RE: equation editors and TeX (long) (was "Equation Editor")

[Martin Sevior <msevior mccubbin ph unimelb edu au>]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000, Paul Topping wrote:
> 
> > > > I've thought about your enhanced XML and I don't agree. If 
> > > > MathML is not
> > > > sufficiently rich it should be expanded by a standards 
> > > > committee so that
> > > > everyone can easily exchange documents. We in Abi already 
> > > > have export to
> > > > Latex so this is an easy decision. 
> > > 
> > > So, what you are saying is that Gnome/Abiword's word 
> > processor and equation
> > > editor will be good for making very basic technical 
> > documents, but for
> > > "real" technical work, users should export to LaTeX. That 
> > really makes me
> > > sad. If you have set your sights this low, you can 
> > definitely count me out.
> > > Say it ain't so.
> > > 
> > 
> > Well far be it for me to say what gnome believes but I think Abiword
> > developrs feel quite strongly about this. We want to be 100% standards
> > compliant. Think of it as marketing opportunity for you. You 
> > can offer an
> > enhanced Math component. I don't think MathML is such a low 
> > standard. My
> > course in advanced ElectroDynamics and all of the papers I've 
> > published
> > (I'm an experimental Particle Physicist) can be accomodated 
> > in MathML I
> > think. Frankly I can't think of the sort of technical work 
> > that not would
> > be covered by MathML and I don't want to delay implementing a 
> > math system
> > that will accomodate 99.5% of our users with an escape hatch for the
> > remaining 0.5% while a more advanced system is developed. We 
> > gain a lot of
> > momentum and can reuse a lot of code by being Standards 
> > Compliant. We can
> > even blame someone else if a users special feature is missing - or we
> > could direct them to you :-)
> 
> In my mind, the question here is not one of standards compliance but of
> using a standard as it was intended.
> 

I've done some more checking and there is a lot of momentum behind MathML.
Amaya can already directly edit MathML into their web browser. Both IE and
Mozilla have plans to display MathML. MathML can be directly translated by
expat 1.1 and libXML 2.0. There a lot of projects to display MathML we can
borrow code from. MathML 2.0 has just been approved and there is a project
in Italy to display advanced Math using MathML 2.0. They even have a gtk
widget to do it. We can steal any or all of this code as it is all GPL or
freer. In short I am extremely comfortable with MathML as our internal
representation of Maths in Abiword.

Cheers

Martin