Re: Formal query about WG role and MathML-FAQ

> [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-math/2006Feb/0012.html]

> Until now, i have received none reply from WG. I find just curioust to
> read, for instance, David Carlishe[sic] replies to others MathML topics
> surrounding my post of 17 February, whereas ignoring my own.

Actually I didn't ignore your message (I followed the link to the
website) but (unlike messages that do tend to get a quick reply) your
message wasn't asking for any specific advice or describing any specific
problem. You are proposing another XML syntax for mathematics and asking
for comments. I didn't feel I had any comments to make. 

The descriptions of MathML (and LaTeX) on the referenced web site seem
rather strange and given those descriptions it's not surprising that you
choose to look for another syntax. Lots of systems use alternative
shorter syntaxes (or menu/pallet systems) to ease authoring, there is no
need to look to the MathML or LaTeX maintainers on the design for any
system specific syntax, so if you find that particular markup convenient
to write, and you have tools to convert it to something more portable
for a wider audience then fine.

If you are asking if the proposed syntax could be used as a portable way
of marking up mathematics as an alternative to mathml then I'd say that
it was unlikely to succeed.

The proposed markup mixes the markup between XML and inline character
markup (for brackets, at least) in a rather alarming way, this would
mean that even to do something as simple as extract subterms from an
expression you'd need an dedicated canonicalxml parser, this means that
it would be considerably harder than doing the equivalent in
presentation or content mathml, or openmath, or even TeX.


David

Received on Monday, 13 March 2006 17:05:41 UTC