Benoit, you said you need proof that MathML is better than TeX. I think it's
the reverse at this point (from a web perspective -- you'll never get me to use
Word instead of TeX privately ;) ).
Anyway, let me try to repeat how I had addressed your original points in my
first post.
1.1. you make a point against adding unnecessary typography. Mathematics is
text, but adding new requirements. It's comparable to the introduction of RTL
or tables much more than musical notation. It's also something that all school
children will encounter for 9-12 years. IMHO, this makes it necessary to
implement mathematical typesetting functionality.
1.2 you claimed MathML is inferior to TeX. I've tried to point out that that's
not the case as most scientific and educational publishers use it extensively.
1.2.1 you claimed TeX is the universal standard. I've tried to point out only
research mathematicians use it as a standard. Almost most mathematics happens
outside that group.
1.2.2 You pointed out that MathML isn't friendly to manual input. That's true
but HTML isn't very friendly either, nor is SVG.
1.2.3 You argued TeX is superior for accessibility. I've pointed out that
that's not the case given the current technology landscape.
2 You wrote now is the time to drop MathML. I've tried to point out that now --
as web and ebook standard -- is the time to support it, especially when your
implementation is almost complete and you're looking to carve a niche out of
the mobile and mobile OS market, ebooks etc.
2.1 you claim MathML never saw traction outside of Firefox. I tried to point
out that MathML has huge traction in publishing and the educational sector,
even if it wasn't visible on the web until MathJax came along. Google wants
MathML support (they just don't trust the current code) while Apple has happily
advertised with the MathML they got for free. Microsoft indeed remains a
mystery.
2.2 you claim MathJax does a great job -- ok, I'm not going to argue ;) --
while browsers don't. But we've used native output on Firefox before MathJax
2.0 and plan to do it again soon -- it is well implemented and can provide the
same quality of typesetting.
3. Well, I'm not sure what to say to those. If math is a basic typographical
need, then the syntax doesn't matter -- we need to see it implemented and its
bottom up layout process clashes with CSS's top down process. No change in
syntax will resolve that.
Since MathML development involved a large number of TeX and computer algebra
experts, I doubt a TeX-like syntax will end up being extremely different from
MathML the second time around.
Instead of fighting over syntax, I would prefer to focus on improving the
situation of mathematics on the web -- so thank you for your offer to support
us in fixing bugs and improving HTML layout.
Peter.
On Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:23:56 UTC-7, Joshua Cranmer 🐧 wrote:
> On 5/5/2013 9:46 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>
> > I am still waiting for the rebuttal of my arguments, in the original
>
> > email in this thread, about how TeX is strictly better than MathML for
>
> > the particular task of representing equations. As far as I can see,
>
> > MathML's only inherent claim to existence is "it's XML", and being XML
>
> > stopped being a relevant selling point for a Web spec many years ago
>
> > (or else we'd be stuck with XHTML)
>
>
>
> Don't be quick to dismiss the utility of XML. The problem of XHTML, as I
>
> understand it, was that the XHTML2 spec ignored the needs of its
>
> would-be users and designed stuff that was untenable. XHTML as in "a
>
> representation of the HTML DOM in XML syntax" isn't a bad idea to me.
>
> Note that I'm really defining XML here as "the basic representation
>
> format of HTML."
>
>
>
> In this case, I think the XML nature of MathML actually works to its
>
> benefit: it uses the same basic framework and "look and feel" as HTML,
>
> so you can very easily insert arbitrary HTML into your equation. A
>
> TeX-like language would have to invent awkward wrappers for this same
>
> functionality, like \html{<b>I can insert arbitrary HTML!</b>}. It also
>
> creates its own implicit DOM structure for manipulation, and provides
>
> very natural launchpads for extra styling or scripting.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Joshua Cranmer
>
> Thunderbird and DXR developer
>
> Source code archæologist
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