Re: hdotsfor?

On Oct 3, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Neil Soiffer wrote:

> I don't believe it is possible to do this in presentation MathML with current renderers.
> 
> Your suggestion of
>    <mtd columnspan="...">
> would not fit in with the spec because columnspan is used to indicate the number of columns spanned, so some other method would have to be used.

Sorry. I didn't mean that the ellipsis was the value of the columnspan attribute.

The value of the columnspan attribute was supposed to be the mandatory argument of \hdotsfor[]{}.

> One way to do this (but I very much doubt it works in any MathML implementation) would be something like
>       <mtd columnspan="3"> <mo stretchy="true">&#x2026; <!-- horiz ellipsis --> </mo> </mtd>
> 
> The idea here is to make use of the property of stretchy chars and rows/cols that span.  This idea would work for both horizontal and vertical dots in a table/matrix.
> 
> MathML's operator dictionary [1] provides some hints to developers as to what chars to stretch (at least that should stretch by default).  Ellipsis is not on that list.  I think it would be useful to hear from users as to what characters they would like to see stretchable, even if they don't stretch by default.

It should be understood that what's wanted here is not a mere stretching-out of the three dots in U+2026, but an arbitrary length row of dots (something along the lines of using U+2026 as an 'extender character').

But, yes, that would be the idea.

Jacques