[whatwg] Mathematics in HTML5

[Anne van Kesteren]

Quoting White Lynx <whitelynx at operamail.com>:
>> I think you make a compelling case for adding math to HTML the simple
>> way. Personally, I'm open to adding it to HTML5. How much would it add
>> to the specification?
>
> Description of math markup tends to grow larger that it was   
> originally expected, but I think it is still compact enough.

There's indeed a lot of new elements in the draft. I think I agree  
that for math markup to really succeed you need to have it compatible  
with text/html in some way (although the people saying you first need  
to convert people from Latex make sense as well), but just putting  
this in the specification as well and requiring UAs to support it by  
default seems too much to ask, imho.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how you can have it as a separate  
module and still let it interoperate and integrate with the HTML syntax.


> Ian Hickson wrote:
>> What we need, to move forwards on this, would be a full proposal for what
>> you want added to HTML5. Currently this thread seems mostly to be along
>> the lines of "we should add maths, but we shouldn't make it hard".
>
> Sketch of the proposal is available [1], comments are welcome.
> At this stage prose is far from being polished, but I hope it is readable.
>
> [1] Preliminary version of HTML5 math proposal
> 	http://www.geocities.com/chavchan/html5/proposal.xml
> 	http://www.geocities.com/chavchan/html5/proposal.pdf

I see at least three things in the specification that are in need of  
improvement. (1) There need to be more examples. I guess this is true  
for most specifications out there... (2) The intend of the HTML  
parsing rules is there, but they are not implementable. For example,  
according to the specification:

   <fraction>17<den>125</fraction>

... comes out as:

   <fraction>
   <num>17</num>
   <den>125</den>
   </fraction>

... now where did that whitespace come from? (3) Error handling. What  
happens when I nest elements where they not belong etc. Does that  
affect parsing? Or for content models like "matrix element or vector  
element followed by either marker or submark" what happens when I  
actually write down a <submark> followed by <marker> followed by  
<matrix>? I guess these issues are mostly relevant for parsing  
(styling is pretty clear once that's defined), but it should be clear  
what the semantics are in such cases as well.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>