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Subject: Roadmap to Office Document / OpenMath / MathML integration
Reminder of objective: I want a text document (or a presentation document) to use the same expression as the spreadsheet document, thereby enabling the user to copy a formula out of their journal article and paste it into a spreadsheet cell and vice versa. And I want easy centralized maintenance of my own expressions (both the content and the presentation). The vision has matured over the past week or two and I seem now to be in a place where I can outline what may need to be done. Most of the pieces are "there". It's just a matter of cooperating to ensure that the final pieces are constructed and that they all fall into place. I suspect (albeit I could be wrong) that the formula subcomittee (of the opendocument TC) will be seeking a new charter when v1.2 is released. May I suggest that coordinating such an integration effort may be the perfect subject of such a charter as it extends and leverages their current work... :) In broad strokes, here is how I would envision this could be accomplished: 1] [ODF] define an <expression/> element to contain a MathML <semantics/> element, which is required to have a Content MathML expression as its first element and may optionally be associated with an arbitrary number of Presentation MathML, OpenDocument Formula, MS Excel, StarMath 5.0, Matlab or "other" encodings. (Or restrict <math:math/> to have these semantics). 2] [ODF] use <expression/> everywhere a user-provided expression is allowed to appear in any office document: presentations, text, or spreadsheets: 2a] Deprecate all instances where an xxx:forumla attribute is defined. 2b] Replace this attribute with <expression/> as a child element (e.g., <expression/> is a child of <table:cell/>, <text:expression/>, <chart:equation/>...) 2c] Replace <math:math/> with <expression/> as a child of <draw:object/>. Allow users to specifiy which predefined Presentation MathML to use or specify a custom articulation for this instance. If no Presentation MathML is specified, automatic rendering of the Content MathML is required. Disallow unassociated Presentation MathML!! 3] [ODF/OM] make content dictionary groups which correspond to the "conformance levels" in the OpenDocument Formula specification; define new symbols as required using the OASIS namespace. 4] [ODF/OM] make a content dictionary to hold symbols of relevance to spreadsheets (e.g. relative and absolute cell referencing, both local and on a separate sheet ... ) 5] [OM] make a clear, machine interpretable, definitive way for a symbol to be defined in terms of other symbols (OM->OM Phrasebook). 6] [ODF/OM/W3C] define the formula document (application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.formula) as a packaging of the content dictionaries, cd groups, and signature files. A Greedy User, Bryce
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