Fwd: FW: Potential Proposal: Standard Mathematics Domain

["Don Day (LbyW)" <donday@learningbywrote.com>]

For Eliot

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	FW: Potential Proposal: Standard Mathematics Domain
Date:	Tue, 15 May 2012 08:47:07 -0500
From:	Eliot Kimber <ekimber@rsicms.com>
To:	Don Day (LbyW) <donday@learningbywrote.com>

Don,

Can you also forward this one for me?

Thanks,

E.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Eliot Kimber <ekimber@reallysi.com>
Date: Mon, 14 May 2012 22:52:28 -0500
To: dita <dita@lists.oasis-open.org>
Conversation: Potential Proposal: Standard Mathematics Domain
Subject: Potential Proposal: Standard Mathematics Domain

Several different people or groups have independently created DITA
vocabulary modules that integrate MathML. I've done it in DITA for
Publishers and the folks at Design Science (MathPlayer, MathType, etc.) have
been looking at it as well.

At the DITA North America conference they asked me about what I was doing
and whether or not it made sense to add MathML to DITA 1.3.

The more I think about it, the more I think it might be a good idea.

The actual DITA markup is fairly straightforward: define a specialization of
<foreign> that allows the MathML <math> element and include the MathML2 or
MathML3 DTD.

For the latest release of D4P under development I've created a standalone
MathML vocabulary module that provides two generic "equation" element types,
one for block contexts and one for phrase contexts. These equation elements
can then contain a variety of content types, including MathML through the
d4p_MathML element (which is a specialization of <foreign>.

So there's not a lot too it, and providing the module would save others from
either having to invent their own or use the D4P vocabulary module (not that
that would be a problem, but if it's generally useful, it seems reasonable
to add it to the standard).

Another data point is that HTML5 and EPUB3 both specify direct support for
MathML, so it makes it more compelling for DITA to provide for MathML
directly (I have both HTML5 and EPUB3 plugins for the Toolkit well under
way). Likewise, the MathJax open-source package makes it possible to deliver
MathML directly in any browser newer than about IE4.

Antenna House supports MathML directly in FO (although their support is a
little big buggy). Not sure about XEP, and of course there are the older
Plus plugins that are supposed to provide MathML rendering to PDF output,
although I haven't had a chance to try it.

I wanted to poll the TC on this subject before making a formal proposal. It
seems like a no-brainer to me, but I'm also sensitive the lateness of the
hour. This isn't an architectural change so it's not a must-have, but the
potential utility seems pretty broad, especially in the educational content
area, as well as in manufacturing standards and processes where mathematics
may be more common than it is in typical technical documentation.

Cheers,

Eliot 

------ End of Forwarded Message