Minutes: MathML Full meeting 9 June, 2025

 Attendees:

   - Neil Soiffer
   - Louis Maher
   - David Carlisle
   - Moritz Schubotz
   - Murray Sargent
   - Bruce Miller
   - Deyan Ginev
   - Paul Libbrecht

<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-0-action-items>Action Items
<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-0-1-announcements-updates-progress-reports>1.
Announcements/Updates/Progress reports2. #247: Spec should specify what
char to use for accents/lines <https://github.com/w3c/mathml/issues/247>

*ACTION:* NS: We should say something about issue 247
<https://github.com/w3c/mathml/issues/247> and move this issue along.
3. Round table: what do people think needs to be tackled in the next 4 - 8
weeks, not counting spec writing and polyfill writing?

*ACTION:* NS: Look to see how ARIA, or some other group, are using web
platform tests, which may not be directly testing the browser.

*ACTION:* If you think of a new issue put in this list. Begin charter
writing in August.
<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-0-agenda>Agenda
<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-1-1-announcements-updates-progress-reports>1.
Announcements/Updates/Progress reports

MathML Core progressing to CR

NS: I haven't seen any updates on Core's progress towards being a CR. I
think it's a roughly two-week project.

MoS: We had an announcement by the Wikimedia Foundation that they are going
to switch to MathML as a default (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T271001
).

MoS: There was pushback from the community saying that the spacing was not
perfect and other issues. The MathML rollout is being postponed.

MoS wants the rollout to be fully compliant with MathML core.

NS was thinking that MoS would want the group to push out more bug reports
to the browsers to improve rendering.

There was a discussion about spacing problems in browsers.

MuS said Microsoft Word handled spaces more accurately.

PL: We're progressing very slowly into the verification of our book, and
I've been using standard speak-aloud functions, and I was surprised to see
that many math symbols are not pronounced by browsers.

NS: I think a lot of people don't realize that speech engines don't support
a lot of Unicode characters.

NS: MathCAT, and other programs, have a big dictionary of math symbols and
how to speak them..

DG: We have been using JavaScripts for short term solutions. The point I
wanted to make is that the whole point of the standard is to avoid needing
JS to render the math in the browser. So that JS is a stopgap until level 2
is realized.
<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-1-2-a-href-https-github-com-w3c-mathml-issues-247-247-spec-should-specify-what-char-to-use-for-accents-lines-a->2.
#247: Spec should specify what char to use for accents/lines
<https://github.com/w3c/mathml/issues/247>

(updates?)

NS: Fred said that this is a font issue not a browser issue.

NS: If one browser does one thing and another browser does another thing,
then the spec should settle the issue.

NS: There have been no recent comments on this issue.

BM: We should say something about this. I do not care what we do, other
than we should not be recommending combining characters Unless they're
preceded by some sort of combining neutralizer, like a space. We should
list the appropriate characters to use.

*ACTION* NS: We should say something about issue 247
<https://github.com/w3c/mathml/issues/247> and move this issue along.
<https://cryptpad.fr/#cp-md-1-3-round-table-what-do-people-think-needs-to-be-tackled-in-the-next-4-8-weeks-not-counting-spec-writing-and-polyfill-writing->3.
Round table: what do people think needs to be tackled in the next 4 - 8
weeks, not counting spec writing and polyfill writing?

NS: What should we focus on?

NS: Previously we talked about how to get intent implemented.

DG just wanted to get to CR. If he had any key issues, he would have made
an issue for them.

NS: DG and MoS were working on the open list.

DG: Open list work should not hold up the spec.

NS believes that implementations are extremely important.

DG: When is our current charter ending?

NS: Our current charter ends in October.

DG: We have a need for a third charter.

NS: We should focus on the third charter in August.

PL is focused on web platform testing (WPT).

PL is also interested in implementations.

MuS: I'm quite interested in how we get these ambitious ideas actually
working. We can stick it in through TeX Macros, which can be considered TeX
control words.

NS: You're talking about getting intense into MathML? Yeah, okay.

MuS: I added a way to do it with Unicode Math, it's a little ugly. You
know, Unicode Math tries to be a mathematical notation. This is clearly
markup, not a mathematical notation. It sort of works.

