Thanks Peter: that point-for-point format makes it easier for me to
understand your perspective on the issues that I raised.
2013/5/6 <p.krautzber...@gmail.com>
> Benoit, you said you need proof that MathML is better than TeX. I think
> it's the reverse at this point (from a web perspective -- you'll never get
> me to use Word instead of TeX privately ;) ).
>
> Anyway, let me try to repeat how I had addressed your original points in
> my first post.
>
> 1.1. you make a point against adding unnecessary typography. Mathematics
> is text, but adding new requirements. It's comparable to the introduction
> of RTL or tables much more than musical notation. It's also something that
> all school children will encounter for 9-12 years. IMHO, this makes it
> necessary to implement mathematical typesetting functionality.
>
School children are only on the reading end of math typesetting, so for
them, AFAICS, it doesn't matter that math is rendered with MathML or with
MathJax's HTML+CSS renderer.
> 1.2 you claimed MathML is inferior to TeX. I've tried to point out that
> that's not the case as most scientific and educational publishers use it
> extensively.
>
> 1.2.1 you claimed TeX is the universal standard. I've tried to point out
> only research mathematicians use it as a standard. Almost most mathematics
> happens outside that group.
>
I suppose that I can only accept your data as better documented that mine;
most of the TeX users I know are or have been math researchers.
> 1.2.2 You pointed out that MathML isn't friendly to manual input. That's
> true but HTML isn't very friendly either, nor is SVG.
>
It's not comparable at all.
If you're writing plain text, HTML's overhead is limited to some <br> or
<p> tags, with maybe the usual <b>, <i>, heading... so the overhead is
small compared to the size of your text.
If you add many anchors and links, and some style, the overhead can grow
significantly, but is hardly going to be more than 2 input lines per output
line.
With MathML, we're talking about easily over 10 input lines per output line
--- in wikipedia's example, MathML has 30 where TeX has 1.
So contrary to HTML, nobody's going to actually write MathML code by hand
for anything more than a few isolated equations.
Thanks also for your other points below, to which I'm not individually
replying; we have a perspective mismatch here, so it's interesting for me
to understand your perspective, but I'm not going to win a fight against
the entire publishing industry which you say is already behind MathML.
Benoit
> 1.2.3 You argued TeX is superior for accessibility. I've pointed out that
> that's not the case given the current technology landscape.
> 2 You wrote now is the time to drop MathML. I've tried to point out that
> now -- as web and ebook standard -- is the time to support it, especially
> when your implementation is almost complete and you're looking to carve a
> niche out of the mobile and mobile OS market, ebooks etc.
>
> 2.1 you claim MathML never saw traction outside of Firefox. I tried to
> point out that MathML has huge traction in publishing and the educational
> sector, even if it wasn't visible on the web until MathJax came along.
> Google wants MathML support (they just don't trust the current code) while
> Apple has happily advertised with the MathML they got for free. Microsoft
> indeed remains a mystery.
>
> 2.2 you claim MathJax does a great job -- ok, I'm not going to argue ;) --
> while browsers don't. But we've used native output on Firefox before
> MathJax 2.0 and plan to do it again soon -- it is well implemented and can
> provide the same quality of typesetting.
>
> 3. Well, I'm not sure what to say to those. If math is a basic
> typographical need, then the syntax doesn't matter -- we need to see it
> implemented and its bottom up layout process clashes with CSS's top down
> process. No change in syntax will resolve that.
>
> Since MathML development involved a large number of TeX and computer
> algebra experts, I doubt a TeX-like syntax will end up being extremely
> different from MathML the second time around.
>
> Instead of fighting over syntax, I would prefer to focus on improving the
> situation of mathematics on the web -- so thank you for your offer to
> support us in fixing bugs and improving HTML layout.
>
> Peter.
>
>
> On Sunday, 5 May 2013 20:23:56 UTC-7, Joshua Cranmer 🐧 wrote:
> > On 5/5/2013 9:46 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
> >
> > > I am still waiting for the rebuttal of my arguments, in the original
> >
> > > email in this thread, about how TeX is strictly better than MathML for
> >
> > > the particular task of representing equations. As far as I can see,
> >
> > > MathML's only inherent claim to existence is "it's XML", and being XML
> >
> > > stopped being a relevant selling point for a Web spec many years ago
> >
> > > (or else we'd be stuck with XHTML)
> >
> >
> >
> > Don't be quick to dismiss the utility of XML. The problem of XHTML, as I
> >
> > understand it, was that the XHTML2 spec ignored the needs of its
> >
> > would-be users and designed stuff that was untenable. XHTML as in "a
> >
> > representation of the HTML DOM in XML syntax" isn't a bad idea to me.
> >
> > Note that I'm really defining XML here as "the basic representation
> >
> > format of HTML."
> >
> >
> >
> > In this case, I think the XML nature of MathML actually works to its
> >
> > benefit: it uses the same basic framework and "look and feel" as HTML,
> >
> > so you can very easily insert arbitrary HTML into your equation. A
> >
> > TeX-like language would have to invent awkward wrappers for this same
> >
> > functionality, like \html{<b>I can insert arbitrary HTML!</b>}. It also
> >
> > creates its own implicit DOM structure for manipulation, and provides
> >
> > very natural launchpads for extra styling or scripting.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Joshua Cranmer
> >
> > Thunderbird and DXR developer
> >
> > Source code archæologist
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>
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