[Fwd: Re: MathML and CSS]

Whoops, I inadvertently replied only to Stan....

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: MathML and CSS
Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 20:53:47 -0400
From: Bruce Miller <bruce.miller@nist.gov>
Organization: NIST
To: Stan Devitt <jsdevitt@stratumtek.com>
References: <40A45354.8060407@nist.gov> <2EEBFEB1-A5B3-11D8-91E5-000A95C50B1C@activemath.org> <40A7848C.5090307@stratumtek.com>

Stan Devitt wrote:
> 
> Two points related to content MathML.
> 
> 1.  "Doing just enough" could include using a functional notation for 
> content MathML.
> The place where you get into trouble in trying to do content MathML 
> right now with CSS is in the
> tree re-structuring and this would allow you to avoid that.
> 
> We start with  writing out content expressions in parsable formats like 
> int( bvar(x) , sin(x) ),  or   plus(a,b,c)  .  (basically writing things 
> in a functional notation) then Content MathML is not totally abandoned
> Then, as you add CSS functionality that allows you to restructure the 
> expression tree,
> you can go for something better. The key point is that the semantics 
> would need not be lost
> even from the word go.

Although I'm a little leery of getting into Content MathML when we haven't
even gotten Presentation covered, that is an interesting suggestion.

Even with the difficult corner cases, Presentation is a closer structure
to CSS's box model than Content is.  I expect that Content will best
be handled by XSLT (or JS).

> 2.  Even if CSS can't handle content MathML at all, it needs to be able 
> to "choose" a presentation out of
> the semantics tag and NOT display all the others.  We need to be sure 
> that the parts of the semantics expression
> that need to be invisible are easily configured to be so.

It is certainly easy enough to make the Content (MathML) invisible (and take no space).
I would have to look a little carefully to see whether complicated
parallel markup creates problems.  As it is, if an outer Content were made
invisible, any Presentation hidden within will be hidden as well.

-- 
bruce.miller@nist.gov
http://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/


-- 
bruce.miller@nist.gov
http://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/

Received on Tuesday, 18 May 2004 11:55:01 UTC