Re: Mathml and latex

There is some discussion of this in the MathML Rec, but the issues all
center
around the need for fuller integration with the web environment.  At
some level, embedding a fragment of LaTeX in a web-page is not much
different from embedding a picture, and the difficulties lie in getting
the surrounding environment to interact with parts of the picture.

Here are some points to get you started:

    1.  The desire to be able to benefit from  built in browser support
    for  CSS, XSLT, etc., and more generally the whole suite of
    XML based technologies and tools.

    2.  The desire to use browser technology at the
    fragment level rather than entire expressions and/or
    pages.   It would be difficult to make parts of a LaTeX expression
    interact properly with the surrounding environment.  There would
    need to be a macro package defining all the necessary markup and
    then there would need to be communication between the application
    that parsed the LaTeX, and the browser.  This requires yet another
    language, etc.

    3.  The desire to integrate more easily with other XML standards
    such as SVG, embedding math in SVG, and viceversa.

    4.  The desire to handle dynamic resizing of pages, etc.
    With LaTeX, line breaking is largely left to the
    author, and then done for one static size of font and page.

    5.  The desire to facilitate automatic processing of the
    mathematical meaning, and to allow authors to document
    their math definitions by referencing them.  LaTeX is largely
    used in a presentational (page layout) manner and while
    a macro package could be written along similar lines of
    content mathml (and may even yet have a role) that information
    would again only be available to the TeX application that parses it
    rather than to the surrounding browser environment.
   (This comes up in searches  and in things like web services ... )

Hope this helps ...

Stan Devitt

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cristian" <cberk@libero.it>
To: <www-math@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 3:06 AM
Subject: Mathml and latex


>
>
> I'm trying to know about MathML and I read a lot about Latex. I don't
> understand the reason why Latex wan't the best candidate to be used on
> the Web.
> Thanks for any help!
> Best regards
> Cristian
>

Received on Monday, 9 September 2002 06:51:14 UTC