Math on the Web CG

Peter: Welcome. We will start with introductions. Daniel is the Co-Chair. This can be changed.
... This is the first get-together.

The idea behind the group that is focused on the tools to put mathematics on the web.
... from such a group, we could build from the bottom up to help build the tools to make it easier.
... people who are building the tools need to step up to make the tools
... it needs standards and developing the web forward
... it will be a learning experience for making standards for most of the group.

Intros

Peter: who are you
... what are you working on, or what is your interest in this group?
... what do you want to contribute to the group?

Peter: Consultant, work with MathJax
... interested in layout, exposing more data, and put out more information, accessibility

<pkra> jeanne: I'm on the a11y side. ... web a11y engineer
... worked on WCAG task forces
... web content a11y guidelines,
... often heard about problems of ppl with disabilities having problems with math on the web
... no specific interest but interested in finding out.

Collin: I am undergrad at UVa, studying math and computer science. Not familiar with standardization, but hope to help any way I can.
... interest and background in vulnerability side. Experience with development, but not with mathematics.

Daniel: I work at Maths for More with a product called WIRIS Editor. I am the CTO. I am interested in putting mathematics in the web using an editing tool. I am interested in the interopability with Math on the Web and MathML. Interested in level of semantics.
... we should consider the level of semantics we want to provide.
... bottom up, I want a list of examples of how mathematics should be put on the web and create use cases.
... then address other fields, such as chemistry.

<laughinghan> http://www.wiris.com/en/editor

Eli: I work for Pearson in Accessible Assessments group. I am looking for solution for braille input online. This is my first working group.
... accessible equation editor is our current focus.

Emily: Kahm Academy doing Math rendering. I am one of the people who wrote KaTeX and the CSS hacks to get things working reasonably on the web. I want to make the CSS hacks less hacky. I am new to the standards process.

Han: I work on MathQuill which is a free open source math editor. I am interested in CSS techniques that others use, reducing the hacks in CSS.

Ivan: I am at W3C, I am the Digital Publishing Activity lead. Digital Publishing is crying out for an efficient solution for mathematics in digital publishing. I have no experience with publishing mathematics on the web, but will work to help Peter.

Jason: I lead engineering for a graphing calculator. We are a large user of MathQuill. We want to get better font information from the browsers.
... we are working with MathQuill so it will work better with speech to text and braille output.
... want to work with others on getting information from DESMOS to other applications.

Jean: Independent Freeland Digital publishing expert. I worked with MathML and MathJax. I am interested in making math accessible on the web, but first we have to get math on the web. Scholarly, higher ed, professional. It is across all digital publishing.

Jos: Web Developer, new to W3C groups. I work on a math library, called MathJS. We tried to group it up with MathJax editing. It is difficult to get them to interoperate and get maths interchangable, like JSON.
... I am strong in making things simpler and clearer.

Markus: I work with DAISY Consortium. I work with IDPF on ePub digital publishing standards. There is a crying out for solutions in digital publishing.
... the publishers require typographical fidelity as on a print page of math, but it needs to be accessible to people with print disabiltiies and there are no answers. It is a tragedy for humanity that we do not have math on the web.

Moritz Schubotz: I am a researcher. My interested in math rendering for wikipedia. I have been working on a math extention for wikipedia. We suffer that MathML is not working on any browser. MathML therefore, doesn't work in practice. We need better math rendering for websites. Now we can only print images which is unacceptable. It should be part of the text.
... it needs to be transportable to other software. I am working on projects with students. One project with MathJax. Another is moving to Mathematica.

Volker: Reader at university in the UK with STEM accessibility mainly Chemistry. I have been working with MathJax creating an accessibility extension. I'm interested in Open Science, with getting data onto the web that is interoperable.
... I was on the SVG accessibility task force, but had to drop off when I didn't have time.

<gjtorikian> bummed I can't be there and have to read these in chat ;_; many thanks jeanne for the scribing

John: I work for Wiley for information modeling. We publish digitally and in print. Large commercial publisher. Our models have always incorporated MathML. I have the same problems that others have mentioned in getting math digitally and in print from a single source. I have experience in the past as a math professor.
... have a colleague, Tzviya, who would also agree with these comments.

