Re: MathML at the next CSS WG F2F meeting

Hi Frédéric and all,

First of all we need to add the issue and discuss it on github. I'll do it
when I've a little more time.

Despite this, there is no urge to add new CSS features right now unless the
necessary for the MathML implementation. I think that both we agree on that.

My claim is that it is good for the health and future of MathML that it is
properly integrated with HTML5. And that will imply that all MathML
building blocks (fractions, stacks, scripting, stretchy, etc.) are also
available as regular HTML5 (and CSS). It is something like the <table> tag
that is also available as CSS (although both approaches are not exactly the
same).

This vision is fundamentally different from other people's of the
MathOnWebPages. In the sense that I believe that a good implementation of
MathML in the browser will inevitably result on better tools for handling
mathematics with solely HTML5. While the position of some the people of the
MathOnWebPages is the opposite: implement MathML using the available tools
in HTML5 (thus not native implementation at all).

Regards,

Dani



On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 10:47 AM Frédéric Wang <fwang@igalia.com> wrote:

> In general I think it's good idea to introduce new CSS features for math
> layout and Igalia plans to work with Google on that.
>
> As I already said several times, we should not make the same mistake as
> the former Math WG and instead really only propose new native features when
> we have a clear specification/implementation/testing plan. In particular we
> should have an idea about how it would work in web engines' internals and
> be able to discuss with them on this point (otherwise we are just wasting
> people's time). This is the rule I've tried to follow for the MathML Core
> and for the CSS proposals I linked in my previous email.
>
> As I said my colleague Manuel Rego is attending the meeting and will do a
> short intro. He is familiar with layout implementation in WebKit and
> Chromium, so should be able to discuss implementation details with Google.
> I am not attending the meeting.
>
> On 25/02/2019 08:38, Neil Soiffer wrote:
>
> That is great. The Math on the Web CG also has some proposals. I believe
> the two most pressing ones were some enhancements to vertical alignment (in
> particular, adding "axis") and some for stretchy characters [1]. These were
> already presented to the CSS group at the last TPAC meeting. I believe Dani
> is more tuned into them than I am, so I'll let him chime in.
>
> We should be supportive of the work of the other math-oriented CG where
> our goals overlap... which I think they do for improvements to CSS. I hope
> whomever will be at the meeting (Frederic?) will be able to speak to those
> ideas if they come up, or potentially proactively mention them.
>
>     Neil
>
> [1] https://w3c.github.io/mathonwebpages/taskforce/css/
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 1:05 AM Frédéric Wang <fwang@igalia.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Igalia contacted Google again this week to discuss our progress on the
>> "MathML in Chromium" project and Google provided very positive and
>> useful feedback. My colleague Manuel Rego will be at San Francisco for
>> the CSS WG face-to-face meeting. Among other things Google invited us to
>> do a quick heads up about the work of Igalia and the MathML refresh
>> community group and they will probably start reporting some spec issues
>> to our tracker. I know we haven't discussed/decided everything yet in
>> this CG (trackers, cleanup of spec, css proposal [2]...) but I guess
>> nobody has any problem if we take the opportunity of the face-to-face
>> meeting to introduce our work and get browsers involved (some people
>> from Mozilla are also interested). I'll follow-up with you all next week
>> anyway.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>
>> [1] https://wiki.csswg.org/planning/sf-2019
>> [2]
>>
>> https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml-css-proposals#mathml-css-proposals
>>
>> --
>> Frédéric Wang
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Frédéric Wang
>
>