Comments on MathML Last Call Draft (cont'd)

Here are yet more comments on MathML Last Call Draft. Hope they
are of some use.

Pankaj Kamthan
--

7.1.2

Why is the "math" element mentioned (late) in Chapter 7? Shouldn't some 
of that be mentioned earlier; even earlier than Chapters 3 and 4? 

Rationale:

1.  It sets clearly what the root element in MathML is. (It is not "mathml"! But 
the reader wouldn't know that in a sequential reading till he/she reaches 7.1.2.)

2. It gives the reader an idea as to what a "complete" MathML document 
structure looks like. 

So some details on it could be mentioned before the example in 2.2.1., 
which is the first instance where the reader sees any MathML markup. 
This is only suggestive but a subsection (with some content of 7.1.2 in 
it) that provides a MathML document structure with a template MathML 
document similar to the following may be desirable:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!DOCTYPE math PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD MathML 2.0//EN" "mathml2.dtd">
<math>
  <!-- Elements of Presentation and/or Content Markup here. -->
</math>

(Yes, I do realize, as 7.1 says that "... the primary anticipated use of 
MathML is to encode mathematical expression within larger documents." But 
it could first be indicated what a valid MathML document looks like on 
its own, prior to the details of embedding MathML in other contexts. So 
any namespace-related declarations are not necessary here.)

From here (2.2.1) details of math element attributes, MathML DTD, etc. 
could be linked.

Related to Appendix A

The description at http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/ mentions that a typical 
use of MathML 1.0 DTD is: 

<!DOCTYPE math SYSTEM 
"http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml1/mathml.dtd">

The SYSTEM identifier for MathML 2.0 DTD at 
(http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/dtd.zip) is:

SYSTEM "mathml2.dtd"

Shouldn't it be:

SYSTEM "http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/mathml.dtd"

or the like? 

Rationale:

1. The absolute URI above takes a similar structure as the reference to 
MathML 1.0 DTD. 

2. It is canonical (or at least it is supposed to be).

There are, of course, other issues with the above use, such as (what 
about) standalone documents and DTD cacheing.

Received on Thursday, 4 May 2000 17:09:52 UTC