Re: linebreaking mathml

Hi Bruce,

You write on an issue concerning presentation MathML in web browsers:

>   I suppose that when MathML was originally developed,
> the authors imagined that the browser would be responsible
> for line breaking.  ...

I am concerned with the community of authors having TeX backgrounds.
As one such author I want complete control over linebreaks in math.
I believe this is the general attitude among TeX users for traditional
print.

I want to emulate that as much as possible in XHTML+MathML.

Accordingly for all <math> elements I set the "white-space" CSS
property to "nowrap".  For examples such as you suggest I use <mtable>
with no more than 3 cells per row as the sole content of <math> in
display mode.  When there is insufficient width of the user's browser,
the window will require horizontal scrolling.

As author I limit the width of content so that the need for horizontal
scrolling should not arise with a font of default size in a browser
window that is 60% of the width of a 1280x1024 display.

The width limitation is natural when I am using one source markup for
both XHTML+MathML and print (via LaTeX).


                                    -- Bill

Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 17:17:06 UTC