Re: Java API for MATHML

The content definitions for the arc trig functions
used in appendix C were largely based on Abromovitz 
and Stegun, Section 4.4  -- see, for example, 

http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-MathML2-20021219/appendixc.html#cdef.arccos

and more generally, were chosen to be consistent 
with OpenMath.

Stan.

> 
> Robert Miner wrote:
> 
> >>Although it looks interesting for an amount of task... do I understand that 
> >>you're opening the door to yet another system with possibly, say, yet another 
> >>interpretation of the arccos ?
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Yes.  But as this is true for any new piece of software that has an
> >interpretation for functions like arccos, I'm not sure what the
> >implication is?  That no new mathematical software should be written? 
> >  
> >
> What it means is that when one starts to write a software which is 
> expected to be connected to the rest of the world, one has to ask how 
> good this connection is to happen.
> In the case of MathML-content, I thought the lack of specification of, 
> at least to my knowledge, the inverse-trigonometric functions have made 
> Mathematica and Maple MathML-content behave inconsistently.
> Based on this experience (which I'd like to see one day written 
> somewhere under an "interoperability" heading in the w3c.org/math 
> pages), a new software being written should then declare something like:
> the inversed trigonometric functions shall behave the same as Maple, 
> Mathematica (or OpenMath) ones.
> 
> Hence my statement which was, sorry for that, sort of sketchy.
> I would surely not prevent new software to be written!
> 
> Paul
>

Received on Monday, 24 February 2003 18:10:06 UTC