MathML is a failed web standard

Post by jandrese » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 3:30 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #83

bentley wrote: post #22

It’s instructive to see how different MathML is from other math markup languages. Here’s the quadratic formula: In troff, x = {-b +- sqrt { b sup 2 - 4ac}} over 2a In TeX, x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}} \over {2a} In plain Unicode, 𝑥 = (−𝑏 ± √(𝑏² − 4𝑎𝑐))⁄2𝑎 In MathML, x = − b ± b 2 − 4ac 2a MathML is simply unreasonable to write by hand. Most of the time it’s only ever used as an interchange format, automatically…

I audibly groaned at the XML version, but to be fair, it can be presented better: x = − b ± b 2 − 4ac 2a Again, I'm not saying this is good. Compared to the brevity of TeX or troff, it's difficult to accept. But XML is easier to read when you give in to its heavyweight structure and format it appropriately. By the way, on my system (OSX, Chrome), the unicode version is beautiful. I had not realized it was a good math…

Post by pcwalton » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

avian wrote: post #55

pcwalton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A side benefit would mean that every browser, and every system, in the world would have TeX installed! TeX doesn't have dynamic reflow, is defined by a macro system that involves essentially monkey patching the parser as it goes, lacks anything resembling a DOM, wasn't designed with Unicode or internationalization in mind, is completely unparallelizable, doesn't interoperate with CSS, has its own concept of block a…

Considering amount of expertise that went into making TeX and the fact that (in my experience at least) it far surpasses other solutions, it might simply be that mathematical notation typesetting doesn't lend itself to dynamic reflow, internationalization, parallelization, DOM representation, interoperability with CSS and its concept of blocks and inline layouts, wrapping around floats, single pass processing and int…

Post by conistonwater » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 3:42 PM UTC

bentley wrote: post #22

It’s instructive to see how different MathML is from other math markup languages. Here’s the quadratic formula: In troff, x = {-b +- sqrt { b sup 2 - 4ac}} over 2a In TeX, x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}} \over {2a} In plain Unicode, 𝑥 = (−𝑏 ± √(𝑏² − 4𝑎𝑐))⁄2𝑎 In MathML, x = − b ± b 2 − 4ac 2a MathML is simply unreasonable to write by hand. Most of the time it’s only ever used as an interchange format, automatically…

Post by Finnucane » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 3:46 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #86

koolba wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah. I think that's inevitable with an XML syntax. XML is good at some things, but representing math expressions clearly is not one of them. What is XML good at? (by good I mean better than alternatives like JSON, YAML, HAML, etc) The only thing I that might qualify is a long term/archival quality document format like ODF/OOXML. The inherently embeddedable nature of XML does seem like a nice fit but it gets very b…

Why does this have to turn into an XML bashing thread? Writing the above equation in JSON would be just as terrible.

Post by thanatropism » Thu, Apr 07, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

analyst74 wrote: post #95

dginev wrote: post #85

I don't know how many of the people lamenting MathML ever came to exist are active math-on-the-web developers. I for one am dealing with third-party math equations on a daily basis and can only dream of the wonder of ubiquitous MathML support in all major browsers. The details as to why are here: http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please/2015-09-16/MathML%20on%2... ! As things stand, math handling on the web is inconvenien…

I am with you. Some people write their math by hand in LaTeX or other formats, but many use visual tools and draw math similar to drawing diagrams. Then those tools generate whatever source code necessary. In those scenarios, MathML would be much easier to deal with than most other formats. Also, Presentation MathML support is much easier to implement than full-scale support of LaTeX or other more complete math solut…