[whatwg] Mathematics in HTML5

[White Lynx]

Michel Fortin wrote:
>>>> I do not think that automatic mixing of roman and italic would be  
>>>> a good
>>>> idea at the browser side if one search a rapid cheap  
>>>> implementation fully
>>>> compatible with current standards.
>>>
>>> That is probably quite right.
>>
>> Yes, roman as a default is Ok as a first approximation.
>> Later extra line in author' s style sheet could provide TeX like  
>> styling:
>> formula, dformula {text-transform:math-italic;}
>
>Hum, what do you expect "text-transform: math-italic" to do? If you  
>want it to change every alphabetic character to the math italic  
>equivalent, how do you avoid transforming "sin", "cos", "ln", "mod",  
>to italic? You'll need at least one new element, maybe more, to  
>distinguish these cases, and then you'll still need to use <var> to  
>style non-scalar variables correctly.
>

If default style is roman, then the rest is up to author, (s)he can either
use LaTeX like math-italic approach and mark roman characters appropriately,
or vise-versa (mark variables apropriately).


>This whole roman-letter-is-a-variable also makes the semantics quite  
>strange: in the whole document you can find variables using the <var>  
>element while inside formulas you must also look for roman characters  
>inside text nodes but outside special "non-variable" elements. I  
>don't think this concept fits HTML quite well.
>

But this concept is not part of HTML.



>I'm not advocating against math-italic, which can be useful to  
>display variables correctly, just against implicit variable-making  
>inside formulas. If math-italic is implemented, you'll still be able  
>to use it like above, but I don't think that should be the  
>recommended method of marking up formulas.
>

What else can be done?


>I think the idea of a script which would add variable markup  
>automatically according to some rules is the best way to avoid extra  
>manual markup without compromising presentation and/or semantics.  
>This way different people will be able to create different tools  
>adapted to their specific needs.
>

In this case no HTML markup is necessary at all, 
one can use LaTeX-like input and let script to do the rest of job.



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