Re: political strategy for MathML

> If it comes down to the situation that the only way MathML will ever
> be created in the real world is with CAS output

there are other ways, for example you can imagine a system with an
embedded math input interface not unlike webeq's that let you type
inline tex and have it insert mathml in to the document.

Or for users of Widows WP systems like MSWord, they can use mathtype4
today and get mathml expressions into their documents.


> Until out of the box pc's have browsers that handle MathML, a teacher
> in the U.S. will not be able to assume that a significant fraction of
> his or her students have easy access to online documents with MathML.

Probably more people today can render MathMl on the machines on their
desks than could render dvi files a couple of years after TeX came out.
Have faith, things change rapidly:-)

> I would need to add symbol declarations, something that is not at all
> like present LaTeX,
I don't understand. If you want to access a right arrow then somewhere
you have to have a symbol definition, be it a \mathchardef for TeX or an
<!ENTITY declaration for XML, don't you?


> That said, it is also unclear to me at this point whether it
> would eventually be the best route through the formatting object
> language (still a moving target, I believe) to a mass-market browser
> screen formatting.

Coordination between MathML and any Math formatting objects for XSL/CSS
is likely to be rather close.

David

Received on Thursday, 28 October 1999 11:41:02 UTC