RE: Whither MathML support?

Daniel, you are absolutely right that this same tension between presentation and semantic content exists for text represented with HTML. But, a sequence of text is a relatively straightforward data structure. Mathematics (across all disciplines) - not so much.

Of course that PowerMac demo was of a calculator operating on its internal data model not software that was starting with a displayed graph of an equation and going backwards.

Personally I think the best we can hope for is that MathML will become more widely adopted because it provides for a much more adaptable/accessible/stylable representation of presentational mathematics (which will help to display content on various devices as well as for those with print disabilities). Serendipitously, this representation, being much more structured, will also be MUCH better grist for machine processing than SVG or a bitmap image would have been. So that live calculation UX for arbitrary MathML  - a la the PowerMac demo of yore - could be feasible even if not 100% reliable for all possible MathML because there will still be some heuristics involved. 

This is, to circle back, similar to the situation with text. People didn't move away from text blocks in GIF to enable better machine processing of web pages but to make web pages faster, more accessible, more responsive, better on mobile devices. But that evolution certainly is facilitating machine processing of web pages. Yet if we had tried to (re)design HTML to be the perfect data format for semantically representing texts that would likely have failed to gain adoption. And we can probably all agree this could have been feasible in principle, whereas in the case of arbitrary mathematics the feasibility is questionable.

--Bill


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Bennett [mailto:daniel@citizencontact.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 7, 2017 12:25 PM
To: public-publishingbg@w3.org
Subject: Re: Whither MathML support?

Bill and folks,

One could always show equations with graphics, especially SVG. Why bother with MathML at all then? I thought the idea was to have mathematics that could be represented as math. I have seen HTML go through similar bumps with texts. GIFs were the best way to show stylish text and alt attribute provided the actual text. Yet we have advanced to allow for embedded fonts and SVG to allow text to be better represented with great presentation.  So again I ask whether MathML is up to the job of representing the math well? Perhaps this is behind the reticence to fully incorporate MathML into browsers.

I remember the first time I saw a PowerMac while visiting Apple. They showed me the included calculator that allowed for playing with polynomials, dragging and dropping, along with immediate graphing of the equations. Makes me wonder if MathML will make this type of work easier in web pages or not.

Daniel


On 9/7/2017 2:58 PM, Bill McCoy wrote:
> Daniel, it seems to me that the precursor question is: is it possible to semantically represent mathematics in a single general declarative data format? Whether that data format could reasonably be XML, JSON, or something else seems a second-order question as it would be moot if the answer to the first question is "no".
>
> I would think of systems like Mathematica as embodying possible existence proofs but yet it seems that it is both leaning on programmatic scripting and (per threads like https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/28162/alternatives-to-mathematica) not able to handle all the various disciplines that comprise "mathematics" (not to mention the various other fields that use applied mathematics).
>
> In any case this seems like a knowledge representation question more so than a publishing question. E.g if it was possible to represent mathematics semantically it would be fodder for AI first and foremost, and only secondarily fodder for presentational publishing.
>
> So I think that this group should probably punt on this problem as both being beyond its scope and likely insoluble.
>
> --Bill
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Bennett [mailto:daniel@citizencontact.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 7, 2017 11:19 AM
> To: public-publishingbg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Whither MathML support?
>
> Hoping that someone will answer the questions I posed. This was non-responsive to my questions.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On 9/7/2017 2:03 PM, Liam R. E. Quin wrote:
>> On Thu, 2017-09-07 at 13:56 -0400, Daniel Bennett wrote:
>> [...]
>>> The second question, and as a strong supporter of XML, is it 
>>> possible to semantically represent math with XML? For example, there 
>>> is no real way to have page and line numbers in XML as well as 
>>> paragraphs that span them, as this breaks nestedness.
>> The usual approach involves thinking of page breaks as separations 
>> rather than containers and then using empty XML elements to represent 
>> them; the same for line divisions (except for poetry, where the lines 
>> are part of the content).
>>
>> For rhetorical overlap with structure, such as a quotation that goes 
>> from the middle of one paragraph to the middle of the next, a 
>> representation of one structure or the other as primary and using 
>> attributes to link together e.g. a continued quotation, is a common 
>> approach.
>>
>> The people at the Text Encoding Initiative and more generally Digital 
>> Humanities have been doing these things for decades, so it's a 
>> question of knowing where to look ;-) There've been papers on 
>> representing overlap in XML presented at Extreme Markup and, later, 
>> Balisage, conferences.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Liam
>>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 8 September 2017 15:53:18 UTC