Aloha Paul, et al, Microformats won't fix any display problems that folks have, but could help with say the problem of searching for a given formula across semantically marked up content.
However, since the problem to be solved seems to be rendering the math visually, with a variety of ways of doing that, would a microformat require all the formulations (aka mathml, texvc, mimetex) to provide support for yet another markup? (Paul, I recall your comments on my blog entry trying to implement just such rendering on a mediawiki install http://jeffmcneill.com/2007/01/24/mathml-tex-latex-texvc-mimetex-oh-my/ ) You are right, it is a mess. Not sure how microformats could help, though. -- Sincerely, Jeff McNeill http://jeffmcneill.com/ On 10/25/07, Paul Topping <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to determine whether microformats is the right venue for > developing a standard math representation within HTML. > > Back in '98, many of us involved with the W3C's MathML standard had > hopes of it being widely supported within most browsers in a few years. > That has sort of happened. MathML is supported natively within Firefox > but users experience font problems and it only works if pages are XHMTL, > rather than HTML. My company's free MathPlayer plugin makes MathML work > in Internet Explorer. MathML support is still missing from Safari, > Opera, and other browsers. People interested in publishing math on the > web still find serving up pages as XHTML challenging (getting the MIME > type right, etc.). Some websites, blogs, and wikis convert TeX or LaTeX > to images on the server to handle equations in content. Quite frankly, > the space is a mess. > > Regardless of whether the math is represented using MathML, TeX, LaTeX, > or some other notation, it is important to expose the mathematical > structure behind the equation to the client in order to support > accessibility (ie, allow screen readers to speak the math) and > interoperability (eg, allow users to copy equations from pages into > Mathematica, MS Word docs, MathType, or new pages). What is needed is a > consistent way to associate an underlying math representation with its > visual representation regardless of whether it is a GIF or PNG image or > MathML formatted by the browser (or a browser plugin). > > This seems like a job for a microformat but I must admit that I have > limited knowledge of the microformat philosophy. On one hand, > microformats embed semantic representations in HTML in a practical but > rigorous way. On the other hand, in most (all?) microformats the > representation is visible in the browser. In the kind of representation > I'm imagining, the user won't actually see the actual MathML or TeX code > in the browser window. > > Thoughts? Is microformats the right place for this kind of thing? > > Paul Topping > Design Science, Inc. > www.dessci.com > > _______________________________________________ > microformats-new mailing list > [email protected] > http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-new > _______________________________________________ microformats-new mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-new
