Re: MathML is dead, long live MathML

Hi Daniel,

Ok. Let's discuss!

Most interesting for me is Peters statements
> Content MathML is just not relevant.
Since I'm currently investigating how content MathML is used, and
whats needs to be done to get mathematical content from one system to
another.
Currently, I have the impression that the latter question is
completely solved in theory, but completely unsolved in practise.

Disclaimer: While I really appreciate drinking beer with Peter, we
have slightly different approaches for de facto standards to share
mathematics in information systems.

Best
Moritz


On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Daniel Kinzler <daniel@brightbyte.de> wrote:
> Peter Krautzberger, maintainer of MathJax, apparently thinks that MathML has
> failed as a web standard (even though it succeeded as an XML standard), and
> should be removed from HTML5. Here's the link:
>
> https://www.peterkrautzberger.org/0186/
>
> It's quite a rant. Here's a quick TL;DR:
>
>> It doesn’t matter whether or not MathML is a good XML language. Personally, I
>> think it’s quite alright. It’s also clearly a success in the XML publishing
>> world, serving an important role in standards such as JATS and BITS.
>>
>> The problem is: MathML has failed on the web.
>
>> Not a single browser vendor has stated an intent to work on the code, not a
>> single browser developer has been seen on the MathWG. After 18 years, not a
>> single browser vendor is willing to dedicate even a small percentage of a
>> developer to MathML.
>
>> Math layout can and should be done in CSS and SVG. Let’s improve them
>> incrementally to make it simpler.
>>
>> It’s possible to generate HTML+CSS or SVG that renders any MathML content –
>> on the server, mind you, no client-side JS required (but of course possible).
>
>> Since layout is practically solved (or at least achievable), we really need
>> to solve the semantics. Presentation MathML is not sufficient, Content MathML
>> is just not relevant.
>>
>> We need to look where the web handles semantics today – that’s ARIA and HTML
>> but also microdata, rdfa etc.
>
> I think both, the rendering as well as the semantics, are well worth thinking
> about. Perhaps Wikimedia should reach out to Peter Krautzberger, and discuss
> some ideas of how math (and physics, and chemistry) content should be handled by
> Wikipedia, Wikidata, and friends. This seems like a cross roads, and we should
> have a hand in where things are going from here.
>
> -- daniel (not a MathML expert all all)
>



-- 
Moritz Schubotz
TU Berlin, Fakultät IV
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Received on Thursday, 7 April 2016 18:01:04 UTC