The Proposed Recommendation for MathML was released on the 24th February 1998 for review and voting by W3C members. The voting period will end on 24th March and the Director's decision is expected on the 7th April. MathML is a low-level format for describing mathematics as a basis for machine to machine communication. It will provide a much needed solution to including mathematical expressions in Web pages.
MathML is intended to facilitate the use and re-use of mathematical and scientific content on the Web, and for other applications such as computer algebra systems, print typesetters, and voice synthesizers. MathML can be used to encode both mathematical notation, for high-quality visual display, and mathematical content, for more semantic applications like scientific software, or voice synthesis.
MathML is cast as an application of XML. As such, with adequate style sheet support, it will ultimately be possible for browsers to natively render mathematical expressions. In the immediate future, several vendors offer applet and plug-ins which can render MathML in place in a browser. Translators and equation editors which can generate HTML pages with images of the math expression from HTML with embedded MathML code will be avilable soon.
For more information about MathML and the activities of the HTML Math working group, consult the HTML Math Activity Report.
Since the MathML 1.0 specification is a very large document as proposals go, there are available in PDF form
Additional Working Group Information:
MathML Related Software:
Other Related Software:
tth TeX to
HTML converter