[uf-new] an equation/MathML/TeX microformat?

[Christopher St John]

On 10/26/07, Jeff McNeill <jeff at jeffmcneill.com> wrote:
>
> Not quite sure that (alt="") is not its intended or suggested use ...
>

There are (at least) three artifacts involved:

 a) The text that should be pronounced by a screen reader ( the alt
    text in <img
   src="http://jeffmcneill.com/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?E(aX+b)=aE(X)+b"
   alt= "E(aX+b)=aE(X)+b" /> )

 b) The underlying semantic representation, possibly MathML,
   possibly TeX). As (a) shows you can sometimes _say_ TeX (and
   sometimes arguably not: \Large f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x e^{-t^2}dt), but
   nobody should ever be forced to listen to MathML spoken aloud
   because it looks like this: "...<mrow><msup><mfenced open=
   "[" close="]"><mrow><mi>a</mi><mo>+</mo>..."

 c) The <img> that is the rendering of the underlying semantic
   markup.

But the Wikipedia work is certainly a good start at an examples list,
and in my Googling around I came across several others. Although I
have a sneaking suspicion this might not really be a big-M uf thing,
it's certainly seems worth gathering more examples as ammunition
for whatever next step is appropriate.

On 10/26/07, Paul Topping <pault at dessci.com> wrote:
> ... It is
> exactly this kind of hack that I'm looking to microformats to escape
> from.
>

In that case, you're going to _hate_ microformats, because they
don't so much escape those kinds of hacks as enshrine them
as standards :-)

-cks

-- 
Christopher St. John
http://artofsystems.blogspot.com