Epub Revision - mathematics support

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Yes, that could be done with "fallbacks", which are already a feature of the current spec (if the reader supports this feature, use this content, if it doesn't, use this other "support-is-required-by-the-spec" content instead).

Excellent. That sounds like a good solution, then.

[pholling]

Dumb pixels won't take advantage of the medium. Reading on a computer, I'd like to plug in some values, and get a sense for what a reasonable range of answers is.
The information that makes it an equation could be pasted into a different application that lets you combine with other equations, rearrange terms, check for consistent units, plot results, etc. I'd learn a lot more that way!

[Fat Abe]

Three standard math programs which engineers and scientists use are Mathematica, Matlab and Mathcad. Each has its own syntax. Favoring MathML as a standard would upset the other two vendors. When you throw in spreadsheet software or even a standard language like Fortran or C, you have another can of worms, due to function naming.

None of the three core programs displays equations in a pretty format, not even for simple matrices. That would involve another standard, with "typesetting" thrown into the consideration. Since any given equation can result in a number of renderings, where do you stop the process of "beautifying" the resulting graphic image? This is why I always spend a lot of time adjusting the positions of symbols when I write a technical paper. I know, this is terribly backward. It leads to errors, since an author may have already validated an equation in his/her math app, only to see a sign added/omitted in the published version, which he probably generated in a word processing app. And don't expect a reviewer to catch the error. It's frustrating.

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

... Mathematica, Matlab and Mathcad. Each has its own syntax. Favoring MathML as a standard would upset the other two vendors...

...which of these three is associated with MathML? I thought MathML was developed by the W3C, but will happily claim ignorance.

For typesetting, mathematicians tend to use LaTeX anyway, no? For ePub though it seems more natural to use a variant of XML.

[WillAdams]

Fat Abe, if you were using LaTeX (and all of those programs can export to LaTeX format ---MathCAD needs an external utility) this wouldn't be an issue. All three programs have varying abilities to natively export to MathML (believe me, _no one_ wants to write MathML out by hand).

http://www.lyx.org is a nice graphical front-end to LaTeX which you really should try.

William

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

Since any given equation can result in a number of renderings, where do you stop the process of "beautifying" the resulting graphic image?

In MathML? Presentation vs Content versions. It explicitly provides for that.

And yes, MathML is an open standard developed by the W3C.

Also, the "XML Entity Definitions for Characters" has just been adopted as a W3C recommendation, and as a required element alongside MathML in ePub should allow easier universal display of formulae.

[Fat Abe]

I was interested in the content part, as another user thought it would be prudent to design in a syntactical representation of a formula, say y= m*x+b, where the reader would be able to manipulate m or b, and then to see the result graphed in the document. Is W3C thinking this far ahead? We'd all like to write once and deploy everywhere.

I had a question about the path from Content -> Presentation. Is this up to the provider of the translator software?

[WillAdams]

Yes, one can do that sort of thing, but none of the static document formats allow for it, AFAIK, one has to use a programming environment --- best example of that would be _Euclid's Elements_ Joyce's Java Version:

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/jav.../elements.html

Or maybe SVG, but I'm not aware of a document-viewing tool which allows the more dynamic aspects of SVG w/o back-end server support.

William

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Fat Abe

I had a question about the path from Content -> Presentation. Is this up to the provider of the translator software?

There's no "->". They're different forms of the standard, intended for different uses, and both are fully displayable. (I'd stress that MathML is purely a display language, you do the layout in your choice of editors and then convert)