Re: Where do the "default renderings" in spec chapter 4 come from?

It seems to me that the whole point of implementing the suggested 
rendering in an XSLT stylesheet (rather than trying to enforce something 
using DTD or Schema somehow) is that it is non-normative -- local 
systems can, will, and should implement their own renderings by 
modifying ctop.xsl.  I know I have made extensive changes to my local 
copy of ctop.xsl (for Content MathML2), and I know others who have done 
the same.  Saying that the W3C suggestions have a large impact is no 
more universal than saying that US notation conventions have a large 
impact (in most cases, the ctop.xsl default renderings seem to follow US 
conventions, for better or worse).  In my experience, it has been well 
worth the effort of learning enough XSLT to make such changes.

<link to YouTube video of Leathrum climbing onto soapbox....>
On a tangential note, this is actually one reason why I don't much like 
the idea of a CSS profile for Presentation MathML -- I understand the 
practical need for it, but stylesheets are supposed to be non-normative 
and localizable, whereas Presentation MathML is supposed to be normative 
and static.
<link to YouTube video of Leathrum climbing off of soapbox....>

Regards,
Tom Leathrum


Christoph Lange wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 1:28 PM, David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk> wrote:
>   
>>> Where do these default renderings come from?
>>>       
>> So the answer to the question in the case of mathml2 is that the choice
>> of notation is at the editorial discretion of whoever was editing the
>> file at the time, in consultation with the working group members (at
>> that time).
>>
>> … the notation given is probably, in the mind of a
>> probable editor, the most commonly used notation in the country in which
>> the probable editor was probably educated.
>>     
>
> Thanks, David, that answers my question.  Actually, I intended to ask
> about this process of agreement, not about the technical generation of
> the renderings.  Has there ever been a debate on a particular
> rendering, e.g. that editor A suggested one rendering that editor B
> didn't like?
>
>   
>> Which is why the spec has alwys been explict that these are essentially
>> only suggested defaults and that a system may (and systems do) use
>> notations.
>>     
>
> Sure -- but given the importance of MathML, your "suggestions" do have
> a high impact.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christoph
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 17:12:29 UTC