Re: Line breaking and MathML

James Amundson <amundson@fnal.gov> writes:

> I am trying to understand the status of line breaking in MathML. By
> "line breaking" I mean the display of mathematical expressions that
> would be too wide to fit on a single display line. I cannot find any
> reference to this problem in the context of MathML, but perhaps I am
> using the wrong terminology. Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
> 
> I realize that the problem of dynamically breaking mathematical
> expressions into multiple lines is a difficult problem.

Math segments may occur either "inline" or "displayed".  If this
distinction is to be regarded as one of xhtml-level content rather
than an issue of style (a distinction apart from that of content
vs. presentation mathml), then it seems to me that the distinction is
precisely the question you raise.  That is, the position of line
breaks in a rendering of the xhtml instance is relatively insignificant
for the inline case, i.e., merely don't break at an obviously bad place,
but quite the opposite for the displayed case: don't break except where
it's explicitly provided.

In printed documents it has long been the author's responsibility to
ensure that displayed mathematics is marked up to provide precise
control of line breaks.  For on-screen documents in re-sizable formats
my view is that displayed mathematics should be overscanned.

                                    -- Bill

Received on Wednesday, 13 March 2002 21:03:33 UTC