Re: MathML status in Firefox

More about all of this:         [I'm on Windows with FF3, BTW]

First, I did install the Stix fonts (lots of them!). Radicals and 
horizontal braces (see  example 22 in the mentioned demo page) now 
stretch correctly, and big parenthesis look a bit better (all curved, no 
straight part in the middle).

Apart from that, all samples I've tried work fine *without* the Stix 
fonts. And they look fine even in several different fonts for the math 
parts.

I tried Times New Roman, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Courier New, Verdana, 
and more. All letters, greek letters, nabla, partial differential, big R 
(real numbers), inverted A (for each), and some others all look fine 
(it's a bit strange to see courier, i.e. fixed width, formatted math, 
but it works fine).

The only little problem are radicals (the V part remains one-line high). 
Well, and horizontal braces, but those are much more rarely found.

My point is that the removal of the requirement for installing special 
fonts seems to be a very small step away. For very very specialised 
symbols, an advanced font should be installed, but for lots of other 
uses it wouldn't be necessary. Improving radical rendering would make 
Firefox out-of-the-box render 95% math, physics and engineering 
textbooks acceptably.

Still, I'd make the sum symbol 50% bigger, I'm so picky... :-)

Now I'd like to point to an, IMO, very interesting project: 
*ASCIIMathML* (http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html)
A simplified and intuitive syntax for embedded math, which is internally 
converted to MathML. Go to the "Try it" page and try. Nice! Math color 
and font can be changed in the script if one uses it locally. That's how 
I tried different fonts.

Best regards



Alvaro wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, is there any progress being done in MathML in 
> Mozilla?
> 
> All new versions render 
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/demo/texvsmml.xhtml with the same 
> little mistakes. And there is not much activity in this list either.
> 
> MathML in FF is very near usable for mainstream use but mainly lacks:
> 
> - Radicals (look at example 13). The root of anything higher than one 
> line will look bad. I suggest drawing lines (a tiny one, then a 
> descending, an ascending and a horizontal.
> 
> - Size of integral and sum: (I'm not talking about strechy things) their 
>  normal fixed size should be bigger than what is shown, maybe twice as 
> big as a normal uppercase Sigma, and a bit higher for the integrals.
> 
> These things (roots, sums and integrals) are likely to appear often in 
> all sorts of equations. Other more specialised strange symbols are less 
> urgent as they will not be needed that often.