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MathML is a failed web standard

peterkrautzberger.org

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Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#141

Post by jahewson »

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…

You can remove the inside the too.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#142

Post by mccourt »

"... MathML is effectively preventing mathematics from aligning with today’s and tomorrow’s web."

I'm probably one of the few that still likes to print things out or buy a physical copy of a book, but I also like reading/producing math for the internet and I often wish there were a better standard out there. I really appreciate how you've laid out several points that demonstrate the situation clearly.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#143

Post by ga6840 »

I am building a project and doing research on math-aware search (my project is hosted on https://github.com/t-k-/the-day-after-tomorrow) As for the search engine for math, it is a pity that MathML has become a standard "input" for mainstream research. The most famous conference on Math search: NTCIR, is actually publishing its main dataset/corpus in MathML.

Converting MathML back into LaTeX is possible but error-prone for most moderate-complex expressions (I tried it using haskell pandoc). This makes math-aware search engines have to include a MathML parser. And the most popular digital math document are still mostly written in LaTeX, math search engine thus needs another tool (e.g. LaTeXML) to convert LaTeX to much more lengthy MathML stuffs. As a researcher in this field, all I see is MathML brings a lot overhead to our life.

I think LaTeX is still the ideal way to "input" math expression, it is human-friendly and most commonly used math input. While WEB standard should focus on "rendering" LaTeX. I have to point it out that I am pretty comfortable about what MathJax provides, but if there needs to be a WEB standard on math, I wish some day the standard way to write math expression in HTML is something like this: x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}} {2a}

Instead of: x = − b ± b 2 − 4 a c 2 a

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#145

Post by ga6840 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #99
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…

Do you think other kinds of content should be included in the web spec too? So, special tags for musical notation, special tags for all forms of maps and geographic, geological features, tags to represent chemical structures, tags for all major forms of engineering notation, etc? To me, it's not that I don't think there is a use case for MathML, it's that it's too content-specific to make sense at the browser level.…

Agree, we do not include a 4*4 image in HTML by inserting ...... In browser level, I think we should treat math expression as a simple and atom component, and the only benefits to expose DOM/XML/JSON or whatever structural information in webpage is probably you can manipulate/extract info from it (e.g. using Javascript). Do we really need to manipulate a math expression? I think a simple "\frac a b" makes much sense to me. I think it is about the trade-off on HTML granularity.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#146

Post by ga6840 »

spicyj wrote: post #5
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #3

Blargh. It annoys me that MathML was even a thing. We've already had a perfectly-fine and widely-used markup language for mathematical formulae; it's called TeX. Ideally, I'd prefer that HTML5 include a tag, or something similar, that takes TeX as input and produces formatted output. A side benefit would mean that every browser, and every system, in the world would have TeX installed! At least MathJax can take TeX as…

TeX is analogous to Presentation MathML but doesn't solve the accessibility concerns because the semantic intent of the TeX source isn't always clear. (How do you read a \phantom{}? Or how can you know that "\left( 7 \atop 3 \right)" should be read as "7 choose 3"?)

I think we do not need semantic representation in HTML case at all. For example, f(x+1) can be a multiplication, or a function, but should we write something like \function f (x+1) ? I think knowing the layout similarity with query is enough for math-ware search engine to identify similar math expressions. Adding too much in Math HTML standard is not helpful but redundant.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#147

Post by WhitneyLand »

spicyj wrote: post #87
WhitneyLand wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you open the KaTeX source, but not the source for your mobile apps?

KaTeX is more likely to be useful out of the box to other developers, whereas the source of the mobile apps is not going to be a drop-in component that's useful; it'd have to be used more as a learning opportunity by interested devs. That's fine, but it's also a different market. In practical terms, the KA mobile apps also are much more KA-specific and need to be cleaned up before open-sourcing, and there's a worry t…

Sorry to hijack this thread and I appreciate your response.

Please keep in mind I don't ask about open sourcing the mobile apps to help other developers, rather, it's to help KA. There are lots of contributions and improvements that would be made by the community if given a chance, which would benefit everyone. Contributions would have to be managed yes, but that's something that done all the time for other projects.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#148

Post by spicyj »

ga6840 wrote: post #146
spicyj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TeX is analogous to Presentation MathML but doesn't solve the accessibility concerns because the semantic intent of the TeX source isn't always clear. (How do you read a \phantom{}? Or how can you know that "\left( 7 \atop 3 \right)" should be read as "7 choose 3"?)

I think we do not need semantic representation in HTML case at all. For example, f(x+1) can be a multiplication, or a function, but should we write something like \function f (x+1) ? I think knowing the layout similarity with query is enough for math-ware search engine to identify similar math expressions. Adding too much in Math HTML standard is not helpful but redundant.

For sighted users it may be possible to differentiate, but whether "f of x plus 1" or "f times x plus 1" is read aloud is a significant difference.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#149

Post by spicyj »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #147
spicyj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KaTeX is more likely to be useful out of the box to other developers, whereas the source of the mobile apps is not going to be a drop-in component that's useful; it'd have to be used more as a learning opportunity by interested devs. That's fine, but it's also a different market. In practical terms, the KA mobile apps also are much more KA-specific and need to be cleaned up before open-sourcing, and there's a worry t…

Sorry to hijack this thread and I appreciate your response. Please keep in mind I don't ask about open sourcing the mobile apps to help other developers, rather, it's to help KA. There are lots of contributions and improvements that would be made by the community if given a chance, which would benefit everyone. Contributions would have to be managed yes, but that's something that done all the time for other projects.

We've open-sourced several other mostly-KA-specific parts of the site, including these:

https://github.com/Khan/khan-exercises

https://github.com/Khan/perseus

https://github.com/Khan/live-editor

Contributions are few and far between; good contributions are even more so. It hasn't been worth the time investment, unfortunately.

Re: MathML is a failed web standard

#150

Post by runarberg »

sammydavis wrote: post #127
yepguy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In AsciiMath[1], x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / (2a) [1]: http://asciimath.org/

also, thanks for the pointer to ascii math, looks like a nice way to render

I wrote a clone1[1] of asciimath recently that aims to be just a little bit better then asciimath. It only targets MathML though.

[1]: https://runarberg.github.io/ascii2mathml

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