Wish for MathML 3: Discourage named entities

Dear MathML developers,

and here's yet another point I would like to see addressed:

MathML defines many named entities (such as ⁢). These  
entities are only valid if the MathML DTD is included in the  
document, and the documents are standalone documents. This is noted  
in the MathML 2 spec at 6.2.1. However, this location is not  
prominent enough. I've ran across many MathML documents which used  
these entities but did not declare the doctype - most notable  
all .mml files in the MathML testsuite. Now the users complain that  
their document does not get rendered - and all I can answer them is  
what they have is not valid MathML.

I would therefore like it to be more clear in the spec that the named  
entities are only valid in standalone MathML document with a dtd.  
Users can not use the generated MathML code in their embedded  
examples without modification. I would like to see it discouraged to  
use named entities except for cases where a "readable" notation of  
MathML is needed.


Max Berger
e-mail: max@berger.name

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