Re: Mozilla mathml project to be interred

> Apologies, Justus, but I think you missed my point.
> I am not arguing for any dilution of mathml, just the opposite. I am
> arguing for additional tag standards, either as a superset to mathml
> or to XHTML that would allow the tagging of text expression for
> parsers.
> Likewise I am not arguing that FF do it all, merely that the extension
> architecture combined withsuch a tag provides the transparency and
> universality that is needed; ie parsers for text syntax can be added
> and turned on and off.

I agree with Justus here. Alternative input syntax for mathematics are
best thought of like wiki syntax for natural language text. Wikis became
popular because they didn't require people to install special browsers,
the conversion from the linear syntax to html/xml markup happens on the
client. Adding multiple math language parsers to a browser would be like
installing parsers for every flavour of wiki syntax.


> Devils advocate wise, mathml is a w3c standard and we can see the
> impact that has had on Microsoft 

Quite a lot on microsoft, although not currently in IE, Word has MathML
input/output as standard and the new pen based math input in Windows 7
is using mathml internally as well as on file export.

>  and webkit.... 

it's comming....

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29529

>  Wolfram is not going to abandon mathematicas syntax

why should they? Mathematica has had MathML import/export since the
first drafts of MathML.

> I think our real choice is between browser based or reliance on 3rd
> party servers (such as WA, googlechartapi, or even mathtran or
> mimetex) and sitting offline reading a file via my browser why
> shouldn't I expect what is imminently possible?

A plugin to the browser (or javascript or whatever) that expands markup,
whether it be asciimath to mathml, or wiki markup to html, is useful
agreed, but the strength of the web is in sharing common markup
languages, not that everyone has to have a parser for every language
variant.


David


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