Minutes: MathML Core Meeting of August 3, 2020

Attendees:

   -

   Neil Soiffer
   -

   Brian Kardell
   -

   Murray Sargent
   -

   Bruce Miller
   -

   Louis Maher
   -

   Rob Buis


Regrets:

   -

   Patrick Ion
   -

   David Carlisle



Agenda:
https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml/issues/8#issuecomment-667748594

The meeting was recorded:
https://benetech.zoom.us/rec/share/_51HdovZ5G5IaIXD6WDue5ElOpngT6a813Aa_aIJmEgvzBIDP3wMm0DINZu35Ome
(Access Password: $2%Ekq4?)

Charter:

   -

   We created a very basic starting point (not even a 'first draft') of  MathML
   WG charter
   <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W-oYUbOMueaqb3KFSWkjWVBwR6AzSEBizHwQhvSwfDc/edit>,
   please have a look, comment, contribute
   -

      NS: Fred had some concerns on the decision making part, that we don't
      specify browser buy-in.  I think that the process of W3C is going to
      enforce that, but I don't know. Moritz also had concerns but I don't
      entirely understand them. I hope they will join a call to allow
for higher
      bandwidth discussion.
      -

      BK: people have different feelings. Probably three different things:
      mathml core, what you can usefully do with known popular
non-browser tools,
      or things we hope will be done someday or some more obscure tools. On the
      latter there are a lot of good ideas, speculation, and just theorizing.
      This is why I suggested that we should get started on the charter sooner,
      rather than later, because if we aren't careful things can spiral out of
      control and some folks are going to be concerned about that.
      -

      MS: We could add something about things about that should be
      deprecated
      -

      NS: Times have changed in terms of how specs are written, and perhaps
      the charter could call out some examples about what will be
deprecated, but
      we have to be careful not to make the charter the spec. There
are wordings
      that need changing. I did notice that the WHATWG Processes also include
      some examples, so we could potentially do that with the charter - careful
      examples.
      -

      NS: Brian has some experience with other charters. Any other things
      to add in thinking about it now
      -

      BK: CSS WG has recently realized that some of the things it says
      aren’t true, where it speaks about how something works "by design". E.g,
      text-transform and screen readers. These kinds of things where you talk
      about a11y and aren’t the group that deals with a11y gets tricky. So I
      worry about things that aren’t straightforward math in the
browser. That’s
      why I didn’t write much about it in the charter. I don’t know
what needs to
      be done or how to write about it.
      -

      NS: If we are going to have this ready for TPAC, we need to keep
      pushing forward. So hopefully no more than two more weeks of
brainstorming,
      then a few weeks of throwing out things that don’t fit or
clearly can’t be
      accomplished, followed by some discussion of details/wording, and then
      turning it over to some editors who will polish it/put it into
the correct
      format/template/location for outside groups to look at/comment on. So
      please continue to comment.



There are 28 MathML Core issues with "needs resolution"Consider integrating
scriptlevel into font-size #174
<https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml/issues/174> (anything new?)

BK: Rob checked and the WPT and implementations were updated to what they
thought Elika said and so those probably need changing. I’m going to be
opening issues with CSS this week.

Applying visual effects #179
<https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml/issues/179>

NS: what happens now?

RB: I don’t know

NS: Seems like we need to write tests and see what the implementation is
doing. Do they just flow through or do we need to have the UA stylesheet
for math reset some of them?

BM: Seems like we need more abstract language so we don’t have to list
every potential interaction. Probably requires someone with deep knowledge
of the web to know which things fall into what categories… if there are
different categories of effects.

BK: we need to know where it is special, such as creating a new stacking
context.

Custom MathML elements #138
<https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml/issues/138>

BK: This should be moved to level 2. They should be treated as unknown
MathML elements in Level 1.

Resolved: to move to core level 2.

Interoperable handling of invalid markup #15
<https://github.com/mathml-refresh/mathml/issues/15>

Non-normative note to spec to send message to console

BK: need to get Webkit or Gecko to agree because they do something
different.

[discussion of specs and tests]

BK: Firefox displays an error, Webkit hides the content, not even laid out
in an mrow. Someone should fact check. SVG renders nothing for invalid
subtrees in some cases. MathML is different because it is text.