While great progress has been made in the composition, storage and manipulation of mathematical documents, most work starts with the assumption that mathematical content has at some point been entered using a keyboard, or scanned from a typeset document. With the wide-spread availability of Tablet PCs and hand-held pen-based devices there is an opportunity for a new generation more natural and more interactive mathematical interface.

The use of the digital pen to enter, edit, communicate mathematical expressions can lead to a qualitative improvement in

• electronic mathematical collaboration,
• mathematical document composition, and
• interfaces to computational mathematical software (e.g. computer algebra systems).

The Pen Math workshop is intended to bring together researchers in mathematics formula recognition, interface design, character recognition and computer algebra systems (CAS). A goal of the workshop is to further the integration of pen-based mathematics interfaces with the power of computer algebra systems.

We seek presentations and demonstrations for the upcoming Pen Math workshop, which will be held jointly with MKM 2009 (confederated in the Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2009) in Ontario, Canada.

The scope of this workshop includes all aspects of collection, recognition, design and evaluation of hand written mathematical equations.  Potential topics of interest include:

• Pen-based expression entry, editing and manipulation
• On-line and off-line mathematical formula recognition algorithms
• Structural analysis of ink
• Character recognition algorithms
  
• Segmentation algorithms
• Semantic methods for disambiguation
• Ink and data collection
• Data sets and ground truth
• Interface design
• Interfacing with computer algebra systems
• Interfacing with document processing systems
• Reports on implementations and experiments
• Applications in education and research

Presentations on other topics with links to the above research fields and topics will also be welcomed for consideration.

We are accepting 1 to 2 page abstracts for presentation at the workshop.  We also are seeking hands on demonstrations of prototype software.  The workshop will have 2 hours set aside for demonstrations.

Abstracts and demonstration proposals should be emailed to penmath2009@cs.uwaterloo.ca .

Presentation abstract deadline: 30 April 2009
Notification of acceptance: 15 May 2009

The Pen Math workshop is on the 8th and 9th of July 2009.

• George Labahn
  David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo CANADA
  
• Stephen M. Watt
  Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra,
  Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London CANADA