Chemistry in MathML needs to be identified in metadata

[GeorgeKerscher]

On the User Experience Guide for Accessibility Metadata call, we discovered that in the EPUB Accessibility Metadata, we have no way to identify that the MathML markup is for Chemistry. ONIX has this ability.

To help, Neil writes: For chemistry, there is a "chemical-element" property and there is a "chemical-formula" property. The latter might switch the speech for "=" from "equals" to "double bond".

So, we think this functionality needs to be added. Once this is available, we can insert it to the UX Guide.

[mattgarrish]

What do you propose calling the property? ChemML and MathML are so close in naming that squashing them together doesn't yield any great names.

MathML4Chem, since it relies on MathML4? But maybe is a bit too punny.

[madeleinerothberg]

It sounds like this is not ChemML, which is a separate mark-up language and for which we already have a vocabulary entry. Instead, it is MathML being used for chemistry. How about "ChemistryInMathML"?

[clapierre]

I agree with Madeline here, although to be consistent with naming convention I think it should be "chemistryInMathML" with the initial c being lower case.

[mattgarrish]

It just sounds like we're starting to write descriptions instead of tokens. I don't know how we avoid abusing the camel-casing here, though.

[clapierre]

if we want to shorten this it could be "chemInMathML" I am fine with either.

[mattgarrish]

It's more the "in" descriptor in the middle. We're describing a flavour of something we already have properties to define two different cases for. If we were still using slashes, this would probably be MathML/chemistry.

It's not a major roadblock for me, but something about compressing a description doesn't quite click for me (btw, I don't really like my suggestion above, so not advocating for it.)

I sort of want something like chemMarkup and in the description we define that that means chem equations and formulas done in mathml rather than chemml, but even that's kind of confusing for the same reason we have two MLs in already.

Go with whatever you think is best. I've said my piece.

[clapierre]

how about chemMathMLMarkup ?

[mattgarrish]

Going slightly off topic (to avoid contradicting my claim I've said my piece 😉 ), is there any appetite for defining a descriptor mechanism here? The slash thing got me thinking we never fully addressed the issue of extending terms.

For example, source terms always have to be camel case while we establish hyphens as a way of adding descriptors to existing terms -- without making it an extension mechanism for anyone to do anything with; they still have to be registered to be official.

So, in this case we could mint MathML-chemistry?

[clapierre]

Oh. I like that idea Matt. This way if you could extend Latex to be for chemistry it could be extended like latex-chemistry as well.

I am in favor of this new approach

MathML-chemistry (Should we also while we are at it add latex-chemistry? Does anyone know if that is possible? I may ask the MathML WG about this idea.

[mattgarrish]

it could be extended like latex-chemistry

Exactly. It's just a flavour of latex (and as far as I know it's a thing).

[madeleinerothberg]

I am happy to go with the hyphenated name, as long as it doesn't mislead metadata authors into thinking they can make any new name they want.

[mattgarrish]

as long as it doesn't mislead metadata authors into thinking they can make any new name they want.

Ya, I think we need to be careful not to call it an "extension mechanism" but in the naming conventions section explain that hyphens are used to add more precise descriptors to terms when warranted.