Re: Supporting MathML and SVG in text/html, and related topics

juan@canonicalscience.com wrote:
> I have seen W3C official stress and torture MathML pages being fully
> rendered in some CSS 2.1 engines.

Rendered, or rendered well?

>> I have yet to see someone propose CSS that would allow the MathML
> equivalent of:
>>    \left(\sqrt{\frac{1}{2}}\right)
>>
>> in a reasonable way, complete with stretchy parentheses and square root.
> 
> Not sure what you mean by reasonable.

Parentheses are tall enough to enclose the expression, without leaving too much
horizontal whitespace.

> Are all renderings of roots and
> stretchy parentheses from W3C list of MathML [1] software reasonable?

I looked at the first 10 or so images that you linked to.  They don't exercise
this case, really.

But I'm not sure why it matters whether _all_ existing MathML packages do a good
job of rendering.  The point is that they have the option of doing a good job.

> About stretchy parentheses, one may obtain good results using CSS rounded
> borders

That might give you a decent approximation, if your box sizes happen to be just
right...

> Few years ago it was broadly believed that it was *impossible* to
> display math using CSS.

People believe a lot of silly things.  Especially if you talk about "broadly" as
opposed to "by the people who know what they're talking about."

> All MathML would be rendered with the future CSS math module.

Do you have a reference on this?  Because I don't recall this being mentioned
anywhere.

-Boris

Received on Thursday, 17 April 2008 16:24:29 UTC