Re: Math in DocBook (was Re: TeX output)

[David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>]

> I'm not quite sure this is on topic for this list, but I'll take David's
> discussion as a springboard and ask: 

(if this is off topic, could move to www-math@xxxxxx, the main mathml
list)

> Even more, I would like to see some such addition to the canonical DocBook DTD,

Norm and I have from time to time discussed mml suport in docbook.
Although I am ashamed to admit on dsssl list that this has mainly been in
the context of XSL and/or xmltex rather than dsssl.

xmltex will already (on a good day) typeset XSL FO with embedded MathML
mainly due to Sebastian Rahtz' passivetex effort layering FO support
over xmltex.

For dsssl it would be good to upgrade my original dsssl heets (which at
least in part I wrote to teach myself dsssl and mathML, so are probably not
the most wonderful examples of either:-) I fear I don't have time to do
that but if anyone wants to take them off my hands, or set up any
open source effort to improve them I would be happy to help where I can.

Do Docbook users require MathML for _SGML_ docbook?
The MathML DTD as written heavily depends on a non standard (for SGML)
SGMl declaration, it has no "- -" omittag specifications, and there are
several repeated true|false enumerated attribute types.

I could add parameter entities to the MathML DTD (assuming I get
agreement of the rest of the working group). These would default to
empty and appear in the all the <!ELEMENT declarations. Then 
they could be defined to - - for anyone using a different SGML
declaration. I have avoided this so far as it complicates the DTD
(visually) and I'm not sure if anyone is really using MathML without a
special SGML declaration. <sin> rather than <sin/> etc.

David


 DSSSList info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/dsssl/dssslist