Re: Whither MathML support?

I agree with most of this.  But IMO there is a large divide between
vertical Japanese text and MathML.  One is pretty much a requirement in
Japan, while MathML is somewhat of a niche language.  Still, there is
hope. As one of the original Adobe engineers on SVG we despaired at times
of it ever succeeding, especially when Adobe killed of its own support
(except import/export in Illustrator, which I wrote most of).  But
mirabile dictu, the browsers DID eventually implement most of the 1.1 spec!

So there is still hope for MathML.

Thanks for your feedback.

Ric


On 9/6/17, 4:01 PM, "Liam R. E. Quin" <liam@w3.org> wrote:

>On Wed, 2017-09-06 at 13:55 -0500, Ric Wright wrote:
>> [...]
>> * Given that the MathML spec seems to be, well, a bit stale (3.5
>> years since
>> last update) what is the long-term view of its viability?
>
>My own opinion is that the most effective way forward is to drop
>demands of every-little-bit-of-mathml-everywhere and instead for
>publishers to demand support of specific mathematics rendering features
>via CSS. For example, a CSS way to make built-up brackets (fences).
>I don't see e.g. building full TeX support into Web browsers any time
>soon, although with asm.js maybe it'll happen. But TeX was designed for
>print, and making TeX mathematics accessible turns out to have its own
>challenges too.
>
>> * Given the difficulty of making it accessible, does it make sense to
>> try
>> and provide markup that is accessible
>
>Yes.
>
>
>>  or just throw in the towel
>
>No.
>
>Consider someone using readium to supply an epub3 textbook in the
>educational sector where accessibility is required by legislation as
>well as institutional rules.
>
>>  [...] It is not easy to
>> find
>> examples of the use of MathML (and most are very old) which suggests
>> that it is not widely used.
>It's not widely shipped on the Web because browser support is so
>pathetic. That doesn't mean it isn't used. But browsers don't see it as
>a high priority I think primarily because not enough people ask them
>for it.
>
>It's a bit like vertical Japanese text - publishers simply weren't
>putting it on the Web because the browser support was inadequate. When
>the browser vendors became aware of this there was an increased push
>for supporting vertical Japanese text.
>
>Similarly Opera didn't support XSLT until Google Maps was released
>requiring it.
>
>The best way to improve browser support for MathML would be to give
>them a business case for it. Bill Kasdorf's response is an example. If
>scientific journals started publishing with native MathML and just
>said, if your browser doesn't support enough of MathML here's a list of
>ones that do, would that make a difference? I expect it might.
>
>It might also help to be clear that MathML isn't only for research-
>level mathematics and engineering but applies from elementary school
>upwards. Or there's the sneaky approach of making a "profile" of MathML
>called K12ML or even just MiddleSchoolMathMarkup (MSMM) and pushing
>that... of course, it wouldn't leave much out!
>
>But all this is about a sort of activism & doesn't answer the question
>is is yes, I'd want to detect whether a book uses mathematics (e.g. via
>a simple XPath query) and include a copy of MathML conditionally,
>activate it only when needed. And include a message, "Loading
>JavaScript support shim for missing browser support for equations" :-)
>
>Liam
>
>
>-- 
>Liam Quin, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
>Staff contact for Verifiable Claims WG, SVG WG, XQuery WG
>
>Web slave for http://www.fromoldbooks.org/

Received on Thursday, 7 September 2017 13:34:21 UTC