The presentation of this document has been augmented to use XHTML rather than HTML, and to include all MathML examples as inlined MathML markup that should be rendered by a MathML enabled browser. The MathML examples that have been added, and which should be displayed in your browser, are marked like this.

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Abstract

This specification defines the Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.

This specification of the markup language MathML is intended primarily for a readership consisting of those who will be developing or implementing renderers or editors using it, or software that will communicate using MathML as a protocol for input or output. It is not a User's Guide but rather a reference document.

MathML can be used to encode both mathematical notation and mathematical content. About thirty-eight of the MathML tags describe abstract notational structures, while another about one hundred and seventy provide a way of unambiguously specifying the intended meaning of an expression. Additional chapters discuss how the MathML content and presentation elements interact, and how MathML renderers might be implemented and should interact with browsers. Finally, this document addresses the issue of special characters used for mathematics, their handling in MathML, their presence in Unicode, and their relation to fonts.

While MathML is human-readable, authors typically will use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized software tools to generate MathML. Several versions of such MathML tools exist, both freely available software and commercial products, and more are under development.

Status of this Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document was produced by the W3C Math Working Group as a Proposed Recommendation and is part of the W3C Math Activity. The goals of the W3C Math Working Group are discussed in the W3C Math WG Charter (revised July 2006). The authors of this document are the W3C Math Working Group members. A list of participants in the W3C Math Working Group is available.

A Proposed Recommendation is a specification that is under review by the W3C Advisory Committee for endorsement as a W3C Recommendation. It is is a mature document that has been widely reviewed and has been shown to be implementable. W3C encourages everybody to implement this specification. Comments may be sent to the (archived) public mailing list www-math@w3.org (see instructions). When sending e-mail, please put the text “MathML3-PR” in the subject, preferably like this: “[MathML3-PR] …summary of comment…”

Publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

This Proposed Recommendation specifies a final version of the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 which has been under active development. It follows the immediately previous Second Last Call draft, dated 10 June 2010 and with a Last Call Comment period ending 1 July 2010. Previously there was a Candidate Recommendation draft dated 15 December 2009, which succeeded an earlier Last Call draft. During the Candidate Recommendation review period of testing and implementation the Math Working Group, with feedback from outside, came up with enough corrections of typos and clarifications, and a reformulation of an algorithm used internally, that the Math Working Group put forward for active review a Second Last Call draft.

The Working Group believes it has completed its work on revising MathML with this document. The differences from the Candidate Recommendation draft are explicitly detailed in a separate Last Call Change List. The differences from the Second Last Call draft are also listed in Last Call Change List, further discussed in the MathML 3.0 Second Last Call Dispositions document, and highlighted in the diff-marked HTML version of the specification.

Since the testing and implementation activities satisfy the Exit Criteria for the Candidate Recommendation phase, the Working Group thinks that it has been demonstrated through interoperable implementations that the MathML 3.0 specification is worthy of passage to Proposed Recommendation status. The Working Group supports this claim with the results of applying a comprehensive Test Suite. This is publicly available and developers are encouraged to submit their results for display. The Test Results are public. They show at least two interoperable implementations for each essential test. The Working Group aims to advance MathML 3.0 to Recommendation Status.

Closely associated with the MathML 3.0 specification is A MathML for CSS Profile which is simultaneously being submitted as a Proposed Recommendation. This describes a profile of MathML 3.0 that can be well formatted with Cascading Style Sheets.

The MathML 2.0 (Second Edition) specification has been a W3C Recommendation since 2001. After its recommendation, a W3C Math Interest Group collected reports of experience with the deployment of MathML and identified issues with MathML that might be ameliorated. The rechartering of a Math Working Group did not signal any change in the overall design of MathML. The major additions in MathML 3 are support for bidirectional layout, better linebreaking and explicit positioning, elementary math notations, and a new strict content MathML vocabulary with well-defined semantics. The MathML 3 Specification has also been restructured.

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

Public discussion of MathML and issues of support through the W3C for mathematics on the Web takes place on the public mailing list of the Math Working Group (list archives). To subscribe send an email to www-math-request@w3.org with the word subscribe in the subject line.

Advisory Committee representatives of W3C member organizations are requested to fill in the review form before 10 September 2010. For this they should consult the WBS questionnaires.

The basic chapter structure of this document is based on the earlier MathML 2.0 Recommendation [MathML2]. That MathML 2.0 itself was a revision of the earlier W3C Recommendation MathML 1.01 [MathML1]; MathML 3.0 is a revision of the W3C Recommendation MathML 2.0. It differs from it in that all previous chapters have been updated, some new elements and attributes added and some deprecated. Much has been moved to separate documents containing explanatory material, material on characters and entities and on the MathML DOM. The discussion of character entities has led to the document XML Entity Definitions for Characters [Entities], which is now a W3C Recommendation. The concern with use of CSS with MathML has led to the document A MathML for CSS Profile [MathMLforCSS], which is a Candidate Recommendation accompanying this one.

The present Proposed Recommendation makes public results of Math Working Group work in recent months. The biggest differences from MathML 2.0 (Second Edition) are in Chapters 4 and 5, although there have been smaller improvements throughout the specification. A more detailed description of changes from the previous Recommendation follows.

• With the second Working Draft, much of the non-normative explication that formerly was found in Chapters 1 and 2, and many examples from elsewhere in the previous MathML specifications, were removed from the MathML3 specification and planned to be incorporated into a MathML Primer to be prepared as a separate document. It is expected this will help the use of this formal MathML3 specification as a reference document in implementations, and offer the new user better help in understanding MathML's deployment. The remaining content of Chapters 1 and 2 has been edited to reflect the changes elsewhere in the document, and in the rapidly evolving Web environment. Some of the text in them went back to early days of the Web and XML, and its explanations are now commonplace.

• Chapter 3, on presentation-oriented markup, adds new material on linebreaking, and on markup for elementary math notations used in many countries (mstack, mlongdiv and other associated elements). Other changes include revisions to the mglyph, mpadded and maction elements and significant unification and cleanup of attribute values. Earlier work, as recorded in the W3C Note Arabic mathematical notation, has allowed clarification of the relationship with bidirectional text and examples with RTL text have been added.

• Chapter 4, on content-oriented markup, contains major changes and additions in this Working Draft. The meaning of the actual content remains as before in principle, but a lot of work has been done on expressing it better. A few new elements have been added.

• Chapter 5 has been refined as its purpose has been further clarified to deal with the mixing of markup languages. This chapter deals, in particular, with interrelations of parts of the MathML specification, especially with presentation and content markup.

• Chapter 6 is a new addition which deals with the issues of interaction of MathML with a host environment. This chapter deals with interrelations of the MathML specification with XML and HTML, but in the context of deployment on the Web. In particular there is a discussion of the interaction of CSS with MathML.

• Chapter 7 replaces the previous Chapter 6, and has been rewritten and reorganized to reflect the new situation in regard to Unicode, and the changed W3C context with regard to named character entities. The new W3C specification XML Entity Definitions for Characters, which incorporates those used for mathematics has become a a W3C Recommendation, [Entities].

• The Appendices, of which there are eight shown, have been reworked. Appendix A now contains the new RelaxNG schema for MathML3 as well as discussion of MathML3 DTD issues. Appendix B addresses media types associated with MathML and implicitly constitutes a request for the registration of three new ones, as is now standard for work from the W3C. Appendix C contains a new simplified and reconsidered Operator Dictionary. Appendices D, E, F, G and H contain similar non-normative material to that in the previous specification, now appropriately updated.

• A fuller discussion of the document's evolution can be found in Appendix F Changes.