Re: [MathML3-last-call] Improving MathML internationalization capabilities

Hi David,

many thanks for very prompt reply.

> When in very rare edge cases you need to set the initial direction of
> text you may use <mrow dir="rtl"><mtext>....</mtext></mrow>, however 
> adding dir to mtext would make this a little less verbose so we
> propose to add dir to the attributes shared by all token elements.

Sounds great.

>> 2. It should be possible to specify language of content using xml:lang
>> attribute at least on mtext and math elements.
>>
>> For more background information see
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-i18n-bp/#DevLang
> 
> This is already allowed as xml:anything is allowed on every MathML element.
> Any namespaced attribute is allowed and of course the xml: attributes
> are particularly  easy as the xml namespace is pre-declared. 

Are you sure that xml:* is really allowed? If I haven't missed something
RELAX NG schema for MathML defines pattern which is used to allow
foreign attributes on MathML elements as

NonMathMLAtt = attribute (* - (local:*|xml:*)) {xsd:string}

and as you can see all xml:* attributes are explicitly excluded here.

> This comment has also highlighted that while the current RelaxNG and
> XSD schemas currently allow xml: attributes, the DTD does not. This is
> a bug in the Relax to DTD conversion used that will be fixed. The DTD
> is non normative and not in TR space so we can fix this inline,
> possibly this week.

Yep, producing reasonable DTDs in namespace ages is a real pain :-(

> Both 3 and 4 are related comments, proposing extending the content
> model of mtext.
> 
> There are competing pressures to allow markup inside mtext for all
> sorts of reasons and allowing MathML specific markup would complicate
> this extension point greatly.  Chapter 6 currently states that if you
> are using a compound document format with MathML embedded in some
> larger document type that you are advised to open up token elements to
> allow foreign namespaced elements. So in xhtml+mathml you could allow
> xhtml spans and ruby markup. If there were MathML specific markup
> inline as well this would complicate the interaction, similarly in
> MathML+docbook one would want to use docbook inline elements for
> marking up text, not mathml.

This sounds reasonable. Shouldn't then token.content pattern explicitly
allow any non-MathML content by default so MathML fragments with embeded
XHTML/DocBook/whatever will be valid against base MathML schema not only
against specific schema derived from base MathML schema?

> We plan to revise the text in chapter 6 
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/chapter6.html#world-int-combine-other
> 
> to make this clearer and could add Ruby as an example here.

Excellent.

> We hope that you will agree that these two mechanisms to provide the
> required functionality here.

Indeed. I think that once issue related to NonMathMLAtt pattern in the
schema and xml:lang is resolved comments from ITS IG can be treated as
resolved.

Have a nice day,

				Jirka

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