ISSUE-37

html-svg-mathml

Integration of SVG and MathML into text/html

State:

OPEN

Product:

HTML 5 spec

Raised by:

James Graham

Opened on:

2008-03-10

Description:

The defacto language of the existing web is text/html and, as a consequence, many existing backend systems are not suitable for producing XHTML in a reasonably error-proof manner. However the text/html platform is limited in its ability to support some types of content that are of considerable interest to authors and have deployed support in XML-aware UAs. In particular the ability to include inline vector graphics via SVG and inline mathematics via MathML is missing from the text/html platform. Typical use cases for supporting these technologies inside text/html include (taken from [1]):

* Converting a typical LaTeX paper to text/html such that everything that wouldn’t get bitmapped in a pdfLaTeX workflow does not get bitmapped.

 * Writing a similar document into text/html in a text editor copying and pasting the SVG figures from Inkscape XML output.

 * Making Flash-like visually “high-impact” sites using the openly specified Web platform but without the Draconianness of XML in such a way that the whole thing uses retained-mode graphics and lives in one DOM for easy scripting (i.e. no need for scripts to deal with object or iframe sub-DOMs).

 * Publishing the kind of content that is published on http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/ using a legacy PHP content management system that is not XML-ready.

Reference [1] also details technical requirements that arise if text/html is to address this set of use cases. Sub issues that require consideration include the syntax constraints imposed on the non-HTML subtrees (whether they must match the HTML or XML syntax where html-in-text/html and XML have different rules), error handling, case folding and probably various other things. Consideration of compatibility with existing UAs, in particular deployed IE, which already has some special handling for XML-syntax-in-text/html [2], is also required.

Relevant emails / References

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0039.html
[2] http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=ie8whitepapers&ReleaseId=573
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0040.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0046.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0047.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0049.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0050.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Mar/0051.html
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/03/07/Design-By-Attrition

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. Re: ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from ed@opera.com on 2008-07-24)
2. Re: ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from cam@mcc.id.au on 2008-07-24)
3. Re: ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from codedread@gmail.com on 2008-07-23)
4. RE: ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com on 2008-07-23)
5. Re: ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from codedread@gmail.com on 2008-07-23)
6. ISSUE-37: RE: SVG in HTML proposal (from Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com on 2008-07-23)
7. Re: SVG in HTML proposal (from ed@opera.com on 2008-07-17)
8. Re: SVG in HTML proposal (from connolly@w3.org on 2008-07-17)
9. Supporting MathML and SVG in text/html, and related topics (from ian@hixie.ch on 2008-04-10)
10. {minutes} 2008-04-03 HTML WG telcon (from mike@w3.org on 2008-04-04)
11. Re: Exploring new vocabularies for HTML (ISSUE-37 html-svg-mathml) (from connolly@w3.org on 2008-04-03)
12. Re: SVG and MathML in text/html (from soypunk@gmail.com on 2008-03-10)
13. ISSUE-37 (html-svg-mathml): Integration of SVG and MathML into text/html [HTML 5 spec] (from sysbot+tracker@w3.org on 2008-03-10)

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