Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] MathML Core (#438)

There is one thing that the CG would very much like TAG's input on: we are struggling with specifically what to do with links. 

MathML was designed with an assumption that "someday, everything can have an href/be a link" was the future. So, the pre-core MathML specs allow any MathML element to have an href.

These days we understand that links are quite complex with regard to security, idl, integration with CSS, focus management, role, etc. In most browser implementations of MathML, token elements can be hyperlinks, and the vast majority of hyperlinks in existing MathML are on token element, or on `mrow`. 

We are struggling between 3 choices:

1. Simply say MathML doesn't have hyperlinking elements for Core Level 1, and take advantage of the ability of token elements to contain HTML by providing authoring advice to use an `<a href>` or write JavaScript code to handle the click event.

2. Choose a safelist of MathML elements to support an `href` attribute. This would be either all token elements, or all token elements plus `mrow` (together these are nearly all uses we could find). 
   - This would involve a longer review process to reach consensus on things like what the default tab index of these elements should be and how it should be specced (would it entail a PR on the HTML spec to add these elements to the list of focusable elements?) 
   - It would also make it tricky to support Shadow DOM on these elements, since hyperlinks can't have a shadow root.

3. Add a new `<ma>` hyperlink element which is `mrow-like`. The arguments here are more or less the same as for #1, but they also solve for groups and still allow `mrow` to support Shadow DOM someday.
   - This seems like a good trade-off, but how hard would it be to get implementers and authors to buy in to this change?

-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/438#issuecomment-640917806