Re: some proposals on MathML

Hi Andreas.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.  Here are a few initial
reactions:


> - re: 4.3.3.2 General Attributes

   I think you are correct;  we should have 'id' along with 'class'
   and 'style'.  This just looks like an oversight to me.

> - The lang attribute may also be useful to add generally.

   This is a good point.  We should try to check with the 
   internationalization people at W3C, too.

> - Have you considered adding HTML 4.0's <OBJECT> element to MathML?

   This falls in the large gray area of "mixing HTML and XML".  There
   is a joint W3C working group meeting in a couple of weeks focusing
   on just this issue.  At the moment, we aren't allowing any mixing,
   because that is the most likely to actually be implementable in the
   near future.

> - For compatibility to OpenMath, please allow [integrals without
    explicitly bound variables]

> - Please also reconsider the relative order of the qualifiers ...

> - What is the reason for not including the two standard <quant>ifiers,
   <forall/> and <exists/>?


   We have been hustling to try to rework the handling of bound
   variables more generally, and I think what you want will 
   be allowed.  Certainly your requests will be noted in the final
   discussion. 

   I think we will not be including <forall/> and <exists/> because
   of exactly what started to happen to you, in your comment; this
   addition starts to propagate changes like crazy.  However, it is
   still being discussed, and if someone can really make the case
   that the addition won't introduce some serious logical
   inconsistency, we may still do it.

> - the logical operators not, and, or, xor ...  
   
   This has been fixed.
 
> - may I propose a "units=" attribute for the <cn> and <ci> elements

   I hadn't thought of this before.  It seems reasonable.


Thanks again,

Robert Miner

Received on Thursday, 29 January 1998 12:26:05 UTC