Re: MathML capable browser

Robert --

: 1) It displays true HTML + MathML documents, in what I think of as

Do they have a DTD for HTML and MathML merged?

:    their "archival" format, meaning that you don't have to use
:    technology specific applet tags, or embed tags, etc to launch a
:    MathML viewer.  Since I think we can fairly confidently say that
:    mainstream browsers will ultimately also have native MathML support,

Don't you mean native XML support?  (Do you think world really cares
about math?  Wasn't the html3.0 experience sufficiently clear?)

:    at that point, people who have created documents using helper
:    technologies like WebEQ and TechExplorer will have a document
:    conversion task on their hands.

(Too bad that these people did not have a useful authoring DTD from
which to generate whatever the output of the day happens to be.)

: A third reason why I think ICESoft deserves kudos for adding MathML
: support to their component library is that it greatly facilitates

What are the terms for use of the component library by others?
Has it seen the glare of daylight?  That is always the issue with
software and always the weakness of proprietary products.  People
do not want to look at code that they cannot work from freely.  So
nobody but the author(s) ever look(s) at it.

Now it would be a *good thing* if the local groupies got together
and put out some testbed stuff like 80% of a useful authoring DTD
with some processing code for public engines, say David Megginson's
SAX (free from www.megginson.com) or SGMLSPM (free from CPAN).

People who are willing to trust proprietary DTD's and SGML/XML
processors will pay for various 100% versions.  And nobody who wants
to buy anything is prepared to *rely* on perl code, right?

                                   -- Bill

Received on Thursday, 10 December 1998 12:14:37 UTC