MuS: Another thing that I think we can probably just simply dismiss is that
we're not going to get intents into braille. There are some semantics, for
example, in Nemeth Braille, like it knows what to choose what a binomial
coefficient is. So that's well-defined, but when it comes to other things,
uh, I don't think there's a really clean way of getting intents into
Braille. So that means that we wouldn't be able to round trip Intense
Through Braille. Maybe we can just forget about that.

MuS: How can we get intents into different systems? MuS suggested a WYSIWYG
approach. He did that in some of his work.

MuS is hopeful about AI because it can tell us what the document means.

NS We must have at least two implementations of consuming intent. Currently
we have MuS's and NS's work.

NS: I don't know, David, whether your LaTeX project is going to count, and
I hope that the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) is also
one that counts from the front-end side of it.

DC has a face-to-face LaTex meeting from this Friday to Monday with intents
and MathML as major topics.

NS: So the approach you're thinking of is a macro that allows someone to
add intent, whereas another approach would be to add a style file?

DC discussed their invisible times macro which inserts intents. This does
not work in the case of using an associated file. The process of adding the
intents makes it drop the content which is taken from the pdf stream.

DC: After the LaTeX work we should work on the polyfills.

DC: There's the technical things for how to do it, but, you know, for a lot
of things, it's not clear what you should do, like in the case of the
accents.

NS: I hope you get your macro in there that allows intent, and then I would
like to see on top of that, a style file that takes advantage of that and
defines some more standard macros so that they're easier for people to
generate.

NS to LM: It would be good to have not just the spec, but a user practice
guide.

MoS: Yeah, I want to stress again that I think the most important thing is
to really finish the core spec and the polyfills. Then we can finish the
open dictionary with DG.

MoS: There is my idea, of this MathML implementation guidelines, so that we
have some guidelines to move from LaTeX to MathML.

MoS: And then there is this giant project I started with Howard and Bruce
many years ago to generate all the LaTeX macros for specific concepts, and
it would be good if this effort could be continued, and in the end,
generate intent.

BM: There are some issues that need clarification like recommended
characters for accents, and what's supposed to happen with stretchiness in
various situations.

BM: The full spec seems on-track though we have a large backlog of getting
intents implemented.

NS: We need to get the spec written and the polyfills written. He is
concerned with the implementations in the browsers.

NS: It's still not in a position where I could go to the MathJax folks and
say, you need to have a MathML output, because the rendering's good, and
you can save yourself a lot of time.

NS: The rendering is not good. It should not be left totally to the
browsers. There's so many things that just don't look quite right, some
spacing issues, and what symbols do you use for the characters.

NS: We should write web platform tests that demonstrate the rendering
problems.

NS: A lot of tests were added to check bug fixes, but not a lot of test to
demonstrate implementation failures.

NS: There is someone responsible for vetting tests to see if they are
necessary.

NS had considered writing many test cases of super and subscripts.

NS does not see people turning down tests.

NS: You could write a lot of tests if they were unique.

PL: We may test other things than just the browsers.

NS: The ARIA group has been adding some web platform tests. They aren't
testing so much what the browser is doing, but sort of what The screen
reader does in the browser, and I really probably should look to see how
they end up doing this. Maybe it's just whether the browser is exposing The
ARIA in the right way.

*ACTION:* NS: Look to see how ARIA, or some other group, are using web
platform tests, which may not be directly testing the browser.

NS: Does anyone want to comment on the issues we have discussed?

DC: We should push the polyfills more, changing the spec may be less
important.

DC: We should sweep through the spec to see what is not in core, and see if
there is a polyfill for it, and, if not, write an issue for that.

DC: I was going to raise an issue about the use of the Shadow DOM which is
totally masking all my wonderful links. I'm not sure why we need the shadow
DOM. It is useful. It would allow you to keep the visible DOM structure and
put stuff behind it, But you don't end up with a mathematical structure,
you end up with an empty MathML element.

NS: For one of our meetings, we should focus on how polyfills should work.
There are several ways to write polyfills.

*ACTION:* If you think of a new issue put in this list. Begin charter
writing in August.