WebMath: ANN: Next Generation of Web Math Products

[Paul Topping]

Paul,
 
The plugins that Microsoft refers to are not so-called "Netscape plugins" or
Java applets that do suffer from the "size problem". They use an entirely
different technology Microsoft calls "behaviors" and does not suffer the
size problem. My company, Design Science, is working on such a plugin. We
call it MathPlayer and have already demonstrated early versions of it. Using
the behavior mechanism, our MathPlayer software becomes a very closely
integrated part of Internet Explorer.
 
Paul Topping
 
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Paul Topping                     email: pault at dessci.com           
                                 phone: 562-433-0685           
Design Science, Inc.             http://www.dessci.com
<http://www.dessci.com/> 
"How Science Communicates"
MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, Equation Editor, TeXaide
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-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Libbrecht [mailto:] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 7:19 AM
To: webmath at camel.math.ca
Subject: Re: WebMath: ANN: Next Generation of Web Math Products



This means no-one will ever hunt for the size problem... 


For your information, the size problem is the need to compute the size of a
plugin or applet when you prepare the HTML page which is often before
knowing anything like the user's font size or window size... 


When you read the readiness statement of Microsoft about MathML it just
says... they're happy there are plugins and they have no intent of providing
support for MathML. 


But MathML display without real embedding (i.e. requiring plugins and size
of plugins) is a despair at many levels: fixed font sizes is unavoidable, no
dynamically changing content size, and it forces folks who generate MathML
and HTML from other sources to compute the real size (which real ?) of the
MathML object before making the HTML. The latter task is almost equivalent
to drawing a picture of the formula, a heavyweight task. 

So for the servlet maker in me, this is pretty much a sad story as it will
mean Maple will probably never ever support any kind of real richer content
encoding (MathML is only good for first level math, as everyone knows). 


How semantic is the generated MathML from Maple ? 

Were there successful attempts to generate MathML content that could be
delivered to other math systems ? 


Paul 




On Wednesday, June 13, 2001, at 02:58 PM, Bob Mathews wrote: 


Maple 7 integrates WebEQ technology by Design Science. To read the entire
press release, see: 


http://www.dessci.com/company/press/releases/june01.stm 


Bob Mathews                      email: bobm at dessci.com 

Director of Training             phone:    830-990-9699 

http://www.dessci.com 

Design Science, Inc. -- "How Science Communicates" 

MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, Equation Editor, TeXaide 


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