MathML story continues
Monday, 14. August 2006, 15:44:17
Recently I joined W3C Math working group, where I will represent Opera Software. I am not the biggest supporter of MathML and often am considered among its oponents, however there are a lot of thing that can be done on MathML side and solving the existing problems requires some kind of coordination between Math WG, CSS folks and browser developers.
The intention is to address MathML/CSS compatibility issues that would make integration of MathML with the rest of technologies supported by browsers much easier. Today it is hard to judge what the actual outcome will be, but in overall I am optimistic as it seems that essential part of MathML can be reformulated in more CSS friendly manner and with a few CSS3 extensions one may merge it in XML + CSS framework.
Once the technical issues will be resolved and realistic spec will be available I think browsers will be able to reconsider their position on MathML support. Not sure whether this will finally bring more MathML content to web as being quite verbose MathML distracts essential part of potential users especially those from LaTeX community, but in the same time MathML3 may have both XML and non-XML input syntax like RELAX NG and XQuery have, so if successful this step may provide some kind of bridge between LaTeX and XML communities.
The intention is to address MathML/CSS compatibility issues that would make integration of MathML with the rest of technologies supported by browsers much easier. Today it is hard to judge what the actual outcome will be, but in overall I am optimistic as it seems that essential part of MathML can be reformulated in more CSS friendly manner and with a few CSS3 extensions one may merge it in XML + CSS framework.
Once the technical issues will be resolved and realistic spec will be available I think browsers will be able to reconsider their position on MathML support. Not sure whether this will finally bring more MathML content to web as being quite verbose MathML distracts essential part of potential users especially those from LaTeX community, but in the same time MathML3 may have both XML and non-XML input syntax like RELAX NG and XQuery have, so if successful this step may provide some kind of bridge between LaTeX and XML communities.
WIDGETIZE