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: 25 Aug 2015 24:17:09 CEST
> To: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>, Peter Krautzberger <peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org>, W3C Digital Publishing IG <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
> X-W3C-Hub-Spam-Status: No, score=-8.8
> 
> Although I have my own issues with MathML's design, it was not that hard to implement in Internet Explorer with our MathPlayer plugin. Microsoft did add perhaps 3 APIs that helped it along but, other than that, MathPlayer was able to do a pretty good job of rendering MathML both graphically and as speech. Although MathPlayer acted as a plug-in to IE, it was implemented using native C++ COM objects, just like IE itself, and, therefore, was an integrated part of the browser.
> 
> I have never heard anyone representing a browser maker complain that MathML was hard to implement. They all said that they didn't perceive any demand. Of course, we know enough about MathML to say that it is not trivial to implement but I see nothing that makes me think that is the source of the problem. Furthermore, those things that make MathML implementation non-trivial are really unavoidable. Off the top of my head, there are two areas:
> 
> - Font and character metrics. Browsers don't provide enough APIs to do this. In MathPlayer we were able to do this with native Windows APIs so this was not really a problem.
> 
> - Layout negotiation. In the simplest situation, equation rendering code needs to get information from the layout engine about the body text font, size, and color and the column width, calculate the vertical space required for the equation, and then be told by the browser to render in the space it provides.
> 
> These problems are really not that hard to solve and would be present in equation rendering regardless of the design of MathML.
> 
> Paul
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Doug Schepers [mailto:schepers@w3.org]
>> Sent: Monday, August 24, 2015 2:43 PM
>> To: Peter Krautzberger <peter.krautzberger@mathjax.org>; W3C Digital
>> Publishing IG <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
>> Subject: Re: Fwd: [Moderator Action] RE: Active lobbying: Math
>> 
>> Hi, folks–
>> 
>> MathML was developed a long time ago, in isolation from HTML and CSS.
>> 
>> I think we could really benefit from taking a look at _why_ browser
>> vendors aren't implementing MathML, learning those lessons, and making a
>> new version of MathML that's easier to implement and maintain, easier to
>> author, easier to style, and is better integrated into HTML5.
>> 
>> I've voiced this opinion to Peter before. I don't think we differ much,
>> and I think the years of experience the MathJax team and others have in
>> implementing MathML in modern browsers could yield a lot more benefit
>> than trying to push browser vendors to implement MathML as it is today.
>> 
>> Regards–
>> –Doug
>> 
>> On 8/24/15 3:47 PM, Peter Krautzberger wrote:
>>> 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.
>>> 
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> 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