Fwd: [Moderator Action] [Moderator Action] RE: Active lobbying: Math

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Paul Topping <pault@dessci.com>
> Subject: [Moderator Action] RE: Fwd: [Moderator Action] RE: Active lobbying: Math
> Date: 24 Aug 2015 22:12:36 CEST
> To: Peter Krautzberger <peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org>, "W3C Digital Publishing IG" <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
> X-W3C-Hub-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.3
> 
> Peter,
> 
> I totally agree with the lack of MathML knowledge on the part of browser vendors and, perhaps, beyond. Perhaps there’s some math phobia at play here.
> 
> I also agree that the state of math accessibility is messy. Lots of stuff out there to convert MathML to speech strings (plug: my company’s MathPlayer does a good job) but what is lacking are the consistent delivery mechanisms. It is hard for end users to put all the pieces together. In fact, it is hard for software developers to put the pieces together. The number of people who care about math accessibility, AND have the intimate technical knowledge to even know what’s missing, is small. It is hard for them to get the attention of the people who set the technical agenda and allocate resources for screen readers, browsers, AT s/w, standards, etc. They all have bigger fish to fry, as they say.
> 
> When you say “web developers are using MathJax's shortcomings as an excuse to dismiss MathML”, what shortcomings were you referring to? Judging from the mailing list traffic, my own take is that, except perhaps for performance, the shortcomings are really just due to the difficulty of integrating MathJax into web pages. This is not so much due to shortcomings that MathJax can address but the general lack of modularity and structure in the modern web platform. This is at least something that the HTML5 movers and shakers are aware of and are addressing. Though they have a long way to go, there is a lot of energy behind it and it has a high priority. That said, I do worry that they are not addressing precisely the issues that MathJax needs addressed. Perhaps an agenda item would be to make these needs explicit. Rather than demand that browser makers implement MathML, ask that they address a set of integration problems that would make MathJax easier to work with and have better performance. For example, MathJax has to perform a bunch of tricks to make typographic measurements and these are generally a performance bottlekneck. Perhaps these could be supplied by some new browser API.
> Paul
> 
> From: Peter Krautzberger [mailto:peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org <mailto:peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org>]
> Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 12:48 PM
> To: W3C Digital Publishing IG <public-digipub-ig@w3.org <mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org>>
> Subject: Re: Fwd: [Moderator Action] RE: Active lobbying: Math
> 
> Hi,
> 
> This is a bit longer. Sorry about that.
> 
> 1. Ivan suggested I should sum up what I've been involved in.
> 
> * In 2013, when Chrome dropped WebKit's MathML code, we coordinated with our MathJax sponsors to reach out to Google management (non-publicly) to encourage the Chrome team to reconsider.
> * in 2013/14, MathJax looked into working on Gecko and WebKit directly; we could not find funding and we could not get WebKit companies to even have a discussion about long-term code ownership (let alone architecture or any other guidance). I'm aware of several efforts to find funding since then.
> * in 2015, the MathWG reached out to browser vendors to start a discussion of the overall situation; we put this on hold for lack of availability from the browser end
> 
> 2. Regarding the discussion so far
> 
> * re Paul Belfanti: "publishing at volume".
> 
> I think from a browser vendors perspective, there will never be enough volume.
> 
> * re Bill Kasdorf
>   +1 to all points. But also: publisher investments in MathML have been mostly internal. Not many have invested in polyfills, web development tools, web standards development, or browser development. Similarly for third party vendors.
> 
> * re Paul Topping.
> 
> > I used all my votes for MathML but I am sure it didn't get many votes compared to other features.
> 
> Actually, some features have fewer votes than MathML and get moved towards implementation.
> 
> > After MathJax, the problem is largely solved, at least from their perspective.
> 
> This does not match my experience. Frequently, web developers are using MathJax's shortcomings as an excuse to dismiss MathML.
> 
> * re Deborah Kaplan
> 
> > I want to stress that the push for native MathML is not out of any desire to get rid of MathJax.
> 
> That's ok ;-) the MathJax project was designed to eliminate itself by encouraging browser support. But we'd also be happy to enable what comes after MathML 3.
> 
> > It is out of the need for publishers to be able to distribute native math that can be read by screen readers without users having to do anything special.
> 
> This strikes me as orthogonal to native MathML rendering. Both exposing MathML to a11y interfaces and finding MathML-enabled AT are quite different (but equally messy) problems.
> 
> Simply reading out MathML via MathML-enabled AT is theoretically easy; try the example at https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-docs/issues/111 <https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-docs/issues/111>.
