Re: [EXTERNAL] Deprecate maction?

Murray,

I agree that being able to communicate a selection or insertion point (a
degenerative case of selection) could be useful. However, changing the
structure of the MathML representation as you change a selection seems
wrong to me. The math hasn't changed, just the selection. Hence, I think it
makes sense to add two attributes: selection-start and selection-end (or
maybe some shorter names) and add them to the start/end elements (which
might be the same). My worry with my suggestion is that selections aren't
unique. For example, if I had a 2d fraction '1 / 2', you could have:

   - selection-start on the '1' and selection-end on the '2'
   - selection-start and selection-end on the mfrac

There is an additional problem though: what if there are multiple
characters in the leaf element. For example "123 / 3". Your maction idea (I
think) would break the digits up, which is really drifting away from the
spirit of proper MathML. For my solution to work, I have to introduce
another attribute: selection-offset. For example, suppose the insertion
point is after the '1', then we would have
<mfrac>
  <mn selection-start  selection-end selection-offset=1>123</mn>
  <mn>3</mn>
</mfrac>

Note: in HTML, boolean valued attributes are true if they are present and
false if they are absent. Hence, I didn't give them a value in the above
example.

The default value of selection-offset would be 0 when on selection-start
and after the last char on selection-end.

There are a number of additional things to consider:

   1. Are multiple selections allowed? Can they overlap?
   2. Can a selection be part of a structure? For example, can the
   selection start in the middle of a numerator and end in the middle of a
   denominator?
   3. What should be done if selection-end is before selection-start?

It is probably not too hard to come up with additional issues, but all of
these likely can be resolved by declaring certain uses illegal and
meaningless.

    Neil


On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 11:10 AM Murray Sargent <
murrays@exchange.microsoft.com> wrote:

> My blog post Editing Math using MathML for Speech | Microsoft Docs
> <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/murrays/editing-math-using-mathml-for-speech>
> describes how <maction> could be used in generating math speech for editing
> math. Most MathML usage concentrates on math display, speech, braille, or
> computation. But creating technical documents involves editing math, so
> it’s worthwhile for MathML to be usable for editing. In the post, <maction>
> is used to produce the speech for the math at the insertion point. A
> related post MathML and OMML User Selection Attributes - Math in Office
> (microsoft.com)
> <https://devblogs.microsoft.com/math-in-office/mathml-and-omml-user-selection-attributes/>
> defines selection attributes that reveal the user selection within a math
> zone.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Murray
>
>
>
> *From:* Paul Libbrecht <paul@hoplahup.net>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:28 AM
> *To:* www-math@w3.org
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL] Deprecate maction?
>
>
>
> Dear WWW-Math mailing-list,
>
> Within the W3C-Math-Working-Group, we have as charter to revise what was
> proposed in MathML3 to make it current and sharper-readable. Among the
> elements who appear to be candidate for a deprecation process are the
> maction element.
>
> The MathML3 (current) spec says
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FTR%2FMathML%2Fchapter3.html%23presm.maction&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cfa3e98c7537e4341962608da3d80fa50%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637889921444449898%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=CrnkAi3fXk14UL3qylLdFyS7F2e%2B9m5FDBEBr1sIeH8%3D&reserved=0>
> that maction can be used to mark a sub-expression so that interactions of
> particular types can happen: toggle (switch between alternatives),
> statusline (show in the status-line) and tooltip (show a tooltip on top),
> and input (show a textfield).
>
> It appeared to us that neither statusline nor tooltip are current and that
> toggle is likely of little use. Is maybe input too?
> All of this can be performed in a more browser- and user-relevant fashion
> using javascript listeners, albeit in a less declarative fashion.
>
> I would like, thus, to suggest to enter maction into a deprecation
> process: it would make this element valid (but deprecated) in MathML 4 and
> it would be removed in MathML 5.
>
> What do people on this list think of this proposal?
> If you have other uses of maction, is this going to be a problem and can
> you describe the use that you make?
>
> Thanks in advance for your answers.
>
> Paul
>
> PS: implementations I know of include Safari and Firefox: they can be
> checked in the MathML3 test-suite: highlight
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FMath%2Ftestsuite%2Fbuild%2Fmain%2FPresentation%2FDynamicExpressions%2Fmaction%2FmactionBhigh1-full.xhtml&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cfa3e98c7537e4341962608da3d80fa50%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637889921444449898%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=cDizZj90IFnsZ0I3WyYvsgGGYcHzDq7cIaChC8PdN78%3D&reserved=0>,
> statusline
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FMath%2Ftestsuite%2Fbuild%2Fmain%2FPresentation%2FDynamicExpressions%2Fmaction%2FmactionBstatus1-full.xhtml&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cfa3e98c7537e4341962608da3d80fa50%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637889921444449898%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=G%2FraNh1R5fFBp%2FBYLFXanjAywzaT8NZUBaFN3CqtiZQ%3D&reserved=0>,
> toggle
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FMath%2Ftestsuite%2Fbuild%2Fmain%2FPresentation%2FDynamicExpressions%2Fmaction%2FmactionBtoggle1-full.xhtml&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cfa3e98c7537e4341962608da3d80fa50%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637889921444449898%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vuiLXE319U5%2FZJ7VATSqYtJWvJA%2Bkh%2BKmJRh%2FOTmyA0%3D&reserved=0>,
> tooltip
> <https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FMath%2Ftestsuite%2Fbuild%2Fmain%2FPresentation%2FDynamicExpressions%2Fmaction%2FmactionBtooltip1-full.xhtml&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cfa3e98c7537e4341962608da3d80fa50%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637889921444449898%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GSTy6OHwBE%2B4Dubmd5rVE7fztfV7c82rCCXKXitDKmQ%3D&reserved=0>
> .
>