[math-on-web] CG meeting minutes, 2017/12/07

Hi everyone,

Below are the minutes from the yesterday's CG meeting.

The next meeting is scheduled for Dec 22. But it's likely there will be too
many regrets.

Best regards,
Peter.

# Math on Web Community Group 2017-12-07

On call: Dani, Neil, Peter, Volker

* Dani: I wanted to discuss two topics
  * another example of math layout through HTML
    * align column with different row than first
    * chatting with Igalia devs at TPAC gave new ideas
    * this solves an important piece
  * we should try to explain things more publicly
    * get people to understand what's difficult about this
  * revisiting accessibility
    * for me, that means talking about MathML
    * hoping to find common position
    * if the CG has a joint position, we can approach other groups better
* Neil: about HTML+CSS approach
  * how does it differ from MathJax?
  * looking at the code is partially a mystery
  * it works but don't knnow how
  * I think it would be good for everyone if people could understand this
better
* Dani: we've been thinking more about future solutions
  * we know the limitations of current tech
  * Neil: MathJax v3 changes seem promising
  * Peter: [screensharing and talking about v3 alpha /
https://mathjax.github.io/mj3-demos/mj3-mml2html.html ]
* Peter: I think talking about font-independent solutions is important
  * also, even MathJax v3 won't be "bleeding edge" because it's a
production-ready tool
  * adopting new CSS (e.g., grids) is still not possible b/c at least IE11
is required
* Neil: identifying what's missing in the platform would be very valuable
* Dani: we need to identify the limitations, then get the community to
follow up with CSS
* Neil: what was TPAC like?
  * Dani: good discussions
* Peter: we need allies beyond math, e.g., the SVG example I gave for
baseline alignment
  * math community is usually not too much in tune with web tech trends
  * Dani: we can't build these but we need to find those who do
* Peter: and admittedly we are too few in this group
  * I've certainly had trouble getting people to respond / come here
  * it would be good for others in the group to reach out more widely
* [some discussion about various MathML details]
* Dani: back to a11y
  * we need to have a joint position if we want to get anywhere
  * Peter: I'm aware of the disagreement I posted at
https://github.com/w3c/aria/issues/660 but I believe it's a mistake to use
MathML for anything web-related.
  * Neil: I would revise MathML and add an mrole attribute, open-ended,
  * [Volker's idea: which I didn't catch in the minutes]
  * Dani: I could imagine roles in MathML, then passed through to HTML/SVG
  * Peter: I don't like mrole because it is open ended and a MathML
revision seems very unlikely
    * DPUB aria shows ARIA is open to modules
    * there's ARIA role-description for open-ended stuff
  * Dani: I'd also hope to get copy&paste of subexpressions into an editor
    * Peter: that seems like a tough problem to solve, not even HTML or SVG
work well here
    * Neil: but a critical feature!
    * Peter: I'm not so sure but you could already build tools like this if
you wanted (e.g., MathJax exposes the MathML structure as classes)