[whatwg] Parsing MathML in HTML5

[Christoph Päper]

Simon Pieters, 2006-10-09:

> If I understand it correctly Ian's proposal is to have a list of  
> elements that are put in the MathML namespace when parsing. I have  
> a slightly different proposal which I'll describe below:
>
> <math> is a sort of namespace- and parsing scoping element (...)

I think this was one of the ideas in the math-related thread(s)  
earlier this year. More generally, a special parsing mode was also  
suggested to apply inside <math/> which /might/ map its contents,  
which would not necessarily conform to, to MathML (or ISO 12083  
etc.). This way you could write more backwards compatibly:

   <math><frac><num>1</num><den>2</den></frac></math>
= <math><frac><num>1</num>⁄<den>2</den></frac></math>
= <math><frac>1<den>2</frac></math>
= <math>1/2</math>

(Note that the fraction slash is the backwards compatible part and  
would be removed by HTML5-UAs with Math support and more advanced  
layout capabilities. Similar compatibility characters, including  
whitespaces, should be considered for roots, limits, fences etc., see  
the brackets in the Ruby module.)

I'd furthermore distinguish the element types |math| (inline) and | 
formula| (block, possibly enumerated) or maybe overload |object| even  
more. Matrices and vectors would be done with |table| or at least  
using its descendants (|td| etc.).

-- 
This was partly an excerpt of a draft comment/proposal I wrote during  
or shortly after those threads, but never got the opportunity to  
finish up.