[whatwg] Mathematics in HTML5

White Lynx whitelynx at operamail.com
Fri Jun 9 01:20:43 PDT 2006


Michel Fortin wrote:
> Well, now that I think of it, there will be some problems with any  
> pure CSS implementation (for current browsers at least, but maybe  
> with CSS3 too). Aligning fraction separators correctly with the base  
> line when <num> and <den> do not have the same height for instance: I  
> don't see a way to fine-tune that without JavaScript.
> 

 It is not a problem at all  (also it took some time to figure out whether CSS can render arbitrary 
complex fractions). In CSS2.1 there are two different ways to render fractions
(one of them even works in MSIE) similar approach exists in XSL FO
See http://www.geocities.com/chavchan/css/annotated.css
for details. Generally speaking everything that we propose can be consistently rendered with CSS2.1.
This is the main point of proposal.

> About styling ruby: for the needs of mathematics, I think in the  
> absence of proper ruby CSS support, styling them as inline-table  
> would be suffisent. But, just like fractions, it would need  
> JavaScript to do the baseline adjustment.
> 

Just like in case of fractions, no script-tease is necessary. CSS2.1 can hadndle them without any problems.
Once again see http://www.geocities.com/chavchan/css/annotated.css
for details. There are minor problems on XSL FO side however, but that is not really important for browsers.

> But I would argue that my sum syntax, while requiring some JavaScript  
> for proper display, use a more natural way of expressing things than  
> yours.
> 

Once it requires JavaScript, there is no point in using XML, you can use LaTeX like input and 
render it using JS+CSS or XSLT+CSS, like in case of jsMath or XSL-TeX.

> The upper limits comes before the lower one, obviously to be able to  
> put it at the right place with CSS. But usually, while speaking, or  
> even just thinking, we put the lower limit first: from k equals zero  
> to n, or something like that.

Yes, current order is CSS motivated.




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