Re: Invitation: MathML Refresh General Meeting @ Tue May 28, 2019 8am - 9am (PDT) (public-mathml4@w3.org)

On the call I took an action to canvas some Chemists in the TeX community, first contact being Joseph Wright, a Chemist at the  University of East Anglia and a colleague on the LaTeX development team.

Joseph is also the author of the siunitx package the main latex interface to typesetting units and dimensioned values.

Some background links:

siunitx: http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/siunitx/siunitx.pdf


mhchem:  http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/mhchem/mhchem.pdf


chemformula:  http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/chemformula/chemformula_en.pdf


Joesph's comments forwarded with permission.


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Hi David,

Ah, all makes sense now.

As you say, a lot of chemistry is out-of-scope for MathML. However, we
do need support for 'simple' linear formulae/equations. In the TeX
world, both mhchem and chemformula offer similar ability. Things like

     H2 + 1/2 O2 ->[Pt] H2O

(where Pt would be above the arrow) are pretty common. We do need a
range of arrows, isotopes (i.e. superscripts before element labels),
bond representation (single ~ em dash, double ~ equals, triple ~
\equiv), etc.

In Word, when I need such a thing to look right, I end up using a
graphical tool (ChemDraw) and pasting in, largely for the (extensible)
arrows. In LaTeX that's a lot easier ...

I'm happy for you to forward the above and/or to pass on my name as
someone who might have something useful to say.

Regards,

Joseph

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