Re: The problems with namespaces in text/html

"Paul Topping" <pault@dessci.com> writes:

> I second these concerns. MathML already contains markup for hyperlinks,
> spacing, and bolding.

The topic here is small bits of commenting text inside math,
wrapped in an <mtext> container.

<mtext> is a tiny scratchpad for authors (like \text{} inside
\displaymath{} in LaTeX), and if we want authors to join us, a few
features will need to be there for them.

Spacing is not the issue.  There is no way I know either to emphasize
or to bold part of it.  (I suppose one could use multiple <mtext>
containers with appropriate CSS clues, but that would be silly since
the reasons for MathML granularity don't apply inside <mtext>.)

It's true, as Distler said, that there is provision for an xlinked
mrow with attributes using XML namespace ':' notation, but that will
not fit in an Appendix C profile for math in HTML5.  In fact, I do not
see it currently working inside <math> in any user agent other than
Mozilla.  And I do not see it in the W3C Test Suite,
http://www.w3.org/Math/testsuite/ .  Have I missed something?

> Nesting languages such as HTML inside MathML inside HTML sounds
> desirable, ...

I'm not in favor of non-math content anywhere recursively inside math.

What I'm suggested is _taking_ _over_ the 4 names "a", "b" (or
"strong"), "em", and "a" when used in "mtext".  That will allow us to
control what happens.

                                    -- Bill