Re: [math-on-web] CG meeting minutes, 2018/01/18

 

Hi Arno,

After our short discussion, I continued to work on WebKit support in
JavaFX / OpenJFX.

I posted the Issue (JavaFX OpenJFS and MathML #71 [1]) on the new
OpenJFX GitHub Contributor process and started to work as suggested by
OpenJFX team.

I found and fixed the problem. I'm waiting now to get my pull request
merged into OpenJFX. Some problems still remain but the support of
MathML it's far better than in the previous version. I can now use it in
my own applications. I hope it would interest others developpers.

On the picture, the reference goal TeX is on the left and the MalML
rendering JavaFX/OpenJFX is on the right.

The small application for the test is not simply a web browser it's an
editor (the HTLMEditor of JavaFX/OpenJFX). It can made some edits in
formulas but we can not presently create formula. Many problems have to
be fixed before we can use it. AsciiMath as authoring language seems to
be a good entry point.

Of course one can use only the web browser JavaFX/OpenJFX component
(WebView).

The test is from the Mozilla MathML Torture Test.

I hope to see it in the next OpenJFX release, I really need it.

Best regards. 

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Hi Arno, 

Thanks for your answer, 

> ​That's an interesting use case. It might take a while to get there, given that SMS doesn't even support bold text, but a good use case to keep in mind. It might be easier to get support in other messaging platforms before SMS (SMS is tied to telecom standards that are slow to evolve).

By SMS, I mean, to use only its sequence of characters and to display it
in a specific SMS Messenger. I agree with you that telecom standarts are
slow to evolve that's why we need a specific messenger. 

> The status of JavaFX is a bit murky, but OpenJDK might be a way to contribute. I also note that the issue above has 0 votes. Furthermore, the issue seems to be with the MathML support in the host browsers, so really, until the host browsers (Chrome, Safari, IE) support MathML natively, the chances of seeing a fix for this bug are low.

I wrote "JavaFX", but in fact, I mean "OpenJFX" its open source version.
OpenJFX includes a web browser "WebView" built over webkit that's why it
supports MathML. 
(https://docs.oracle.com/javase/9/docs/api/index.html?overview-summary.html)

But I don't understand why with the same webkit version, it works well
on Safari and not on OpenJFX. As suggested by team OpenJFX leader,
(http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2017-December/021113.html)
I tried to see where is the problem, but it's not pure Java and build
OpenJFX is a bit difficult than build OpenJDK. 

> - is the height of the container that needs to be surround by the fence, within certain margins? 
> - if so, use a single glyph representing the fence: U+007d "{" 
> - if the height is above those bounds, create a "stacked" fenced, by putting a glyph at the top U+23a7 "⎧", a glyph at the bottom U+23a9 "⎩", a glyph in the middle U+23a8 "⎨" and for the rest of it, a "repeating" glyph, U+23aa "⎪" (and so on for all the different types of fences)
 Before choosing a way to proceed, I tried to understand how TeX works.
There is several prebuilt sizes of each fence (3 ou 4). TeX first tries
to use these sizes and if it needs hiegher, TeX builts the "stacked"
fenced as you discribed. But what about italic and other orientations !
?
So,I wonder why nobody tried to sent a simple font file with the right
sized glyph draw to the glyph engine (Harfbuzz or other) as TeX but for
each sizes and not only for the first four.
I think that drawing a bracket as a curve is simpliest and economics
than the algorithm that puts glyphs over other glyphs.
That's the way I choose to proceed, I directly draw "{", "(" and "[".
The inconvenience, is that I have to create them by hand and then to
draw them but without use the glyph engine (a bit complicate for me
because I don't know how to built a font file). Fortunately Java can
draw it easily. The advantage, I have got symetric, italic and
horizontal glyphs too, with the same curve.

 Best regards. 

Guy. 
 

Links:
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[1] https://github.com/javafxports/openjdk-jfx/issues/71