Re: [docbook-apps] New user question on the current state of mathml in docbook

[Ian Dickinson <i.j.dickinson@gmail.com>]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for your reply.

> Yes, there is a better choice of tools for MathML in DocBook.  Antenna
> House's XSL Formatter Lite and the MathML Option are pretty much the state
> of the art right now.  It can generate output for the web too.  But at $400
> for the pair, they are not free.  But they do produce good results and are
> supported.
OK, I'll look into that.

> I've pretty much given up on trying to support PassiveTeX.  It doesn't
> support enough of the XSLFO standard, and it is not under active
> development.
Yes, the MathML thing aside, I noticed that the pdf generated by fop
and that generated by PassiveTeX are, er, markedly different!

> Math in HTML  is difficult because most browsers cannot format MathML.  Many
> people resort to converting their math to images using a MathML typesetting
> tool, and use mediaobject to include them in DocBook.  An SVG image for PDF
> output and a bitmap image for HTML output work well because you can use a
> role attribute to indicate which image is for each output.
Thanks for the advice, I'll think about my strategy a bit more. My
main goal is the pdf, since that the document that will get examined.
Generating xhtml would be nice, to put a copy up on my web site
(assuming I pass of course :-). I figured that the skewed (and
probably small) distribution of people who might be interested in
reading the html version would likely be mainly FireFox users. Firefox
does support MathML out of the box, except, annoyingly enough, on FC3
due a bug.

Thanks again,
Ian