> 
> The much bigger problem is AT for visual users, e.g., sync-highlighting and exploration (see comment on ARIA below).
> 
> > Rather, the greater concern is non-browser-based reading systems, frequently used for textbooks, which have legal requirements for accessibility.
> 
> How do you see browser implementations for MathML help here?
> 
> * re Liam
> 
> re (1) you make it sound easy ;-)
> 
> re (3) is actually a huge, messy, overlooked issue; see my use cases on font metrics APIs for Houdini.
> 
> re (4) I don't really think this is a big issue these days (although third party vendors are a different issue). TeX conversion has many options, Microsoft's own equation editor and Windows handwriting recognition can produce MathML, MyScript has great apps. Although high-quality MathML Editors are virtually non-existent (esp. if your focus is publishing on the  web) -- that probably means something?
> 
> re (5) the examples are not quite right, I think, (long division etc is actually pretty easy in MathML 3 markup). But otherwise, yes.
> 
> re (a) math content becomes quickly tabular and there's not a lot room for reflow in tables. But here's something fun https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-RespEq <https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-RespEq>
> re (c) the state of MathML accessibility is pretty messy, on both the content, browser, OS, and AT end.
> 
> 
> 3. Let me add a couple of entirely personal points.
> 
> I think the main problem is that nobody really knows what it would technically require to implement good math layout in browser engines or what it would take to implement good MathML support.
> 
> * Browser vendors have never worked on MathML.
>   * MathML in Gecko and WebKit has been almost exclusively implemented by unpaid volunteers
>   * Only Mozilla devs has actually supported its volunteer; they are the only knowledgeable browser devs regarding MathML.
> 
> * In my experience, both browser vendors, publisher, and third party vendors have surprisingly little knowledge of
>   * MathML as a markup language
>   * math layout in general
>   * MathML layout specifically
>   * math layout using OWP tech
>   * math accessibility using OWP tech
> 
> * third party vendors have a bit more knowledge of the first two but I sometimes see an incentive to keep things complicated (read: expensive).
> 
> * The ARIA spec has a massive hole where mathematics should be.
> 
> * Neither browsers nor publishers are active in the MathWG (ok, maybe 1 exception).
> 
> * The MathML spec needs some work in an HTML5 context
>   * MathML has been "out of sync" (for lack of a better term) with HTML/CSS/SVG for a while
>   * MathML duplicates HTML/CSS features (sometimes the features are not compatible though never critically so imho)
>   * MathML hides quite a few complex layout features behind math syntax, complicating the implementation of both
>   * ContentMathML has failed outside of CAS.
> 
> Another key problem is: MathML is neither necessary nor sufficient for math layout on the web. Nowadays, HTML/CSS implementations are good enough for (high quality) math/MathML layout. I'm not speaking of client-side JS-driven rendering but of (server-side) HTML+CSS generation that looks the same on all recent browsers. (MathJax will introduce such a technology in our next release. It's not pretty markup code and it's not perfect but it works.)
> 
> Personally, I don't think MathML will be implemented in browsers (though I'd be extremely happy to be wrong here and will support any effort in this group). I do think there are more realistic alternative goals such as improving CSS implementations incrementally and developing standards for exposing underlying data such as MathML to tools such as AT.
> 
> Again, sorry about the length.
> Peter.
> 
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 7:29 PM, Deborah Kaplan <dkaplan@safaribooksonline.com <mailto:dkaplan@safaribooksonline.com>> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Aug 2015, Paul Topping wrote:
> 
> Convincing them to implement EPUB would be a worthwhile cause.
> 
> Yes, absolutely.
> 
> Isn't the bigger problem convincing students and teachers to adopt etextbooks?
> I'm sure many of you here know the actual data, and anecdotes are not data. But I do know that when I was a graduate student two years ago, I had two choices: print, or the official electronic textbook through our vendor, which was an epub which could only be read through the vendor's reading system.
> 
> At that institution, in any case, the students and the teachers aren't making the decisions. If you buy a textbook, you get the electronic version as is delivered, which is usually EPUB.
> 
> But again, I'm sure many people on this list have the actual data.
> 
>  (There was non-terrible accessibility on the reading system (since it is an educational platform with compliance requirements), so it was minimally usable without a mouse. But the textbooks were unedited OCR, so I wouldn't have wanted to use them with a screen reader.
> 
> That's a content problem, though. Unedited OCR isn't going to end up with MathML markup no matter what the reader supports.)
> 
>  Deborah
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C
Digital Publishing Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0782-2704