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

[MARK.WROTH@xxxxxxxxxxx (Wroth, Mark)]

David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx> replied to my comment/question

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

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

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

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

[...]

DC> Do Docbook users require MathML for _SGML_ docbook?

I suppose that was the question I was asking; for myself the answer is both yes and no. 

Yes, in that I desire/need to layer mathematics on top of the SGML version of DocBook.  I suppose I could switch to an XML version, and probably would if it added the functionality I need without causing problems ... but I have no particular plans or desire to make such a switch.

No, in that I don't really care if the specific markup implementation is MathML.  Right now, I have no effective way of layering mathematics into SGML documents, and so am reasonably free to choose an appropriate method -- MathML looks attractive, but if DocBook standardized on some other mathematics markup, I'd probably use it.

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

Non-standard declarations don't especially bother me ... but I suppose this implies some need to harmonize the declaration for DocBook and that for MathML.  Assuming that happens as part of the implementation, I have no preference on how the result falls out.


Mark


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