Re: [MathOnWeb] call for comments -- directions for 2018

On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 5:57 PM, Liam R. E. Quin <liam@w3.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 2018-01-15 at 13:44 +0000, Arno Gourdol wrote:
> > Personally, I don't think that MathML is the solution. I would rather
> > see CSS and ARIA improved. This would be a less significant effort
> > from a standard and implementation point of view, while providing a
> > more flexible solutions.
> >
> > Specifically, I would like to see support in CSS for stretchable
> > fences and notations, features which are currently
> > difficult/impossible to implement well.
>
> I agree that building mathematical formatting on CSS (and extending CSS
> where needed) makes sense in the Web platform.
>
> I don't agree that this obsoletes mathml - especially the semantic
> markup - since done well it could actually *enable* the use of mathml.
> You might as well say that having display:block and size:larger
> obsoletes the h1 element, but that'd be ignoring the needs of search
> engines and content management systems.
>

​I should have been clearer since you seem to disagree with something I
didn't say. I'm not arguing that MathML should be obsoleted. In fact, the
point you're making is the one I made about the second workstream. If I may
quote myself:

A workstream about machine readable representation of mathematical
> notation, for the purpose of computation, alternate renderings, etc...
> would be a useful topic as well. In this context, I'm not considering
> something that would necessarily need to be implemented by browsers, but
> something that could be used to foster interchange between software. This
> could be MathML, Latex, Wolfram, or some form of ASCIIMath (or maybe more
> than one of those).

​
I agree that MathML could have a role to play as a machine-readable format.
However, that doesn't mean that browsers should have anything to do with
displaying MathML. There are a number of solutions today that display
MathML in browsers, even if those browsers don't support MathML. Browsers
do not need to support MathML for MathML to be useful.


There are plenty of features in mathematical formatting that would be
> of use elsewhere, ranging from line-breaking of complex structures
> (e.g. Japanese two-line wraechu) to fences to alignment of displayed
> equations on the = sign with an equation number in the margin.
>

​Yes, indeed, and those would be prime candidates for enhancing CSS.

Best,
Arno.
​MathLive