, where you also
| have access to more keys and modifiers?
| asdf_snar wrote:
| Seconded. This looks like a fun toy, but it solves a problem
| that I don't have (and I believe I am the target audience).
| Modern typesetters are very good (e.g., TexMacs). There is also
| a limited set of characters by design, and I would have to
| remove my hand from my keyboard only for those.
| ubj wrote:
| Love this idea, although I wonder if this can also be done with
| QMK keyboards. I'll have to try setting up similar macros in my
| Ergodox EZ.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Interesting idea, but back when I needed to enter such I use
| DEC's compose.exe (while it still worked) and then Allchars:
|
| https://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars/
|
| or used a stylus and the drawing input in TeXview.app on my NeXT
| Cube or https://www.inftyproject.org/en/software.html --- since
| then, didn't Microsoft's Journal and various other stylus note-
| taking apps get math support?
|
| These days I just press the touch keyboard icon in the task bar
| and use that to get special characters.
|
| A further concern is one has to be entering things more than just
| as a lineal stream --- superscripts and subscripts need to be
| entered into, things need to be put over or under a fraction bar,
| &c. --- do the hard-wired buttons actually accelerate things that
| much?
|
| Why not just use a programmable keypad such as a Streamdeck?
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I love the idea of a physical device (esp. with buttons) but I
| get that it is not always practical. I wonder how much work it
| would take to add math symbols to something like Touch Portal.
| I haven't used it but read that many people do for controlling
| various software, including DAWs (which can be latency-
| sensitive).
|
| https://www.touch-portal.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| WinCompose [0] is the spiritual successor to AllChars.
|
| [0] https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose
| threatofrain wrote:
| Y'all should try espanso for your latex needs.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Y'all should try espanso for your latex needs.
|
| I definitely understand why macro-expander programs can be
| useful, but I'm always a bit puzzled about the idea of
| combining them with a macro language like (La)TeX. Why
| introduce two layers of macro indirection? Maybe it just
| doesn't fit my use case, which doesn't mean it can't fit
| anybody's; but, more intriguingly, maybe it would come to fit
| my use case if I understood what it can add, so I wonder if you
| could describe how it's useful to you.
| red_admiral wrote:
| > Why introduce two layers of macro indirection
|
| TeX already has more than enough layers of macro indirection
| :/
|
| Try debugging an \makeatletter\expandafter and you're going
| to have a bad day. I think the macro system is even Turing-
| complete in some sense, certainly the number of times you
| potentially need to run TeX to guarantee a complete output
| reduces to the halting problem.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > > Why introduce two layers of macro indirection
|
| > TeX already has more than enough layers of macro
| indirection :/
|
| Sure, I should have said "another layer of macro
| indirection" instead of just two!
|
| > Try debugging an \makeatletter\expandafter and you're
| going to have a bad day. I think the macro system is even
| Turing-complete in some sense, certainly the number of
| times you potentially need to run TeX to guarantee a
| complete output reduces to the halting problem.
|
| So is the indirect (har!) answer that, for you, which I
| know isn't the same as the person I was originally
| responding to, introducing the new macro layer allows you
| to replace some of the TeX-level indirection by a more
| concretely understandable macro expander?
|
| (By the way, you are right that TeX's macro system is
| Turing-complete, not just incidentally but intentionally;
| Knuth didn't plan to make it so, but did so by request from
| Steele.)
| stevejb wrote:
| This is super cool. When I was doing a lot of math-related
| typesetting I found that I got really fast with Emacs + AuCTeX. I
| have no idea of the state of that project, but if you were fast
| you go at nearly the speed at which you could write.
| altairprime wrote:
| For those interested in purchase rather than DIY, the above page
| links to:
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/summa-cogni/mathpad
| zokier wrote:
| it is frustrating that nowhere does it tell how it actually
| works. generally keyboards can not send specific unicode
| codepoints to host system, they only send scancodes that get
| interpreted by operating systems keymap. But most keymaps do not
| define any keys for these symbols, so there is something going on
| here. Based on the docs, I'll guess it attempts to send a
| _sequence_ of keypresses to trigger some compose mode (thus
| requiring additional software on windows). I find such hacks
| slightly frustrating because they are so fragile, they depend on
| the keyboard predicting perfectly how the host will handle the
| keypress sequences which obviously can break quite easily, e.g.
| simply by switching layouts or having some timing /focus related
| aspects.
|
| I would really love to see new keyboard HID designed specifically
| for modern advanced keyboards (qmk etc) where you wouldn't need
| to resort on this kind of trickery. Or alternatively make the
| input stacks of OSs more easily configurable with custom physical
| layouts and modifiers etc instead of assuming that all keyboards
| follow basic ISO/ANSI layout.
| a5c11 wrote:
| Maybe it's as simple as sending popular ALT+<unicode> sequence,
| at least for Windows and Linux. But that's still hacky.
| a5c11 wrote:
| Ya, I was right. The driver is built around popular QMK
| framework. Here you can read how it handles unicode input:
| https://docs.qmk.fm/features/unicode.
| glitchc wrote:
| It's likely the driver handling the conversion. Which makes me
| wonder, can I use the same driver to remap extra keys on my
| existing QMK compatible keyboard?
| agcat wrote:
| This is pretty cool!
| genpfault wrote:
| Prior art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-cadet_keyboard
| mcphage wrote:
| Why no Aleph?!
| layer8 wrote:
| To infinity and beyond!
| efavdb wrote:
| Why no omicron!?
| challenger-derp wrote:
| Am eagerly anticipating the commercial availability of Mathpad.
|
| At the moment I'm using Espanso, an open source software that
| lets users map typed character sequences to unicode. So it's
| possible to set things up in such a way that typing the character
| sequence ";" "a" ";" makes Espanso replace the entire ;a; string
| with the greek symbol alpha a.
|
| Symbols like = that can kind of be "drawn" with common keyboard
| characters "=" ">" is possibly nice to be mapped to the character
| sequence ;=>; This is a personal preference inspired by Typst's
| math notation design choice.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| I like Vim's digraphs, which go in a similar direction. For
| instance, Ctrl-K = > gives =, Ctrl-K a * gives a. An overview
| of available digraphs is available at :digraphs.
|
| Otherwise I like the Agda input method of Emacs, where \to
| gives = and \alpha (or \Ga) gives a.
| JNRowe wrote:
| Somewhat predictably zsh also has a digraphs1 feature, via
| the insert-composed-char function2. Supported characters can
| be seen in source3, and beyond that there is the insert-
| unicode-char2 function for when you need it.
|
| I flit between regular compose key input and zsh/vim digraphs
| in a way that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Compose ^1,
| AltGr+1 or C-k 1S all kind of feel natural _to me_ , but the
| advantage of the ZLE method is that you can also use it to
| preview characters which can be useful if you want to test
| something out while in another widget or find the hex value
| to insert using some other tool.
|
| 1 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1345#section-2.3
|
| 2 https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/User-
| Contributions.ht...
|
| 3 https://github.com/zsh-
| users/zsh/blob/master/Functions/Zle/d...
| layer8 wrote:
| I prefer using a Compose key [0] (remapped Caps Lock, for me),
| which can be installed/configured on all major platforms.
| Configuration is sharable via XCompose configuration files.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
| Unearned5161 wrote:
| It looks nice, but I'm not sure I'd jump ship from my snippets
| setup I have with vim. At the end of the day it would be very
| similar to a mouse hand movement and would probably take a long
| time to get it as quick and comfortable as just typing "aa" for
| alpha when I'm in math mode which I get into with "mk"
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