- From: Simon Pieters <zcorpan@hotmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:14:54 +0000
Hi,
I have noticed that there have been some discussion about MathML in HTML5 on
some lists and newsgroups, but I'm not subscribed to those (yet).
If I understand it correctly Ian's proposal is to have a list of elements
that are put in the MathML namespace when parsing. I have a slightly
different proposal which I'll describe below:
Instead of having a list of elements that are put in the MathML namespace,
<math> is a sort of namespace- and parsing scoping element so that it and
all of its descendants are in the MathML namespace, and also that all tags
inside <math> are parsed as any other <xyz> tags except for start tags for
empty MathML elements. E.g., <none> inside <math> is an empty element but
outside it is not; <br> is not an empty element inside <math>.
For setting .innerHTML on MathML elements, "root" would be a new <math>
instead of a new <html>.
This way existing tags on the web that happen to be the same as MathML tags
(outside <math>) won't be affected; there's no need to profile MathML to
HTML; MathML3 can introduce new elements (even with the same names as HTML
tags if they wanted to) without any need to change the parser (unless they
introduce new empty elements).
For example, with my proposal this (invalid) text/html document:
<!doctype html>
<title>test</title>
<p>This is not MathML: <mi>x</mi></p>
<p>The following is MathML:</p>
<math>
<mi>x</mi><mo>+</mo><mn>2</mn>
<p>This is still MathML and <br> is not an empty element</p>
</math>
...would be equivalent to this XML document:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>test</title>
</head><body><p>This is not MathML: <mi>x</mi></p>
<p>The following is MathML:</p>
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
<mi>x</mi><mo>+</mo><mn>2</mn>
<p>This is still MathML and <br> is not an empty element</br></p>
</math></body></html>
Please cc any other lists as appropriate.
Regards,
Simon Pieters
Received on Monday, 9 October 2006 13:14:54 UTC