Re: [MathOnWeb] Peter K's comments on directions for 2018

Hi Ivan,

I'm sorry about my previous message. I've grown very frustrated trying to
respond on this thread as I seem unable to make myself understood and I
seem unable to understand your position.

However, my last email was simply rude for which I apologize. It does not
represent the way I wish to communicate on this list or elsewhere; I will
do better in the future.

With best regards,
Peter.

2018-01-27 17:39 GMT+01:00 Peter Krautzberger <peter@krautzource.com>:

> Hi Ivan,
>
> It's difficult to reply as there are many details in your message that are
> off, uninformed or incorrect.
>
> I think we fundamentally do not understand each other; we do not
> understand how each of us views the current state of affairs, the available
> tools and standards, what each of us considers to be problems see or how to
> try to resolve them.
>
> So I cannot even agree to disagree as it would presume an understanding of
> each other's position.
>
> Peter.
>
>
>
>
> 2018-01-26 13:41 GMT+01:00 Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>:
>
>> Hi Peter,
>>
>> indeed, we do not seem to find a common ground:-( so let us try again.
>> Reset (symbolically, I removed all the previous threads from this mail:-).
>>
>> The discussion started with your statement whereby you think MathML
>> should be removed from HTML. What I was trying to understand is what you
>> would replace it with. Put it another way, if there is no MathML in HTML,
>> what is the vision of displaying math in a Web page?
>>
>> What I could *gather* from your replies and also some of our earlier
>> discussions is that, in your view:
>>
>> 1. Authors should use *some* tools (authoring tools, AI, simple screen
>> editors, whatever) to author/describe their math content. Let thousands of
>> tools bloom.
>> 2. Some process, possibly bound to these tools, would turn, on the server
>> side, these formulae into HTML+CSS+SVG content and incorporate those
>> directly into the overall HTML of the enclosing Web page. (Let us put
>> issues of accessibility and interactivity aside for now.)
>> 3. That web page then displays in the browser as usual and everybody is
>> happy:-)
>>
>> MathML, in this view, is "reduced" (although that sounds pejorative,
>> which is not my intention) to, e.g., publishing workflow usage, part of
>> step (1) above, it can be used for interchange among mathematical systems,
>> etc. And, in a way, that is also what happens often in practice, except
>> that, instead of HTML+CSS+SVG, MathML content is turned into images.
>>
>> If this is indeed your vision, then it is obviously a radical departure
>> from the current HTML+MathML approach. The fundamental difference, in my
>> view, is that the math rendering happens on the client vs. the server side.
>> And, I believe, that is also at the core of our disagreement: I am not
>> convinced that this is the right architecture.
>>
>> I think we can agree that the CSS+HTML+SVG "encoding" (let me call it
>> this way) for a mathematical formula is extremely verbose. You guys have
>> much more data on this than I would ever have, but I believe my gut feeling
>> is correct. That means the load will be on the amount of data transferred
>> to the client over the wire; that may very well become a major bottleneck.
>> The processing power of clients is, after all, getting huge and I do not
>> see that evolution slowing down; the speed of the network is far from
>> following that pace. There are other problems with this architecture (eg, I
>> am a bit worried about the extreme proliferation of different tools and
>> conversion engines) but that is the essential one.
>>
>> What it means is that I still believe the fundamental architecture of the
>> current HTML+MathML is right: use a succinct representation of mathematics
>> on the wire and let the client do the job. Hence the necessity, again in my
>> view, of having such succinct representation as a standard.
>>
>> Now... we know there are problems, to say the least, with the
>> practicalities today. And it may well be that MathML does not hit the right
>> target in making that architecture viable. For example, one of the comments
>> I often get is that MathML is aiming way too high: the goal is to be able
>> to represent PhD level mathematics, whereas, on the Web, the mass
>> publication would what our American friends call K12 or even elementary
>> mathematics. Ie, maybe the current approach should be changed by replacing
>> MathML with something simpler. Also, the implementation strategies used so
>> far may not have been not the good ones, because they did not use CSS & co
>> properly. Etc. And, probably, the two architectures will have to coexist
>> side-by-side and we have to understand the details. So yes, the current
>> situation does need improvement.
>>
>> Do we at least agree where we disagree?
>>
>> Ivan
>>
>> P.S. You realized that I did not use the L-word, right? :-)
>>
>> ----
>> Ivan Herman, W3C
>> Publishing@W3C Technical Lead
>> Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
>> mobile: +31-641044153 <+31%206%2041044153>
>> ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704
>>
>>
>