[Moin-user] Re: What is MathML? Should I care?

[Frank A. Zdarsky]

On Friday 09 December 2005 18:32, skip at pobox.com wrote:
> Hijacking your thread...  What is MathML?  What does it offer beyond the
> LaTeX macro/parser stuff I installed from the MacroMarket?  A quick Google
> took me to w3.org, and my Firefox instance was able to display some of the
> test page, though it is missing fonts.  Though LaTeX is complex, lots of
> math types here learned it when doing their dissertations.  MathML input
> doesn't look very much like the equations it encodes...

I agree that writing MathML markup directly is neither very appealing nor 
comfortable. The good news: With the "MathML Support" that I was referring 
to, you do not have to know or use MathML at all. You simply encode the 
formula in _LaTeX_ (or alternatively in an ASCII math style) and a JavaScript 
automatically converts your formulas into MathML markup.

As Paul wrote, the advantage of MathML is that formulas display much more 
nicely together with text than those generated bitmap formulas (and if you're 
used to LaTeX you're probably concerned about nice layout of formulas ;-)). 
The disadvantage: Only the latest browsers do support MathML directly 
(Firefox >= 1.5 and upcoming IE versions, I believe), older Browsers need a 
plugin such as MathPlayer (for IE6).

Installing the math support is not so difficult if you follow the instructions 
on http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MathMlSupport. They seem to be written for 
an older version, but in principle they work with MoinMoin 1.5 as well (apart 
from this strange behavior that suddenly the "Edit (GUI)" link does not 
display anymore).

Personally, I do not think that the suggested solution of using the 
ASCIIMathML.js script to convert formulas at the client is very elegant (let 
alone requiring JavaScript to be activated in the browser). Another solution 
would be to have something like "texvc", which is used by other wikis and can 
convert LaTeX formulas into native HTML, MathML, or PNG depending on the 
user's preference and browser capabilities. Or maybe WikiTeX (
http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Teng)...

--- Frank