> 1.2.2. TeX is very friendly to manual writing, being concise and > close to natural notation, with limited overhead (some backslashes and > curly braces), while MathML is as tedious to handwrite as any other > XML-based format. An example is worked out at > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Example_and_comparison_to_other_formats, > where the solution to the quadratic equation is one line of TeX versus > 30 lines of MathML!
This isn't exactly a fair comparison. I mean, its fair, but for equations of any complexity (i.e. things you wouldn't find in a high school text book) TeX can quickly become incredibly difficult (maybe more difficult than MATHML) to manage. Most people I know who use TeX regularly have developed fairly thick sets of macros to try and manage things. > Given that TeX is already the standard in scientific publishing, I would > find it very surprising if they complained about a TeX-based or TeX-like > format ! I'm not sure this is true either. At least in the fields I was involved in (solid state phsyics), MS Word had established itself as a broader standard. That was primarily based on general ease of use and (more importantly?) ease of collaboration (i.e. we could easily share a real document back and forth that tracked changes/comments inside it). Using a version tracking system would have been interesting... but I wasn't aware of anyone doing it. I always wanted to see MathML succeeded. There are plenty of things to complain about in the format, but I think most of its problems stemmed from a lack of implementations. It feels to me like another one of those technologies (like flexbox or web components) that people need to reinvent (with a few of the sharp edges rounded off) and try to sell as "new". Until we have buy in from some other browser vendors on a new format though, I don't think I understand why we'd kill off something that 1.) works and 2.) AFAIK requires almost zero upkeep. Are teams spending a lot of time upkeeping MathML code? - Wes _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
