- From: Paul Libbrecht <paul@activemath.org>
- Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:56:05 +0200
- To: juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com
- Cc: www-math@w3.org
juanrgonzaleza@canonicalscience.com wrote: > For example, > - what is the argument to use some like > <apply><divide/><ci>A</ci><cn>2</cn></apply> instead of shorter > <divide><ci>A</ci><cn>2</cn></divide> ? > To be able to speak about the "divide" operation ?? The same has been done in OpenMath btw. > - What is the reason for > <apply><plus/><cn>5</cn><cn>8</cn></apply> > instead of calculator-like > <apply><cn>5</cn><plus/><cn>8</cn></apply> ? > That'd be a bad-thing how would you consider, if the second was true, the following: <apply><cn>5</cn><cn>5</cn><plus/><cn>8</cn></apply> ? ???? You definitely need the operation to be at head! > - What is the reason for > <msup>base <mrow>index1 index2</mrow></msup> > instead of base<sup>index1 index2</sup> of SGML/HTML/XHTML/CSS > or the base^{index1 index2} of TeX systems ? > I think Mikko answered this well... you know how high you can put your exponent... Note that msup and mfrac, just to name two, are elements that have a fixed number of arguments... and that has saved me hours of work! They are the only elements that can be checked for arity at display time. My generated MathML-p did contain several times expressions such as: <mfrac><cn>1<cn/><mo>+</mo><mi>2</mi><mi>y</mi></mfrac> Which are just impossible to parse (where is the denominator?)... Fortunately, Mozilla prints a bold "invalid markup" which I can catch quickly instead of trying to guess something as have been doing many HTML parsers. earlier, you wrote: > Unfortunately, the w3c MathML specification does not explain to readers > the reasons for the several options taken by its authors. > I think the spec is already quite complete as is... and it is good to ask these questions... the mailing-list is archived and also scanned by people that have questions such as these ones and they often get answered! Keep asking! paul
Received on Thursday, 30 March 2006 10:56:24 UTC