# Re: New MathML Drafts

From: William F Hammond <hammond@csc.albany.edu>
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:04:00 -0400
To: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>

Message-ID: <i7d49kue0v.fsf@hilbert.math.albany.edu>
David Carlisle writes:

> I'm pleased to be able to announce new drafts of MathML3 and the
> MathML for CSS profile.

Thanks.  I'm happy to see progress.

I was hoping for clear guidance on prime accents in the context of
presentation markup.  All I see in the new spec (after searching the
pdf for "prime") is 3.2.3.1:

Not all 'mathematical identifiers' are represented by mi
elements -- for example, subscripted or primed variables should
be represented using msub or msup respectively.

I raise this, in particular, because, for example, Firefox rendering
of <mi>x&#x2032;</mi> and <msup><mi>x</mi><mo>&#x2032;</mo></msup>
changed between late versions of FF2 and current FF3.  (With FF2 and
the first example the prime was not raised; with FF3 it is raised.
With FF2 and the second example the prime was placed well; with FF3
it is too high and too small.)

Also it seems now that <mi>x'</mi> is now being set upright by FF3
while <mi>x&#x2032;</mi> is not.  Why?

Of course, these would be FF issues but for the fact that there is

For example, what should be the presentation equivalent of the
LaTeX: x^{\prime{}\,2} (which likely means {x'}^2 but looks better)?

If some items of cdata are to be given non-standard treatment in math
(and there is history in mathematical typesetting to justify it), it
needs to be spelled out.  Maybe a better way would be to roll out new
markup such as an attribute for mo when it holds a prime accent.

My point is that there is insufficient guidance in the spec.

See http://math.albany.edu/~hammond/gellmu/primeaccents4.xhtml
as well as the earlier analysis it references.

-- Bill

Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 17:04:45 UTC

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