- From: Paul PIkowsky <pksky@finestplanet.com>
- Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 14:26:47 -0500 (EST)
- To: <www-math@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <000001c29e26$87e01270$0500a8c0@propjob>
Hello: Some time ago, I decided it might be an interesting thing to do to study mathematics independently and seriously. With the help of a university library and a computerized library catalog I was able to make no small amount of progress over the period of several years. I collected a bibliography and managed to reach some interesting conclusions. I decided that it might be rewarding to others to share what it was I found. The Internet pointed to a way I might do that. Moving the collection of books that I had written down to my desktop computer was easy using the bibliographic software ProCite. Making my bibliography available on line has obstacles, but none of them insurmountable. Actually trying to write down my observations proved to be another kind of problem altogether. After about a year of trying to publish simple text with equations to the internet, I have decided that it is at this point completely impractical using the available technology. It is the gravest disappointment to me that the technology established by the World Wide Web Consortium for doing precisely this has failed me in my goals. Here are my efforts so far in publishing mathematical discussion to the internet: http://galileo.spaceports.com/~symbiota/HIR/HIR.html And especially, http://galileo.spaceports.com/~symbiota/HIR/HIRDifferentDiffForm.htm#Dif ferential Microsoft Word My first experience was with Microsoft Word which has the capability of creating HTML documents and even saving the equations that you use in the document along with them as GIF files. The results you get doing this is very disappointing. It is impossible, as near as I can tell, to apply changes to simple things like background color and expect any changes to the GIF file you have created. Microsoft Word is where I had my first experience with MathType, the Word plug-in that allows you to create "Math Pages" capable of being served to the internet. I experimented with this and found that you could successfully create documents that could include equations and also serve to a wide variety of browsers. This was encouraging, but the technology depended heavily on scripts and also, once created, the HTML document could not be edited by Word. It could only be edited using an original Word document and then recreated to the HTML document. This is a real nuisance if all you want to do is correct a few typographical errors or change some simple formatting like background color by editing the HTML document directly. If you have to edit or add an equation later, you find yourself functioning with two different documents, the HTML document and the Word document. LaTeX I heard that LaTeX had some potential for adding equations and also creating documents to be served to the internet. I looked into this possibility and was disappointed to discover that despite several days of exploration, investigation and research that I was completely and utterly unable to even perform so simple a task as creating a readable file of some kind -- any kind -- using LaTeX. This, despite having had considerable success with command line editors like vi. Despite this frustration, I investigated *TeX again when I heard about tbook while hoping that XML might open the way to applying equations to HTML documents only to be disappointed again. XML When Netscape and Mozilla finally began to be making browsers that could interpret equations using MathML, I decided that this really was my last chance for serving HTML documents with equations in them. I had first discovered this potential in using Amaya, the browser and editor that is supposed to be able to create math legible documents. But I was not able to accumulate any real success using this software. For some reason, documents made with Amaya cannot be read using Mozilla/Netscape and I despaired of asking my readers to install Amaya just to read my work. Asking them to use Mozilla or Netscape seemed more reasonable. I was also pleased to find that somebody had created a Math equation editor in Mozilla, but was disappointed to find that I can't seem to make it work. You can save to clipboard and paste from there, but it still is rather limited in how you can apply it. It was experimental, but I still had hopes. There is also the EzMath Editor that will save a MathML equation to the clipboard to be pasted into an HTML document. This has been my latest hope and inspired me to explore XML since this is the source of MathML as a technology. But even when you can manage to paste an equation into an XHTML document, there doesn't appear yet to be any way of actually creating equations with EzMath Editor I really like XML, I have purchased the Academic version of Visual Studio .NET and really like the way that it handles XML. I had hoped that this software might provide some insight into applying MathML, but I have not been able to utilize its XML functionality to explore MathML despite successfully downloading an XML Test Suite page and its XSL pages from www.w3.org/Math and successfully serving them to myself in Visual Studio .NET's browser (MathPlayer enabled). Visual Studio .NET cannot seem to interpret the MathML elements as data. I really think that XML is the future of the internet. I would rather use XML to publish text to the internet then HTML. There is a bit of a learning curve, but I am convinced that there is a very short bridge between learning HTML for simple text applications and using XML for the same purposes. That bridge is style sheets. Another XML programming tool that I have tried is XMLSpy. This is a very satisfying tool to use, it looks as though it might actually have an advantage over Visual Studio .NET and there is a home version available for about $100 US, so it is much more accessible then Visual Studio. Dreamweaver by Macromedia is the first web designing software that I have seen that will create XHTML documents in WYSIWYG environment. There may be some hope here, but it is certain that the environment does not accommodate MathML at this time. Scientific Notebook by MacKichen software is another math capable editor that will save to HTML, but will not edit the HTML directly once created. Also, I had trouble with my browsers not reading the equations correctly. Somewhere in the bowels of XML is the secret of MathML and applying it using XML editing concepts. I could imagine struggling to add equations using XML elements alone if I had some confidence that what I was applying yielded legible or even XML valid results. I have attempted to do this using various samples cut and pasted from every MathML editor I could find and have yet to deliver up some kind of useful document. The thing I see in common between XMLSpy and Visual Studio .NET is their dependence on schema for creating some kind of XML project. But, as near as I can tell, MathML at this point depends completely on DTDs. Now I'm not exactly sure what the necessary relationship is between DTDs and an XML document, but I do know that Visual Studio .NET can actually create schemas based on an XML document. I've tried this, but Visual Studio has problems doing it. Would it be worth exploring the errors? I've seen at the W3 consortium site that there is some kind of effort to create a MathML schema and so it they have not been able to come up with something, I doubt that I could hack my way to one using Visual Studio alone. If I had a good MathML schema could I start crafting MathML documents using XMLSpy alone? I'm not really sure; I actually have nothing to suggest that I could. This is how desperate I am, I am grasping at straws. I am convinced, however, that the key to a good, easily available WYSIWYG MathML editor is not text editors like Word, but an XML programming editor like XMLSpy. I don't think such a thing is beyond the grasp of your average high school teacher. I am convinced there is a good elementary pedagogy for making XML useful to the casual user. Generally, there is a need for a good WYSIWYG editor for creating XML pages that are controlled by XSL style sheets and schema. This can already be done in many editors with HTML and CSS sheets - Visual Studio .NET, for example. Once XML pages can be edited as transparently as HTML is now, then MathML can be easily integrated along with many other excellent XML based technologies like SVG. Editors and Proprietary Interpreters I would hope that software developers abandon the idea of creating proprietary interpreter/editor combinations for serving up mathematics on the internet. Even in an isolated environment like a university, it is simply too much to ask to expect readers to install software to read documents that can only be created by one editor. This contradicts the Internet and its vast potential. But why is it that the hopes of a universal markup language for mathematics should be so completely impenetrable to the casual user? Why should school teachers be obliged to purchase or explore university grade software in order to post study material to the internet for their students? What is missing? I can't imagine that it is an editor alone that is the obstacle. Again, I am certain that there is an easy pedagogical approach to creating MathML documents that is as transparent as the simplest "Hello World!" HTML document. Anyone can program HTML and, eventually, anyone will be able to program the same simple HTML documents in XML too. Where does MathML fit into that simple potential and why hasn't it been filled already? I thank you for your attention to my experience in this and thank you for your efforts so far. Despite my frustration, it has been a most rewarding effort. Paul Pikowsky, pksky1@hotmail.com, pksky@finestplanet.com
Received on Saturday, 7 December 2002 15:52:42 UTC