RE: [EXTERNAL] Deprecate maction?

Neil, your recommendations are contained in the post MathML and OMML User Selection Attributes - Math in Office (microsoft.com)<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevblogs.microsoft.com%2Fmath-in-office%2Fmathml-and-omml-user-selection-attributes%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=cFdq%2B30hMrwD%2F51RiNNPCc%2BQuk1LxAphI%2BzEr7GslUA%3D&reserved=0>. The maction post deals with a different use: fine-grained speech specifically aimed at revealing what’s at the insertion point. A person editing a math zone needs to know the nature of the insertion point. E.g., “end of the numerator” or “start of the denominator”. This is conveyed via the selection attributes, but to get the same speech, one would have to compare the current MathML from the MathML from the previous selection.

Here's a scenario where the maction approach works better: the user enters a → key. The IP moves to the right. We want to here what’s at the new IP. We don’t want to get the whole math-zone MathML all over again. If you edit a math zone in Word with Narrator on you can hear how this works. It enables you to edit a math zone just hearing the speech, that is, without seeing the screen. That’s what we want to enable via a MathML conduit. The Word math editing experience works directly with the OfficeMath backing store and doesn’t use MathML. But we want to be able to offer ATs MathML that can be used to offer the same editing experience.

Thanks,
Murray

From: Stephen Watt <smwatt@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 6:13 AM
To: Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu>
Cc: Murray Sargent <murrays@exchange.microsoft.com>; Paul Libbrecht <paul@hoplahup.net>; www-math@w3.org
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Deprecate maction?

Neil,

You made the reasonable statement

> changing the structure of the MathML representation as you change a selection seems wrong to me

I think this depends on the editor in use.  Some will limit selections to be consistent with the mathematical structure.   Others can allow selections that aren't, for example allowing selection in text presentation order:

a b c + d e f

The editor may allow replacement of c+d with x.   I just tried this in Maple 2017 and it was allowed.

Stephen

On Thu, Jun 9, 2022 at 1:31 AM Neil Soiffer <soiffer@alum.mit.edu<mailto:soiffer@alum.mit.edu>> wrote:
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<mailto:murrays@exchange.microsoft.com>> wrote:
My blog post Editing Math using MathML for Speech | Microsoft Docs<https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Farchive%2Fblogs%2Fmurrays%2Fediting-math-using-mathml-for-speech&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=iJLkNaR%2BgEPUqCv6aSNbNp4c5foeP4VUJY3gU90lXf0%3D&reserved=0> 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://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevblogs.microsoft.com%2Fmath-in-office%2Fmathml-and-omml-user-selection-attributes%2F&data=05%7C01%7Cmurrays%40exchange.microsoft.com%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=cFdq%2B30hMrwD%2F51RiNNPCc%2BQuk1LxAphI%2BzEr7GslUA%3D&reserved=0> defines selection attributes that reveal the user selection within a math zone.

Thanks,
Murray

From: Paul Libbrecht <paul@hoplahup.net<mailto:paul@hoplahup.net>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2022 5:28 AM
To: www-math@w3.org<mailto: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%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b0OA4yV0OrBdoWUHDGOc%2B1u%2BLVj8bMoaPQO3Pg004CM%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%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=gyDKGIUEwoiiSScoUX%2FozIgjcsTrhLPVsZwEj%2FJcRJ8%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%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SIy%2FkV7et9%2BsQRN6sgN94L12iu3RLrL37RbrSp5IKjk%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%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=7TVMm%2FpL0VWSttPZ9Py%2FNKGxPXokrXsbYEa4NF7YuDs%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%7Cb06c7b7a9caf421cc96908da4a19cf80%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C0%7C0%7C637903771979916758%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oWFvsQ%2BNuGg6TTqGBYBs2jITpmaZK7WTIcgHCNAjfL8%3D&reserved=0>.