dginev
commented
2 years ago Collecting macros for creating a tiny tree with each of the MathML Core elements is certainly quite doable.
My fear is that to make it useful, you'd also have to collect the macros needed for generating the different meaningful values for each of the MathML Core attributes.
And then macros to generate some of the idiomatic expression trees.
For example, would such a list care that a script of an <msup> is better attached to a completed parenthetical base, rather than the closing fence?
( \ldots )^2attached to full parenthetical base, (latexml with enabled grammar):
<msup>
<mrow>
<mo stretchy="false">(</mo>
<mi mathvariant="normal">…</mi>
<mo stretchy="false">)</mo>
</mrow>
<mn>2</mn>
</msup>vs attaching to the closing fence (via mathjax)
<mo stretchy="false">(</mo>
<mo>…</mo>
<msup>
<mo stretchy="false">)</mo>
<mn>2</mn>
</msup>vs not attaching at all. (latexml with grammar disabled via --noparse):
<mo>(</mo>
<mi mathvariant="normal">…</mi>
<mo>)</mo>
<msup>
<mi/>
<mn>2</mn>
</msup>The elements are about the same, but the trees are markedly different. Well, there's also apparent debate whether the ellipsis is an <mi> or <mo> -- which is also a question for a useful list, should most of the math symbols be given clear MathML Core targets?
I fear that a useful list will have to spend a lot more writing in talking about tree structure, than the individual leaf elements. Still worth starting, but I'd expect it to hit 50-100 pages in size pretty quickly if we include that area of consideration.
davidfarmer
physikerwelt
NSoiffer
TLDR: Can we create a list of LaTeX commands that generate all elements described by the core spec?
The goal of the Wikimedia community group math is to improve the display of mathematical expressions in Wikipedia. Indeed, using browser-based MathML rendering to deliver high-quality formulae is desirable. The new MathML core specification seems promising as it appears to be detailed enough to implement and evaluate MathML rendering engines based on the spec. Therefore, there are good reasons to be optimistic. Once the spec is final and the rendering engines have been implemented, reasonable MathML markup will lead to appealing rendering results that the community will appreciate.
However, the de-facto standard in 2022 for authoring and rendering mathematical formulae are formats from the TeX family. Therefore, I suggest a deeper investigation of the conversion process TeX like inputs formats to MathML. We need conversion tools that generate the intended MathML 4 output from TeX like input as a prerequisite for our new MathML 4 standard to become a success story. In 2018, we evaluated several TeX2MathML conversion tools including those listed on our tool page. At that point, we created a manual gold standard dataset for presentation and Content MathML. However, the gold standard dataset's quality might not be optimal as it was influenced by LaTeXML. In particular, we used LaTeXML to generate the initial version of the MathML output and fixed problems we spotted by chance in that output.
Therefore, I suggest creating a non-normative document describing how to convert TeX expressions to the corresponding MathML core expression. While this task is open-ended, I recommend stopping after all elements described in the MathML core spec have at least one corresponding LaTeX input.
After that is completed and we still have enthusiasm, we could extend the exercise not only for core but also for intent. Here one could stop, for example, after having touched all symbols with the planned custom style tag annotations and their corresponding content MathML representations.
Disclaimer: I am currently considering implementing a texvc to MathML converter in PHP. For a TDD workflow, it would therefore be good to be able to generate meaningful test cases.