Peter: This is a diverse group, and I am very happy.
... Ivan, can you give an overview of Community Groups and how they fit into W3C structure?

Ivan: Community Groups do what they want when they want it. They are satellite groups around W3C. Good that they have the flexibility to do what they want, Bad because their work is not considered and official W3C Standard.

<pkra> 244 CGs

Ivan: what I have seen that worked, is Community Group that follows a process that produces a Community Group Report. If the quality is good enough, then that work becomes the basis of W3C standard work. That may not be a goal of this group
... The Web Annotations Community Group produced a report that became the basis of the Web Annotations Working Group.
... this is a group that suffers the most from the status of MathML.
... it would be a huge success if this group could be the group that produces work that could help solve this problem.
... accessibility is still a problem, and it would be good if this group could help with that.
... Community Groups are autonomous, and the group can do what it wants.
... Working Groups are the only groups that can produce W3C standards, aka W3C REcommendations. Interest Groups do not produce W3C Recommendations.
... the Digital Publishing Interest Group worked with other W3C groups to improve the standards as needed by Digital Publishing.
... for this group, the differentiation between Interest Groups and Community Groups is not significant.

Peter: I didn't realize that Community Groups are replacing Interest Groups.

Ivan: Many of the Community Groups don't go anywhere. That is the way of it.

Peter: Many of the people on this call have been thinking about Math since MathML working group was active. The MathML group is now closed.
... this group is not taking over from MathML.

Ivan: I would expect the work done here to be oblivious to the syntax of math on the web. Millions of equations are described in MathML. Some people expect their work done in LaTex. We should have a way to build tools that take advantage of the work that browsers have used to optimize display in HTML and CSS.
... if some of the features of CSS are insufficient, and this group comes up with featueres that HTML, CSS or others should add to their specifications, then that is appropriate for this group to contribute ideas to those groups.
... there is a project in CSS -- Houdini -- that may be of interest to those who were interested in the font issue.

Peter: Use q+ to join the queue if you wish to speak. Use q? to get a list of who is on the queue.
... I wouldn't expect this group to be oblivious to syntax, but I would expect this group to follow its interests.
... there are no limitations if you want to talk about MathML if you want, and LaTex syntax or asciimath syntax.
... I see an interest in layout, CSS layout in particular. There may be interest in SVG.
... There is interest in Houdini Task Force (the sexiest task force) between CSS and TAG (the highrollers of the standards world). They are looking for use cases from the mathematics world.
... there is a recent article in Smashing Magazine where they describe Houdini project.
... we may want to get tangible information to these groups.

<jos> https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/03/houdini-maybe-the-most-exciting-development-in-css-youve-never-heard-of/

Peter: there is also interest in accessibility. There has been work on a digital publishing ARIA extension, with digital publishing use cases. Some discussion of ARIA use cases to make mathmatics more accessible.
... This is another area where this group could provide input and get traction.
... a third area is interoperability. No one will help the math community who isn't part of the math community.
... last week someone posted to the MathJax mailing list looking for a JSON-type for interoperability. Many tools produce very different data results based on the input. [example] Teacher who writes an equation, the markup changes to make it render properly. We could look for low-hanging fruit.
... Next meeting. I would like to have a next meeting, and quickly.

Peter: how frequently should we meet? I would like monthly personally.

<Eli_Weger__Pearson> monthly?

<mgylling> +1

<ivan> monthly is fine

<Jason_Merrill> monthly sounds good

<laughinghan> do we need to meet regularly yet?

monthly sounds good.

Daniel: To start, every two weeks, then monthly.

Volker: +1 Otherwise, we will not get anything off the ground.

<laughinghan> I personally vastly prefer IRC > meetings > mailing lists

Ivan: We should try to use the email list or Github to work asyncronously. I don't think we should rely on telcos.

Peter: Put ideas and work on the mailing list. If there is anything else, please follow up by email.

Ivan: We signed up for a short face to face meeting at TPAC, but we haven't heard any status.

Ivan: TPAC is a week long meeting where working groups meet face to face. It is also a place to have neutral coordinated interaction with other groups. It is an intellectually stimulating, but exhausting week. This year, the TPAC is 3rd week in September in Lisbon.
... we may get a spot.