Re: Line breaking and MathML

On Wed, 2002-03-13 at 20:03, hammond@csc.albany.edu wrote:
> Math segments may occur either "inline" or "displayed".  If this
> distinction is to be regarded as one of xhtml-level content rather
> than an issue of style (a distinction apart from that of content
> vs. presentation mathml), then it seems to me that the distinction is
> precisely the question you raise.  That is, the position of line
> breaks in a rendering of the xhtml instance is relatively insignificant
> for the inline case, i.e., merely don't break at an obviously bad place,
> but quite the opposite for the displayed case: don't break except where
> it's explicitly provided.

The problem I have in mind is the following: I am considering using
MathML for the output of a symbolic algebra program, Maxima. What I'm
worried about is displaying machine-generated code that will not fit on
a single line. If Maxima is to provide the line breaks, how can it
possibly decide how to do it? If Maxima is going to expect the MathML
display software to do the breaking, is that a reasonable assumption?
I.e., do any available MathML display tools do that?

> In printed documents it has long been the author's responsibility to
> ensure that displayed mathematics is marked up to provide precise
> control of line breaks. For on-screen documents in re-sizable formats
> my view is that displayed mathematics should be overscanned.

Perhaps it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the lingo, but I don't know
exactly what you mean by "overscanned."

Thanks,
Jim Amundson

Received on Wednesday, 13 March 2002 22:24:23 UTC