Re: Math in the Page Authoring Guidelines

Including MathML with OBJECT or even images
with IMG in a normal scientific paper is impractical
due to the large number of mathematical expressions 
in a paper. 
But the future is promising: http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html-in-xml/

The current techniques include 

1. using PDF, PostScript, or LaTeX-DVI instead of HTML/XML

The guidelines may suggest to provide also a TeX or LaTeX 
version, as there is software who can transform it to speech,
rather than providing only ready to print-useless for speech 
versions. 

2. Many converters from TeX to HTML use incorrect 
markup to fake mathematical symbols. For example:
<FONT face="symbol">a</FONT> to generate the 
Greek lower case alpha. 
this is incorrect as a conforming browser should render 
the Latin letter lower case a in this case.
The guidelines should warn against this practice and 
recommend using correct markup e.g., 
the HTML4.0 entity &alpha;
As this is done usually by automatic converters it may be 
mentioned also in authoring tools guidelines.

Regards,

Nir Dagan, Ph.D.
http://www.nirdagan.com
mailto:nir@nirdagan.com

"There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." 
-- A. Einstein

Received on Tuesday, 8 December 1998 18:18:08 UTC