Iceweasel: suggested font packages for MathML

Frédéric WANG <[email protected]> Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:23:14 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.linux.debian.devel.mozilla,gmane.comp.mozilla.devel.mathml
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Dear Debian Mozilla team,

I've just had a look to the dependencies for Iceweasel 8 and I've seen 
the following packages:

* xfonts-mathml: installs "Type1 Symbol", suggests otf-stix and 
recommends ttf-lyx.
* ttf-lyx | latex-xft-fonts: installs TeX's Computer Modern fonts
* ttf-mathematica4.1: installs mathematica fonts

Mathematical fonts are used in Mozilla's MathML implementation to 
display stretchy/large operators correctly. Also, they are useful to 
render various mathematical symbols.

Since at least Gecko 2, TeX and Mathematica fonts are no longer used for 
stretchy/large operators. Instead, we rely on STIX fonts 1.0. These 
fonts should also cover most of the unicode characters needed for 
mathematics. So I think among the dependencies listed above, only 
otf-stix is really useful (Karl Tomlinson may know it better).

Among other free fonts currently suggested:
(https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozilla_MathML_Project/Fonts)

- Asana Math (support for stretchy/large operators since Gecko 7, good 
support for mathematical symbols)
- DejaVu Serif and DejaVu Sans

You may also be interested in following these entries in Bugzilla:

* MathJax: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=701758
* Neo Euler: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=622576
* STIX 1.1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=693968

regards,
-- 
Frédéric Wang.
Website <http://www.maths-informatique-jeux.com/> - Weblog 
<http://www.maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic/>