A MathML Progress Report: More Light Than Shadow

Posted by timothy on Friday November 1, 2013 @04:50PM from the show-all-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Recent reports of MathML's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Given the amount of marketing dollars companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have spent trying to convince a buying public to purchase their wares as educational tools, you'd think they'd deliver more than lip service by now. MathJax team member, Peter Krautzberger, has compiled a great overview of the current state of MathML, the standard for mathematical content in publishing work flows, technical writing, and math software: "20 years into the web, math and science are still second class citizens on the web. While MathML is part of HTML 5, its adoption has seen ups and downs but if you look closely you can see there is more light than shadow and a great opportunity to revolutionize educational, scientific and technical communication.""

1 of 84 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

More XML hell... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-11-01 17:40 · Score: 0, Flamebait

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-MathML/#abstract
"While MathML is human-readable* it is anticipated that, in all but the simplest cases, authors will use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized software tools to generate MathML."
Or, in other words, not intended for use by humans. The web absolutely needs a way to display complex mathematical content, but you have to marvel at how the inherently broken paradigms of the web deal with new challenges. More XML for the fire, I guess.
* (it really, really isn't)