Navigation mislabels <msubsup> children when the superscript is a prime

[TimArborealis]

When an <msubsup> has a prime as its superscript, Enhanced and Simple navigation appear to assign the wrong structural roles to its children.

Possibly related to #415, but this seems to involve the special handling for prime/pseudo-script superscripts rather than the ordinary <msubsup> path.

MathML

<math id="0" display="block" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
    <msubsup id="1">
        <mi id="2">x</mi>
        <mi id="3">i</mi>
        <mo id="4">′</mo>
    </msubsup>
</math>

Settings

• Language: English
• Speech style: SimpleSpeak
• Speech verbosity: Medium
• Overview: False
• Navigation verbosity: Verbose
• Auto zoom out: True

Tested through NVDA, with the latest build of MathCAT as an addon.

Observed behaviour

Enhanced and Simple

Both modes behave identically.

1. ZoomIn

   • land on id="2"
   • hear: "zoom in; in base; x"

2. MoveNext

   • land on id="3"
   • hear: "move right; in superscript; i"

3. MoveNext

   • land on id="4"
   • hear: "move right; prime"

The structural labels appear to be shifted. In the source MathML, i is the subscript, not the superscript, and ′ is the superscript.

(Character navigation behaves as expected.)

Expected behaviour

My expectation for Enhanced and Simple is that the semantic structure should preserve the indexed base, similarly to an ordinary <msubsup>, while treating the prime specially rather than as an exponent:

skip-super(indexed-by(x, i), prime)

This would give two semantic parts: the indexed expression x sub i as the base, and the prime as the superscript.

I would therefore expect approximately:

1. ZoomIn

   • land on the generated semantic node for x sub i
   • hear: "zoom in; in base; x sub i"

2. MoveNext

   • land on id="4"
   • hear: "move right; in superscript; prime"

3. MoveNext

   • reach the end of the expression

Possible cause

Rules/Intent/general.yaml contains a skip-super rule for both msup and msubsup:

name: skip-super
tag: [msup, msubsup]
...
- intent:
    name: "skip-super"
    ...
    children: [x: "*"]

For this <msubsup>, that gives the skip-super intent three children:

1. x
2. i
3. ′

However, NavigationParts in Rules/Languages/en/definitions.yaml defines:

"skip-super": "base; superscript",

so skip-super has navigation names for only two children.

This appears consistent with the observed behaviour:

• child 1 (x) → base
• child 2 (i) → superscript
• child 3 (′) → no navigation part name

The ordinary <msubsup> inference creates an indexed-by intent around the first two children before adding the superscript.

Perhaps the msubsup version of skip-super needs to preserve the indexed-by(base, subscript) structure rather than passing all three children directly to skip-super.

(Disclosure: I asked ChatGPT for help when digging into the possible cause, so these guesses might by all means be wrong.)

[TimArborealis]

I found another <msubsup> expression that appears to trigger the same navigation problem.

<math id="0" display="block" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
    <msubsup id="1">
        <mi id="2" mathvariant="normal">O</mi>
        <mn id="3">2</mn>
        <mo id="4">−</mo>
    </msubsup>
</math>

I tested both without intent and with: intent=":chemical-formula" on the <math> element. The behaviour was the same in both cases.

Chemistry was set to Spell it out.

Enhanced and Simple

Both modes behave identically:

1. ZoomIn

   • land on id="2"
   • hear: "zoom in; in base; o"

2. MoveNext

   • land on id="3"
   • hear: "move right; in superscript; 2"

3. MoveNext

   • land on id="4"
   • hear: "move right; in part 3; minus"

As in the prime example, the second child of <msubsup> is therefore announced as the superscript even though it is actually the subscript, while the actual superscript is labeled part 3.

I think this means that the problem is not specific to prime/skip-super. A <msubsup> with superscript <mo> also seems to trigger the error.

[moritz-gross]

GPT-6 proposed to me that this might be fixed using more elaborate rules for children in skip-super

like this here

children:
- test:
    if: "self::m:msubsup"
    then:
    - intent:
        name: "indexed-by"
        attrs: "data-intent-property='concat(data-intent-property, \":infix:\")', id='concat(@id, \"-indexed-by\")'"
        children:
        - x: "*[1]"
        - x: "*[2]"
    else:
    - x: "*[1]"
- x: "*[last()]"

My question: How exactly do the intent and attrs elements work? I've looked through our docs, but they don't cover that, or am I missing something?

And potential followup: attrs seems to be a single string representing a map, a bit like JSON. What format does attrs have? And would it make sense to use JSON or some other established format instead?