Re: What are your plans for MathML macros?

> 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