On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 6:23 AM, mhampton <hampto...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I thought for the record I would mention that at the joint meetings > someone asked why we didn't support MathML. My impression is that > someone began to, but lack of demand or interest has resulted in that > stagnating.
Here's the history of MathML and Sage from my point of view. I think I had never heard of MathML until about two years after I started Sage. There was a guy named Aaron Klemm who wanted Sage to do a bunch of MathML, e.g, have native presentation MathML output for different objects in addition to latex output. I wrote the basic infrastructure and a few examples (e.g., for rational numbers), so he (or others) could implement it, but he never ended up writing a line of code. (I think he was kept very busy with his main job.) I think some people have discussed a few times using a "latex to presentation math ml" converter, since that could be used instead of jsmath in some web browsers. I'm not sure if this ever went anywhere. I recall being criticized by several people at different times at the AMS meeting in San Diego last year, because Sage doesn't use content MathML to communicate with Maxima, Singular, GAP, etc. Clearly the MathML group was talking about Sage and was disappointed. At ISSAC I saw a demo of how content MathML interfacing between different programs actually works when fully implemented in a particular case, and I think I'm glad Sage doesn't use it since it is way more complicated than what Sage currently does, and would take too much work to implement. The Sage pexpect interfaces are as KISS (keep it simple stupid) as possible, and MathML isn't KISS. Finally, I think MathML comes up in a central way in the new DLMF (digital library of mathematical functions). That application of MathML seems like a good idea since it is being used to solve a real problem. Anyway, after all that, I still don't even know what the phrase "support MathML" means. When you write "There are probably benefits in getting some people to use Sage who have invested time in materials written in MathML." what do you mean? I don't know what "materials written in MathML" means, since it's not like MathML is just an alternative to latex. -- William -- William --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to sage-edu@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-edu+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
