[whatwg] Mathematics in HTML5

White Lynx whitelynx at operamail.com
Fri Jun 2 02:08:05 PDT 2006


To summarize discussion on mathematics in HTML5, I would like to ask several questions.
1) Which markup do you think fits better in the scope of HTML5?
	a)
		<div>
		(X)HTML document may contain math formulae, like
		<formula>
		ax<sup>2</sup> + bx + c = 0
		</formula>
		</div>
	b)	
		<div>
		(X)HTML document may contain math formulae, like
			<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/MathML">
			<mrow>
			 <mi>a</mi>
			  <msup>
			   <mi>x</mi>
			   <mi>2</mi>
			  </msup>
			 </mrow>
			 <mo>+</mo>
			<mrow><mi>b</mi><mi>x</mi>
			<mo>+</mo>
			<mi>c</mi>
			<mo>=</mo>
			<mn>0</mn>
			</math>
		</div>
2) Which markup is more suitable for usage on web?
	a) The one that fits well in X(HT)ML + CSS framework.	
	b) The one that does not fit in XML + CSS approach at all.
3) Which markup is easier to implement in browsers?
	a) The one that requires just couple of CSS bug fixes in Safari and Mozilla (these bugs should be fixed in any case).
	b) The one that still has to be implemented in Safari, Opera and MSIE
4) Which markup is more convenient for authoring?
	a) The simple one, in the same namespace as HTML5.
	b) Unreadable tagsoup in separate namespace.
5) What do you prefer to see in future HTML documents?
	a) One markup language clearly documented by  WHAT WG
	b) Multiple math oriented markup languages and microformats, maintained by different publishers, scientific institutions etc.

Making decision is up to WHAT WG, you can follow W3C line that so far brought nothing good to scientific web 
(which turned into bunch of PDF/PS/DJVU files) or (even without much afforts) you can solve longstanding problem 
of embedding mathematics in HTML. If WHAT WG will pay attention to interests of mathematical community, we are ready
to do essential part of technical work needed to incorporate mathematical markup in HTML 5, like writing DTDs, default style sheets, 
documentation, test cases etc.
 

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