Mechanism to include MathML in next OEBPS Spec -- request feedback

Everyone,

The IDPF OEBPS Working Group has asked for public feedback on a
proposed next version of the OEBPS Specification, slated to be renamed
"OPS 2.0". This spec is to be used by the publishing industry to
represent books and similar types of documents. Adobe itself is
planning support for it in its "Digital Editions" reading system now
in beta.

For the details on this public comment period (ending Jan. 31), and
the method to provide feedback, refer to:

   https://www.idpf.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=45

One of the new features seen in the draft OPS 2.0 should interest the
MathML community. It is called "Inline Islands". Refer to Section
2.6.3 of the draft OPS 2.0 spec at:

   http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/informationaldocs/OPS/OPS_2.0_0.7_draft.htm

The one Inline Islands example includes an "island" of MathML markup.

The reason for Inline Islands is to allow content document authors to
include a snippet of markup from a namespace not natively supported by
the specification (the spec natively supports XHTML 1.1, Digital
Talking Book, and SVG.) There is no native support for MathML in the
OPS 2.0 spec, but hopefully there will be in a future version -- thus
one of the reasons for showing MathML as an example use of Inline
Islands.

The Inline Islands mechanism also requires providing a default in
XHTML 1.1 or DTBook markup, allowing for an OEBPS reading system to
use the "fallback" native markup when it can't render the non-native
markup. In the case of a MathML "island" the fallback could either be
text (as the example shows), or an embedded bitmap of the equation,
using <img> for presentation.

Hope this makes sense.

Anyway, I encourage the MathML community to provide feedback on any
technical problems/issues associated with using Inline Islands to
include MathML in essentially XHTML 1.1 documents. Any hidden gotchas
that make it difficult to use Inline Islands for embedding MathML?

If there are, do provide feedback to the IDPF forum per instructions,
and I hope you also discuss it here. It is important for the OEBPS
Working Group to get this right. This is a new technology, and so may
have unforeseen consequences that need to be understood before the
spec is finally approved and released. There is time to change Inline
Islands if any unforeseen knotty issues are uncovered, both for use
with MathML, and for its broader support for any non-native markup.

Thanks!

Jon Noring
OEBPS Working Group Contributor
(and a few other hats I wear...)

Received on Tuesday, 16 January 2007 04:12:54 UTC