RE: MathML-in-HTML5

| Copy sent to mozilla.dev.tech.mathml

> Please don't go down that road. 
> Let's not have two incompatible markup languages, both called "MathML," 
> one of which can be embedded in HTML5, the other in XHTML.

Completely agree. Personally I am not against removing mandatory tokens and following approach taken by ECMA (this attitude does not necessarily reflect the position of Math WG however), but I am radically against current approach. It does not make sense to remove tokens from markup while preserving them in DOM (the semantic value of tokens automatically generated by parser is zero, and not all conversion/interchange tools operate through DOM).

> I don't know how common the knowledge is, but MathML is closely tied 
> with a certain platform: Mathematica

They just use MathML for import/export of math formulae. This is not the kind of integration I meant.
 
>> I consider switching from XML to text/html as inappropriate and 
>> pointless development, morover it is damaging in long term perspective. 

> Damaging to what? To MathML? Not really in my opinion. What damage could 
> there be to have plenty of MathML formulas on the web?!? 

What prevents you from having plenty of formulae on web today? Do we have at least one MathML implementation that supports HTML,  but lacks XHTML support? Do we have MathML implementations  that support XHTML only? So, how introducing two different and incompatible parsing rules will improve interoperability? And assume that you have plenty of formulae on web and you want to process them. How having half of 
them in tagsoup and another half in XML does not make them easier to handle?

> But to the 
> XML/XHTML agenda, possibly. And that has been the real "problem" since 
> the beginning, and which I alluded to in my opening post.

It is not the beggining. Seven years passed since that time and a lot of XML applications emerged since then. Most of current W3C are designed keeping in mind XML and not SGML or HTML. MathML is part of large and extensible framework where it can be combined with other XML applications. Current proposal does adds no new functionality to MathML, but rather artificially splits MathML community into incompatible parts that has to be delt separately.

> Interested in using MathML? First pass that XHTML barrier, and that 
> wasn't even a small barrier. It was a significant barrier, taking seven 
> years before IE understood application/xhtml+xml.

It was. But it is not anymore. So it is not clear what are you struggle with. Maybe someone has to struggle with legacy text/html content, but it is not our problem we have no MathML in HTML legacy. Maybe someone complaints that MSIE does not support application/xhtml+xml, again it is not our problem as without MathPlayer MSIE can not process MathML while with MathPlayer application/xhtml+xml problem is N/A.
If someone doubts about future of XML in MSIE, note that Microsoft's own mathematical markup language is (and most of other recent format$ are) entirely XML based.

> MathML already works in XML/XHTML and this proposal is not going to 
> break that.

XML for maths means better interoperability (and extensibility) this proposal splits MathML into two different versions 

> This might also 
> encourage those building HTML authoring tools to consider interfacing 
> MathML (either with free or commercial plug-ins) because the XML/XHTML 
> barrier won't be standing right at their face.

Once again there is no barrier, XHTML has all the functionality that HTML has and much more. The only issue is MSIE parser and as noted above several times this issue is N/A to MathML today.

> Many math pages wouldn't have bothered 
> with XHTML if it had been possible to have MathML in HTML

Which means that goint in that direction will give rise to two different versions of MathML, damaging interoperability and introducing no new functionality.

> MathML-in-HTML5? Worth a try.

Once you try something you can't always untry it. Just proceed with you proposal and we will have to strugle with text/html legacy forever.

-- 
_______________________________________________
Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way:
Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com

Powered by Outblaze

Received on Tuesday, 3 October 2006 07:19:06 UTC