notes on conference call of 15 July

Notes on HTML-Math ERB Conference Call
15 July 96
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In attendance:

Robert Miner    Geometry Center
Neil Soiffer    Wolfram Research
Ron Whitney     American Math Society
Ralph Youngen   American Math Society

[Notes prepared by RW.  Corrections welcome.]
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Not much business was transacted today.  Robert discussed the state of
his renderer, and said he would post a note to this list (which he's
already done).  Neil asked how symbols were being accessed, to which
Robert replied that he had swiped a WEBeq technique, but that he's also
anticipating the day when OpenType is available so that we can provide
a real solution.  Robert can fill in details for those who might ask.

Ron asked about the possibility of using the display list format as an
entry point for those who would like to transmit only visual data.
The idea would be to filter from TeX or the current ISO 12083 Math DTD
data to display list format directly, rather than trying to "upgrade"
legacy data or machine-ambiguous data to HTML-Math form.  Neil felt
that our display list specification already carried much of the
information which the expression tree carries, and that there is
nearly a one-one correspondence between the two trees.  Whether this
is actually true or whether is should be true seem to be questions in
the air at the moment.  [Bruce, what was your intent?]  I think we all
felt there might be value in treating the map from expression-tree to
display-list as an instance of a renderer (a "downward" map, in some
sense).  Ron spoke to using the current ISO 12083 Math standard as a
good set of layout schemata for this purpose.  Neil felt that ISO
12083 itself wouldn't fit so well in the midst of our language as a
set of layout schemata, but (Ron conjectured) a replication of its
functionality within the list notation already specified would provide
the entry point for layout filters.  Comments are welcome.