Re: FFL: CSS-like selectors for web mathematics

Deyan,

Hello. Thank you for sharing the formula formatting language (FFL) project.

I, for one, am interested in further exploring (1) FFL's TS/JS API, and (2) how FFL might work with transitions and animations.

In these regards, one can envision content authors being able to intersperse hyperlinks throughout passages of pedagogical, explanatory hypertext pertinent to mathematical content such that hovering over or clicking on these hyperlinks could: (1) modify the styling of or activate style-related animations pertaining to selected portions of mathematical content, (2) make labels appear or disappear, or (3) modify the styling of or activate style-related animations pertaining to labels. These features would allow user-initiated, interactive visual cues on mathematical content.

In addition to hyperlinks interspersed in document content, there are also to consider tooltips, context menus, and scroll-position-dependent menus.


Best regards,
Adam

P.S.:

Brainstorming, math-related selectors may be useful for attaching semantics to mathematical content.

<style type="text/ffl">
  .physics $a$ { --semantic-label: 'acceleration'; }
</style>

________________________________
From: Deyan Ginev <deyan.ginev@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 7:26 PM
To: www-math@w3.org <www-math@w3.org>
Subject: FFL: CSS-like selectors for web mathematics

Hi everyone,

Busy week for math-related enhancements!
I also wanted to share a new HCI (human-computer interaction) project by the University of Pennsylvania. It attempts to improve the ergonomics of writing CSS styling rules for math subterms - especially setting "color", which seems to be gaining prominence in recent years.

As you'll notice, the project isn't MathML-centered, but tries to amalgamate together LaTeX syntax and CSS syntax (with a transpiler step that auto-generates a "class" attribute).

Talk video (recommended!): https://youtu.be/PkXHuPkatpk?t=566
Paper: https://bit.ly/ffl-paper
Demo: https://bit.ly/try-ffl

It is easy to be reminded of a post by Brian on this general subject (which I also shared with the author):
https://bkardell.com/blog/CSSLike.html

Enjoy,
Deyan