Re: [MathOnWeb] agenda and call-in details for Thursday, Jan 18, 2018

Hi Arno,

I've moved the proposed task forces to an issue on GitHub
https://github.com/w3c/mathonwebpages/issues/21. Please suggest any fixes.

I'll spin off another thread for the stretchy discussions.

Best,
Peter.

2018-01-19 11:21 GMT+01:00 Arno Gourdol <arno@arno.org>:

> Following up as per the discussion at the end of the call yesterday...
>
> In addition to a taskforce/workstream focused on improving CSS for math
> layout, the second taskforce/workstream I suggested is one that would focus
> on machine-readable formats of math for the following purposes:
>
> - software interchange (i.e. being able to copy/paste, send/receive data
> from a service). Imagine a web service that provides computation services,
> perhaps plotting of mathematical function. How would you represent the
> function to plot? What is the JSON equivalent for math?
>
> - other software processing, for example for accessibility (spoken or
> braille representation of math)
>
> There are several existing formats in use for these purposes today,
> including LaTeX and MathML. Could these formats be improved or could they
> be further standardize to better serve these use cases, in combination
> perhaps to improvements to other standards such as ARIA. This would also be
> an opportunity to tackle and clarify the role of MathML for math on the web.
>
>
> To give this more context, the way I envision math on the web in the
> future is as follow:
>
> - the "presentation" of math done with HTML and CSS (with suitable CSS
> enhancements, as there are lacunas today), accompanied with an out of band,
> optional but recommended, machine readable description of the formula
> (similar to the ALT tag of an IMG element). This should require the least
> effort from browser vendors to implement, and have the greater chance of
> broad adoption. I also believe this solution should not require the use of
> scripting. The required CSS/HTML could be generated dynamically on the
> server, or by an authoring tool at authoring time. In the future, a
> solution could be implemented based on web components/Houdini, but it would
> require the same improvements that are needed today to do the display from
> HTML and CSS, since it would essentially move the work that can be done
> today on the server in a locally packaged component.
>
> - interactive math (such as editing) done with HTML, CSS (relying on the
> same enhancements as above) and Javascript. This would seem consistent with
> accepted use of Javascript on the web for interactive/dynamic content.
>
>
> Finally, as a follow up on another point of discussion in the call, I
> looked at the implementation of stretchable fences in mj3. As far as I can
> tell, it uses an implementation very similar to what I'm using in MathLive,
> namely, multiple fonts with symbols of different sizes up to a certain
> point, then constructing the fences by stacking end caps and a stretched
> middle portion. This is fine, and all that logic can be done in Javascript.
> You could argue, I suppose, that an author who wishes to write formulas
> without Javascript could do the same kind of gymnastics, but I still think
> that having stretchable fences that could be described in CSS so that the
> browser's layout engine could do these calculations would be valuable. As
> an illustration, I would argue that writing CSS/HTML by hand to render the
> following is non-trivial, because of the fences:
> \begin{pmatrix}
>     x_{11}&x_{12}&x_{13}&.&.&.&x_{1n}\\
>    x_{21}&x_{22}\\
>    x_{31}&x_{32}\\
>    x_{41}&x_{42}\\
>    x_{51}&x_{52}\\
>    x_{61}&x_{62}\\
>    x_{71}&x_{72}
> \end{pmatrix}
>
>
> I'm not sure on what next step would make sense here. Personally, this is
> not something I need in MathLive, since I have a solution that works just
> fine. I believe this is something that would benefit the greater community
> of math on web authors, and could help achieve the goal I outlined above of
> displaying math content using only CSS and HTML, but I didn't get the sense
> that there was a lot of enthusiasm from this group regarding this.
>
> Best,
> Arno.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 17, 2018 at 9:13 AM, Peter Krautzberger <peter@krautzource.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> We are scheduled to meet on Thursday at 12pm Eastern.
>>
>> Since appear.in is now restricted to 4 participants, it's not useful
>> solution anymore. For now, we'll switch back to Google Hangouts, see [1]
>> below.
>>
>> Best,
>> Peter
>>
>> # Agenda
>>
>> * review call for comments
>> * plan potential task forces for 2018
>>
>> [1] https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/krautzource.com/mathonweb
>>
>
>