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I got involved with the Math Activity at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1995. Ever since, I have attended two or three meetings a year on the topic of MathML. At nearly every one of those meetings, the need for a book on the MathML has come up in one way or another. Anyone who has slogged through the MathML specification will know that it is
It couldn't come at a better time. When the
MathML Recommendation
was first published in 1998, there was an initial surge in interest, and expectations were high. A number of specialized tools soon added MathML support. But rendering MathML in browsers proved to be a harder problem and only in the last few months has it really become practical on a large scale. In the
Now, however, MathML support is finally there in browsers, and there are clear signs of a resurgence. Publishers are again looking at MathML as a way of moving to XML work flows for their math and science materials, and as a means of unifying production streams for paper and electronic media. Distance learning
I confidently predict that with resources such as The MathML Handbook to guide them, many people will find that the time is indeed ripe for Math on the Web. And I look eagerly forward to the outpouring of creativity that will inevitably flow from that happy discovery.
Robert Miner
MathML 2.0 Recommendation Editor
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This chapter gives the background you need to understand the origin, goals, and benefits of MathML. It explains the problems with current ways of representing mathematics on the Web and shows why MathML is an effective solution to these problems. It describes the history of MathML and explains its relation to other Web standards such as HTML and XML. Finally, it describes the various practical uses of MathML such as Web publishing and interchange of mathematical content between applications.
MathML, the Mathematical Markup Language, is an XML application for encoding mathematics on the Web. It provides a simple but precise syntax for encoding both the visual structure and the symbolic meaning of mathematics. Using MathML, you can display even the most complex mathematical notation in a Web page with a high degree of fidelity and clarity. At the same time, the meaning of the notation can be preserved so that, for example, you can copy and paste an equation from a Web page into a computer algebra system for evaluation.
MathML was the first XML application endorsed by the W3C and is supported by major software
As a common and widely accepted standard for representing mathematics, MathML provides the foundation for many interesting and useful applications. For example, using MathML you can develop dynamic mathematical Web sites that feature interactive equations; create a database of technical documents whose contents can be easily searched, indexed, and archived; or develop speech synthesis software for the aural rendering of mathematics.
MathML is simple enough to be readable by
MathML was
Since MathML is an XML application, general XML tools such as XML editors and parsers can process it. In particular, mathematical notation from a single MathML source file can be rendered in diverse media such as Web pages, print, and audio by using different CSS or XSLT stylesheets, each optimized for a specific medium.
Because it is written in plain text, MathML is portable and platform independent. This makes it a
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