RE: Content Markup or Presentation Markup for Audio Rendering of MathML

I don't understand why you want to create a new parser to parse MathML.
MathML is XML and can therefore be parsed with any XML DOM or SAX parser.
The standard method to transform a XML instance to other formats
(like in your case) is to create an XSLT stylesheet.

As a vendor of an WYSIWYG authoring appllication
for the creation of XHTML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 docments,
my oppinion is, that it makes no sense to support
Content Markup in a WYSIWYG authoring software.
If it would support Content Markup, than it can not be WYSIWYG
at the same time. Because you would have to visualy mark things
that differ in its meaning but not in its visual layout (presentation).

You can always transform Content Markup to Presentation Markup.
Transforming  Presentation Markup to Content Markup is not
possible in general.

If you would see an audio browser playing the same conceptual role like a visual browser,
than its behavior should be analog to the behavior of a visual browser.

Every existing visual browser shows only Presentation Markup.
When you look at the rendering result you can not
determine whether the source was created as Content or Presentation
Markup.

But if your target audience are blind people there might be the wish, that
the role of an audio browser goes beyond the one of an visual browser
in that way that he interpretes and explains the content and not it's
visual presentation wich might be meaningless for a blind person.

So I think there might be good reasons to choose a markp language
that describes the content/meaning wich is not bound to any visual
presentation.
But it is the question whether MathMl Content Markup is reach
enough to fullfill that role in general. I doubt that.



Bernhard Keil
mailto:Bernhard.Keil@soft4science.com

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soft4science             Bernhard Keil
Nibelungenstr. 4        80639 Munich       Germany
+49 89 / 95 411 088  http://www.soft4science.com
+49 173 / 72 53 669  http://www.MathML.net


-----Original Message-----
From: www-math-request@w3.org [mailto:www-math-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Helder Ferreira
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 4:39 PM
To: www-math@w3.org; dfreitas@fe.up.pt
Subject: Content Markup or Presentation Markup for Audio Rendering of MathML


Greetings everyone!

My aim is to create a parser that generates a text version of formulas (MathML) in technical documents, to feed a TTS engine.

What would you use for audio rendering of mathml?
Content Markup or Presentation Markup?

Seems to me that Content Markup has much more to offer for audio rendering, however, most of the math applications or conversion
tools only create documents with presentation markup.
Most people use simple editor's that create presentation markup (usually in XHTML+MATHML format to publish in web).

The problem is that a parser to have some utility has to think of what people use, and pratice tells me to go for the Presentation
Markup, but Content Markup is much more suitable for audio rendering.
And transforming Presentation Markup into ContentMarkup doesn't seem a good idea to me, since presentation cares about visual
rendering and content cares about the structure and the meaning of the formula, and this is what matters to a blind user, for
example.

W3C MathML Spec and MathML Handbook from Pavi Sandhu, aren't very helpfull in this area, i only see one unique reference saying that
Content Markup is suitable for Audio Rendering. But seems to me that is shooting in the dark since most people use Presentation
Markup. Or am I wrong?

Is Content Markup only to be used as a standard markup language between applications? Or can it be used to publish technical
documents too, with the possibility to be usefull to render it in a TTS engine?

Thank you for your attention,

    Helder Ferreira
    Laboratory for Speech Synthesis, Electroacustics, Signals and Instrumentation
    Faculty of Engineering University of Porto, Portugal

Received on Wednesday, 23 April 2003 11:30:44 UTC