Technical aspects of the digital library of mathematical functions. (English) Zbl 1019.65002

Miller, Bruce R.; Youssef, Abdou

Ann. Math. Artif. Intell. 38, No. 1-3, 121-136 (2003).

Summary: The NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) Project, begun in 1997, is preparing a handbook [Zbl 1198.00002] and Web site [http://dlmf.nist.gov/] intended for wide communities of users. The contents are primarily mathematical formulas, graphs, methods of computation, references, and links to software. The task of developing a Web handbook of this nature presents several technical challenges. We describe the goals of the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions Project and the realities that constrain those goals. We propose practical initial solutions, in order to ease the authoring of adaptable content: a L^AT_EX class which encourages a modestly semantic markup style; and a mathematical search engine that adapts a text search engine to the task.

MSC:

33-00	General reference works (handbooks, dictionaries, bibliographies, etc.) pertaining to special functions
65D20	Computation of special functions and constants, construction of tables
65Y15	Packaged methods for numerical algorithms

Keywords:

digital library of mathematical functions; mathematical markup; mathematical notation; mathematical search; handbook; web site; mathematical formulas; methods of computation; mathematical functions project

Citations:

Zbl 1198.00002

Software:

DLMF