Re: Formal query about WG role and MathML-FAQ

> I find really interesting that XPath language developed by w3C has NOT a
> XML syntax.

yes there are times when a non xml syntax is good, but a syntax that
uses mixed markup, some XML and some characters is rather hard to handle
as you can neither pass the entire text node over to an external parser
(as you would with embedded tex or xpath) nor get the parse tree from
the xml parse of the document, as you would from an XML syntax such as
openmath or mathml.

Your proposal appears to be essentially a variant of content mathml with
a more infix syntax and allowing more operators with different
presentation but the same semantics.

It is also important to address the issues that presentation mathml aims
to address, namely the ability to express the layout of mathematical
expressions _without_ requiring the specification of the semantics
(either because the semantics are unknown or too hard to express
formally (in a given amount of time) or there are no semantics, for
example educational examples of incorrect notation.  I can write
<msup><mi>H</mi><mn>2</mn></msup> without having to specify anywhere
what cohomology is.

David

Received on Tuesday, 14 March 2006 14:59:26 UTC