2013/5/5 Wesley Johnston <wjohns...@mozilla.com> > > 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. >
Well, I have written hundreds of pages of TeX; for sure, some large equations would expand over more than one line of TeX, but I can't remember going over more than 5 lines of TeX source (without custom helper macros) per actual line of output, that that would be a really unusual case --- while the MathML example above has a ratio of 30 source lines to 1 output line. The fact that TeX furthermore allows macros shouldn't be considered proof that it's particularly hairy --- it's just something that people do for convenience/abstraction. There _are_ very hairy things with TeX, but they are not so much with math typography per se; instead, I'd say that TeX becomes hairy when one tries to use it beyond its primary domain of application. For example, one can draw diagrams, e.g. with the xypic package, and that can get really cumbersome and inexpressive. But that's not part of what I was suggesting could become part of the subset-of-TeX used to replace MathML. > > 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. > Ouch. I am glad I didn't work in a field where MS Word was in use for writing long and/or scientific documents. At least for the more mathematical sciences (math, mathematical physics, large parts of CS) I can say with confidence that TeX is ubiquitous. > > 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? > We agree: it does sound fair to wait for either a replacement, or agreement that no such technology is needed in browsers, or evidence that the maintenance cost is significant, before taking any decision to drop MathML. Benoit > > - Wes > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
