[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 15302] Add very-basic CSS-based MathML support into WebKit

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15302





------- Comment #10 from distler at golem.ph.utexas.edu  2007-09-28 10:44 PDT -------
MathML is verbose. It's also not intended to be hand-authored.  Typically, it
is machine-generated, often from LaTeX input. See, e.g.

   http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/itex2MML.html

>It's also not really XML.  Not only do MathML files not require a DTD
or namespace, ...


Huh? MathML most certainly IS an application of XML. XML doesn't require a DTD
(and porbably shouldn't). Of course, without a DTD, you can't use named
entities (other than the standard 5). But one shouldn't be sending the 2000+
named entities defined by the MathML DTD over the wire, anyway.

What *is* strange about the MathML Spec is that it is really *two*
specifications:

* Content MathML
    Conceived, among other things, as a data interchange format for symbolic
manupulation programs.

* Presentational MathML
    Conceived as a format for displaying Math on the web.

No browser implements CMML. The focus is on PMML.

>but there also appears to be this screwy "annotation" tag, which
can contain non-xml content (probably not even in a CDATA tag).

The <annotation> is a part of Content MathML, and its content-model is PCDATA.
No browser implements it, nor (probably) should they.

>A good example of this is the MathML test suite http://www.w3.org/Math/testsuite/ which has lots of mml files which are not valid XML.

Really? If so, that's a bug. You should report it. (But, again, for present
purposes, I would not give a hoot about the CMML part of the test suite).

>Also, I keep expecting someone to make
an XSL stylesheet which knows how to render MathML perfectly using an SVG
engine

That is, certainly, one approach to implementing MathML...

>given how little MathML seems to be used on
the Web, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Both MathML and inline SVG require application/xhtml+xml, and so are
essentially unused on the Web.

By comparison with SVG 1.1, Presentational MathML is a small,
implementer-friendly little specification.


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