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

Paul Topping pault at dessci.com
Fri Oct 26 15:04:05 PDT 2007


This is the kind of thing I was looking for. The use of comments within
<div> might be a problem as they can't be accessed via the DOM, right?
I'm not sure escaping the MathML or TeX is as big a problem as you say
as it can be handled by proper authoring tools. 

Paul Topping
Design Science, Inc.
http://www.dessci.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: microformats-new-bounces at microformats.org 
> [mailto:microformats-new-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf 
> Of Scott Reynen
> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 1:49 PM
> To: For discussion of new microformats.
> Subject: Re: [uf-new] an equation/MathML/TeX microformat?
> 
> On Oct 26, 2007, at 9:58 AM, Paul Topping wrote:
> 
> > Also, I want to put the MathML or TeX in the page, not in separate
> > documents.
> 
> This seems to be the fundamental problem, and I doubt microformats  
> can solve it.  With microformats we can make maximum use of existing  
> HTML tags, but we can't create new tags.  And I don't think any  
> existing HTML tags allow embedding of XML-based data directly 
> in HTML  
> documents.  You could escape all the XML with entities, e.g.  
> &lt;math&gt;, but that would be far more work than a separate  
> document.  <script> can include XML, but implies the XML is a 
> script,  
> which MathML isn't really.  If you're okay with such redefinition of  
> HTML elements, you could do something like this:
> 
> <script type="text/mathml">
> 	[MathML version]
> </script>
> <script type="text/tex">
> 	[Tex version]
> </script>
> <noscript>
> 	<img src="[image version]" alt="[text version]" />
> </noscript>
> 
> Note that's just plain HTML, no microformat.  You could also just  
> wrap the XML in a comment, but HTML comments by definition 
> don't have  
> any semantics.  You could wrap a container around the comment with  
> semantics, but again you're getting into redefining HTML elements:
> 
> <div class="math">
> 	<img src="[image version]" alt="[text version]" class="photo" />
> 	<div class="mathml">
> 	<!--
> 		[MathML version]
> 	-->
> 	</div>
> 	<div class="tex">
> 	<!--
> 		[TeX version]
> 	-->
> 	</div>
> </div>
> 
> That's closer to what microformats do, but not likely to be accepted  
> by this community as it requires treating an HTML element as  
> something completely different from what the HTML spec suggests.  I  
> believe anywhere else you put raw XML will cause it to be treated as  
> (invalid) HTML.
> 
> --
> Scott Reynen
> MakeDataMakeSense.com
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