Re: Math and MathML [forethought about rendering]

juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com wrote:
>
> MathML developers ignored CSS (it is obvious), providing us a markup was
> CSS unfriendly, generating lot of headaches to developers.

It's not obvious to me that they ignored CSS. Were you present at the
meetings, or what makes you think they ignored it?


> Of course CSS is limited (presentation MathML is also) but the group
> would stop from spreading myths about like only p-MathML is good or
> render good.

So, what's your vested interest in CSS? (I have none, so I can afford to
be agnostic. But knowing yours would help me relativize the parts of this
discussion that sound like they're out to lunch.)



> The group was familiar with rendering but not with rendering on browsers
> via CSS, not with other stuff is cause that MathML is not popular in
> despite of many publicity efforts.

What metric are you using to assess the popularity of MathML?


>> It is calumnious to suggest that the WG did not think of problems of
>> rendering.
>
> The WG did but did not in a correct way as time and experience are
> proving. Once some minor problems with CSS implementation was solved and
> some extension (e.g. CSS3 Math module) on the table, I would wonder if
> presentational MathML is of generalized interst anymore.

Time will tell, won't it? This isn't the first time we've had more than
one way to do a thing.

What's better for server-side scripting, perl or Python? PHP? JSP?


> XSL-FO has been strongly rejected for the web (of course, you can use of
> off-line).
> Only MathML would remain isolated from the rest, with the group
> encouraging and endorsing the spread of presenational markup omn the web,
> do you know.

Well, maybe not *just* MathML. I've been in favor of presentational markup
in HTML since I started using it in 1993, and I've never used CSS for real
work in my life. And I'm not alone, at least not out here in the trenches.
So my prediction is that the W3C will ultimately recognize their mistake
in shifting presentation from HTML to CSS, that they will start shifting
it back, and that finally nobody will need to use CSS for much of
anything.


> Some of us prefer follow more standard design with content and structural
> markup for mathematics and rendering via stylesheet: CSS.

And some prefer to do otherwise. Is that a problem?


-- Mark

Mark P. Line
Polymathix
San Antonio, TX

Received on Monday, 17 July 2006 14:53:30 UTC