Getting Math onto Web Pages Community Group created

The Getting Math onto Web Pages Community Group has been launched:
  http://www.w3.org/community/mathonwebpages/

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There are many technical issues in presenting mathematics in today's
Open Web Platform, which has lead to the poor access to Mathematics in
Web Pages. This is in spite of the existing de jure or de facto
standards for authoring mathematics, like MathML, LaTeX, or asciimath,
which have been around for a very long time and are widely used by the
mathematical and technical communities. 


While MathML was supposed to solve the problem of rendering mathematics
on the web it lacks in both implementations and general interest from
browser vendors.


However, in the past decade, many math rendering tools have been pushing
math on the web forward using HTML/CSS and SVG.


One of the identified issues is that, while browser manufacturers have
continually improved and extended their HTML and CSS layout engines, the
approaches to render mathematics have not been able to align with these
improvements. In fact, the current approaches to math layout could be
considered  to be largely disjoint from the other technologies of OWP.


Another key issue, is that exposing (and thus leveraging) semantic
information of mathematical and scientific content on the web needs to
move towards modern practices and standards instead of being limited to
a single solution (MathML). Such information is critical for
accessibility, machine-readability, and re-use of mathematical content.


This Community Group intends to look at the problems of math on the web
in a very bottom-up manner. 


Experts in this group should identify how the core OWP layout engines,
centered around HTML, SVG, and CSS, can be re-used for the purpose of
mathematical layout by mapping mathematical entities on top of these,
thereby ensuring a much more efficient result, and making use of current
and future OWP optimization possibilities.  Similarly, experts should
work to identify best practices for semantics from the point of view of
today's successful solutions.


This work should also reveal where the shortcomings are, from the
mathematical layout point of view, in the details of these OWP
technologies, and propose improvements and possible additions to these,
with the ultimate goal of reaching out to the responsible W3C Working
Groups to make these changes. This work may also reveal new technology
areas that should be specified and standardized on their own right, for
example in the area of Web Accessibility. 


The ultimate goal is to pave the way for a standard, highly optimized
implementation architecture, on top of which mathematical syntaxes, like
LaTeX or MathML, may be mapped to provide an efficient display of
mathematical formulae.


Note that, although this community group will concentrate on
mathematics, many other areas, e.g., science and engineering, will
benefit from (and factor into) the approach and from the core
architecture. 

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To join:
  http://www.w3.org/community/mathonwebpages/join

If you do not have one already, you will need a W3C account to join:
  http://www.w3.org/accounts/request

This is a community initiative. W3C's hosting of this group does not
imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair:
 http://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#how-do-we-choose-a-chair

For more information about getting started in the new group, see:
 http://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#how-do-we-get-started-in-a-new-group

and good practice for running a group:
 http://www.w3.org/community/about/good-practice-for-running-a-group/

We invite you to share news of this new group in social media
and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires
the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team

Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2016 12:26:07 UTC