Math WG Road Map

Status of this document

This is a draft report examining implementation experience and interoperability issues arising from MathML. It was first prepared in connection with the request for Candidate Recommendation status for MathML 2. This is a W3C-only document, not for public consumption.

Abstract

As a result of the long process of development of MathML 2 as a revision to MathML 1.01, a good number of implementation efforts using MathML have been started. There are even shipping products and government agencies deploying MathML. Interoperability issues have been addressed as a result of this activity. The document outlines lists of the known implementation activities and gives criteria which should be sufficient to satisfy the requirements of a candidate review period.

Introduction

There are a good number of software developments that have begun to make use of MathML. During the Candidate Recommendation review period the Math WG expects to receive formal reports on ease or difficulties of implementations, especially in regard to new features introduced with MathML 2, from most of these efforts. There are several pairings of organizations mentioned below who have joint ventures using MathML for the interoperability it affords.

MathML has two obvious parts that are both countervailing and cooperative. They are mark-up for Presentation and mark-up for mathematical Content. The Presentation mark-up (Chapter 3) uses about thirty elements, and Content (Chapter 4) about one hundred and fifty. It is readily possible to undertake an implementation, especially a first one, using MathML that concentrates on one type of mark-up or the other. Then there input and output considerations, display and editing aspects, and so on.

Candidate Recommendation Review Exit Criteria

MathML will be ready to exit the Candidate Recommendation period when its readiness for wider deployment has been demonstrated by

Implementation Requirements

the existence of

At least one prototype implementation using each of
- Presentation mark-up,
- Content mark-up.
- Presentation and Content mark-up together;
Proofs of concept that MathML Presentation and Content, and their mixing, can be displayed in
- A Web browser,
- A plug-in,
- An autonomous viewing application;
Demonstrations that MathML presentation and content mark-up can be generated by applications that have mathematical data already encoded in other ways;
Examples of authoring tools, of different types, showing that MathML can be edited;
An example of a prototype translator from mathematical legacy documents in TeX encoding;
An example system showing that MathML encoding can be used to produce high-quality mathematical typesetting;
A proof of concept showing audio rendering from MathML encoding;

Interoperability Requirements

and the provision of

Implementations that run on several platforms under different operating systems;
A test-suite of standard examples to exercise various aspects of the MathML specification, preferably installed as part of the W3C validation service;
Examples of import of mathematical data encoded in MathML into a computer algebra system for further processing;
Examples of cut and paste of MathML between different implementations.

MathML Implementations in progress

Amaya: W3C's browser and authoring tool for Web pages. Amaya includes an easy to use editor for MathML
Mathematica: a technical computing system with high-quality mathematical typesetting and editing. Mathematica is a visual typesetting and authoring tool which both renders and exports MathML. Since the shipping Version 4.0 Mathematica has had MathML support for presentation markup. This is in everyday use at the US Patent Office. Mathematica can both import MathML markup and display it, and export it for inclusion elsewhere.
IBM techexplorer: a technical/scientific document viewer and "live mathematics" plug-in using MathML and TeX/LaTeX. Available on several platforms. Version 3 has almost complete MathML 2 support.
Maple: a computer algebra system which has demonstrated import, export and evaluation of MathML content markup; in the future, generation and rendering of MathML will be supported,
MathType: Design Science's intelligent equation editor and authoring tool for MathML began MathML support with version 4. Design Science makes the simpler equation editors for Microsoft Word and Word Perfect.
WebEQ: a Java-based collection of tools for authoring and rendering MathML, including a visual editor, a WebTeX to MathML translator, and a rendering applet for interactive math on Web pages. WebEQ also provides Java Programmers with API documentation and libraries for other MathML aware applications.
MacKichan Software: Scientific Workplace makers, have been working on MathML since joining the Math WG, especially in regard to the DOM interface.
Mozilla: The open-source developing form of Netscape has a prototype form with MathML interpretation.
Internet Explorer: Microsoft's Web browser effort is working to support MathMl rendering using their behaviors technology.
OpenMath: A project, part of whose European efforts are funded by the European Commission, which makes use of MathML.
E-Lite: ICESoft's lightweight Java web browser and browser components offer a full, native MathML implementation available in a browser.
LaTeX2HTML MathML package: LaTeX to MathML conversion
Omega: LaTeX to MathML conversion
TeX4ht: general TeX to SGML/XML translator (presentation tags)
TtHMML Ian Hutchinson's powerful (La)TeX to HTML + MathML translator.
EzMath: an easy-to-use input format based on how people speak expressions. EzMath also provides a convenient way to author MathML.
maje: A DOS/Linux MathML compiler working from a simplified input language.

This version:	http://www.w3.org/Math/iandi/impl-interop20001031.html
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Editor:	Patrick Ion (ion@ams.org)

MathML 2.0 Implementation and Interoperability Report