RE: [Clipboard] Mathematical Proofs in HTML5 Documents‏

Henri Sivonen, While some mathematics, clipboarding and drag and drop topics have been previously discussed, some topics are still somewhat pioneer with regard to both math islands and math archipelagos.  Browser support topics for mathematics-related functionalities are exciting anew due to, in part, digital books and textbooks. Each <annotation> and <annotation-xml> in MathML3 includes a content type specifying attribute, @encoding, and a thought was that JavaScript could populate a DataTransferItemList from a math island. Also topical are hypertext document regions with auxiliary structure included (e.g. RDFa) or attached (e.g. SMIL, SMIL Timesheets) where the document regions have or contain elements with multiple semantic formats.  The JavaScript would be slightly more complex for facilitating data motions from such regions and the data transfer format options could be numerous. The non-exhaustive list of techniques for including or attaching document objects to hypertext, mentioned in the previous leter, can generalize beyond mathematical proofs which can be conveniently moved between browsers and applications such as automated reasoning applications, automated theorem proving applications, computer algebra systems, as well as other upcoming applications for the education technological niches that portable document objects and data objects in digital books and textbooks can create.  There are also possibilities for scholarly and scientific communication, scientific desktop computing, and the topics can generalize to the embedding of arbitrary objects in or to the attaching of arbitrary objects to hypertext documents, in highly functional ways, while utilizing HTML5 presentationally. For those and for other usage scenarios, it might be convenient to have a new feature on the DataTransfer interface (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dnd.html#the-datatransfer-interface).  A feature request includes a SetDataProvider or setDataProvider function to facilitating the use of JavaScript delegates as callbacks for data ypes.  An example is DataPackage (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.applicationmodel.datatransfer.datapackage) which has a SetDataProvider function (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.applicationmodel.datatransfer.datapackage.setdataprovider). Some other ideas include, from IDataObject concepts, to concepts resembling IOleObject, possibly IOleDocument, where the browser and/or web page author, possibly by means of widgets (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/), can describe fully linkable and embeddable objects in hypertext document objects.  A simple example is a <table> that is both contenteditable and draggable where the user then drags and drops that table into another application, edits and saves the table, and the webpage receives the updated table from the user. Other interesting topics include intents (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html), web intents (http://webintents.org/) and some new application interoperation trends eerging from platforms.  The browsers, as applications, can utilize intents on various platforms, such as Android.  Windows 8 has application contracts (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464906.aspx) and some developers might desire for the browser to exhibit some of those when their webpage, web application or digital book is loaded.   Kind regards, Adam Sobieski  > Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2012 15:34:35 +0300
> Subject: Re: [Clipboard] Mathematical Proofs in HTML5 Documents‏
> From: hsivonen@iki.fi
> To: adamsobieski@hotmail.com
> CC: public-webapps@w3.org; hallvord@opera.com
> 
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:57 AM, Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > MathML3 includes <annotation> and <annotation-xml> elements which can
> > provide parallel representations of mathematical semantics
> 
> > 1. Having entire proofs in <math> elements. Proof formats could then express
> > semantics in <annotation> or <annotation-xml> elements. OpenMath content
> > dictionaries could come to exist for mathematical proof structures.
> >
> > 2. Having proofs in HTML5 document structure, possibly containing one or
> > more <math> element instances, while utilizing XML attributes from other
> > XMLNS.
> 
> Does any browser currently support any kind of a XML-based clipboard
> flavor? If you transfer MathML islands using an HTML clipboard flavor,
> you can't use arbitrary namespaces.
> 
> > 3. Having proofs in HTML5 document structure, possibly containing one or
> > more <math> element instances, while utilizing RDFA
> > (http://dev.w3.org/html5/rdfa/). Proof structure and semantics can overlay
> > the HTML5 and/or the RDFA can relate elements to referenced external
> > resources.
> 
> What kind of software do expect to consume of this kind of data?
> 
> -- 
> Henri Sivonen
> hsivonen@iki.fi
> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/