Re: Math on the web without MathML

> I still haven't seen a good example of *parentheses*, i.e. rounded  
> brackets. All the brackets illustrated so far have been square 
> ones.

http://geocities.com/chavchan/temp/matrix.xhtml

try it in Gecko based browsers (border radius is used) 
for fixed height fences there is option to assemble brackets
from Unicode bracket fragments or box draowing charcaters
using CSS generated content.

> Certainly I should update the xslt at www.w3.org/Math/XSL to transform
> to something like this for opera (if you  don't mind).

You can reuse XSLT posted on Prince forum. It is in public domain.
 
 http://www.princexml.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=217

I have to modify part that deals with indices, fences and some stuff like widehat,
widetilde etc, as currently there are some limitations, but I am not sure when I will be able to allocate time for this.

> a) put in an xml-stylesheet reference to (a copy of) the xsl at the above   site (but that doesn't 
> know about opera yet) or 
> b) Restrict to presentation MathML (so mozilla works) and put in an an explict DOCTYPE (so that 
> mathplayer auto-detection works). An opera user.js script such as one you've promoted from your site 
> should allow these pages to work in opera as well.

The problem with xml-stylesheet is that it will interfere with native implementations, plugins and even UserJS and spoil rendering of MathML in those UAs that are MathML aware, so it would be nice if W3C will not advertise this practice. UserJS will recognize MathML if it is served as application/xml, text/xml or application/xhtml+xml (no text/html, text/mathml please) and if namespace is declared explicitly (don't rely on default attribute value in external DTD). So I think that UserJS approach is the way to go as it does not require hacks on author side.

> Do you know if a similar XSLT+CSS+user-javascript solution would work in
> Safari as well as Opera

I fear Safari is still affected by bugs
 http://www.geocities.com/csssite/opera/bug05.xhtml
 http://www.geocities.com/csssite/opera/bug08.xhtml

this bugs have to be fixed, otherwise CSS approach won't work as it should
in Safari.

> The CSS rendering will always lack the typographical quality of
> a real Math renderer, 

Too general statement. In any case web browser is not a typography and I am not the one who cares about glyph shaping much (if I would care I would use math alphanumerical characters that have proper shape and kerning).

> and also of course lacks the benefits of using a
> standardised markup

Basically we can thank W3C (those who standardized awkward markup) for this.
In this respect ISO standards (SGML, DSSSL, ISO 12083) were much more consistent.
(By the way standard model was never standardized it was just proposed and verified experimentally.
Existing niche in XML + CSS framework does not need to be standardized in order to work, it exists canonically).




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Received on Friday, 14 July 2006 14:33:24 UTC