- From: David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk>
- Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 17:45:54 GMT
- To: jjramsey_6x9eq42@yahoo.com
- CC: www-math@w3.org
> These are the plans that I was talking about: > ... > I know this would break the XML rules, but I think > it might be a good idea to only require the low-level MathML tags to > be XML-compliant, ... It is, I think, becoming clear since the MathML recommendation was published that there will be many applications using an XML syntax, and they will all be similarly verbose. If MathML were to produce its own private macro extension that broke XML, then any document using MathML will not be valid XML, and would not be usable by the many XML tools that are being produced. An extension (macro) scheme that keeps within the XML syntax is much more attractive for that reason, but again MathML should not go it alone, it should be able to fit in with the XML standards as they evolve. Specifically it might be that XSL may be used to play this role. Certainly for the example in section 5.3 with a new <rank/> element, XSL as currently proposed could transform a document which used that to one that was valid MathML. What isn't totally clear at the present time is whether such uses would interfere with an application that was using the same XSL mechanism to control the style of the rendering of the MathML itself, rather than mapping _in to_ MathML. It is still the case that to initially produce the MathMl you are going to want to type something like x^2 + x + 1 rather than the XML. However as Barry replied, the current thinking is that transforming such syntax to MathML should be done by an external pre-process, or editing tool, not as part of the MathML language itself. Hope this helps. David
Received on Thursday, 29 October 1998 12:48:00 UTC