Re: Some comments on MathML and Amaya, includes a sample MML document

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> The most serious
> problem I encountered was that if I closed the Amaya window with unsaved
> changes in the editor, I could not cancel this action without the
> program crashing. Fortunately, my work was restored when I restarted the

We tested some Math edition on Windows and Unix and didn't have this problem.
Do you remember the scenario that caused that trouble.

> program again. Even without the program crashing, the way this works is
> non-standard, at least in the Windows world. Most Windows programs in
> this situation give the user three options: Yes - Save and exit. No -
> Exit but don't save, and Cancel - Don't exit. Another problem I

The Amaya dialogue seems clear:
Save the document XXX before closing it
Save document - Close don't save - Cancel

> encountered was in adding and deleting MathML operators. When I tried to
> add some operators the program would insert an additional character
> which was rendered as a black rectangle, and I couldn't seem to delete

I guess it's an empty element which is rendered just to be selected by the end 
user.

> some operators once they were added. Finally, the file output from the
> program did not use the CR/LF sequence for line breaks that is standard
> in Windows. This made it difficult to open the file in a text editor.

Do you know a program that is not able to read files generated by Amaya?
All Windows editors I tested are able to read files generated by Amaya.

> (For debugging purposes, I was using v3.2, July 4, 2000, on a Windows 98
> platform)
> 
> Amaya did render MathML correctly with the following exception, when I
> tried to use the ⟨ operator, it was rendered as a '?'.

When Amaya cannot access a special character it renders as a '?'.

> I used ⟨ instead, though this operator does not seem to be
> documented in the specification. There were a couple of small formatting
> issues as well. First, I noticed that when a line started with either a
> '(' or a '[', the start of the line was not flush with the other text.

I guess this problem is fixed now.

> Second, when I used the ':' operator, there was no space between the ':'
> and the next character as would be expected.

This implies the analyze of the contents of the mathematical expression.

> Lastly, though I realize that the MathML specification is not intended
> to be a tutorial or a beginner's guide, I would like to suggest that a
> few links to complete pages that use MathML would be extremely helpful.
> I eventually found some very useful examples at
> http://www.webeq.com/mathml/samples/index.html. There are some complex
> mathematical notations on http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/mmlreview/
> but I didn't think this was useful as an example because it is
> implemented using complex tables and not with MathML proper.
> 
> Feel free to use the attached file in whatever way you see fit, though I
> won't make any claims as to the quality of the mathematical content. If
> you have any suggestions as to how the document can be changed to
> conform better with the MathML standard I would appreciate your sending
> them to me. Also, I apologize in advance if any of the problems listed
> above are due to my own ignorance or incompetence.

-- 
     Irene.

Received on Thursday, 17 August 2000 03:57:51 UTC