MathML support in Mac browsers

June Lester jalester at cecm.sfu.ca
Thu Jul 4 20:15:42 EDT 2002 

>Message-ID: <46566A3075DDD311969100E0811031ECAF49AE at euclid.dessci>
>From: Paul Topping <PaulT at dessci.com>
>To: "'Alan Kelm'" <akelm at cms.math.ca>
>Cc: "'webmath at camel.math.ca'" <webmath at camel.math.ca>
>Subject: RE: MathML support in Mac browsers
>Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 14:58:05 -0700
>X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
>
>Dear Paul,
>
>There was discussion at the MathML Conference on finishing the MathML
>implementation of Mac Mozilla (and, therefore, Mac Netscape). The situation
>as it now stands is that Wolfram Research (Mathematica) will try to do the
>work. Failing that, my company has offered to try to get it done, all with
>support from Roger Sidje, the original implementor of MathML in Mozilla. I
>think this means it will get done in the next 3 months. It may take longer
>to get into Mac Netscape since it has to go through their release process.
>
>As far as implementing our MathPlayer plugin within Mac Internet Explorer,
>it is still my hope that Microsoft can be persuaded to support the needed
>interfaces in a future upgrade. A longer statement of my company's position
>can be found at http://www.dessci.com/webmath/mathplayer/mac.stm.
>
>I believe your comments associating ActiveX with security concerns don't
>stand up to scrutiny. ActiveX is a protocol for extending Internet Explorer.
>If there is a security issue, it is the possibility of downloading bad
>software and installing it on your computer. This is independent of the
>technology used to connect the browser with the software. As with any kind
>of computer and any kind of browser, if you can get a user to download,
>install, and run bad software, there is a vulnerability.
>
>Paul Topping
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>Paul Topping                     email: pault at dessci.com
>President                        phone: 562-433-0685
>                                 http://www.dessci.com
>Design Science, Inc.
>"How Science Communicates"
>MathType, WebEQ, MathPlayer, Equation Editor, TeXaide
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>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Alan Kelm [mailto:akelm at cms.math.ca]
>> Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2002 11:10 AM
>> Subject:
>>
>>
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>> Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 17:45:18 +0200
>> Subject: Re: WebMath: MathML conf. report
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>> From: Paul Libbrecht <paul at activemath.org>
>> To: webmath at camel.math.ca
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>> In-Reply-To: <200207022221.XAA30029 at penguin.nag.co.uk>
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>>
>>
>> On Mercredi, juillet 3, 2002, at 12:21 , David Carlisle wrote:
>> > I know there has been a lot of interest getting mozilla for
>> mathml on
>> > the mac, and design science who make the mathplayer mathml
>> extension
>> > for IE have a public page saying they would like to have a
>> mac version
>> > of MathPlayer but the Mac version of IE does not have the
>> interfaces
>> > needed, so a Mac MathPlayer would require a new version of
>> IE for teh
>> > Mac from Microsoft.
>>
>> Well, indeed, it's not going to come I fear as it is this ActiveX
>> technology which is, in essence, a complete security disaster where
>> MacOSX developments tend to care a lot about security.
>>
>> > I don't personally have easy access to a Mac (and, as I said in
>> > response to your question at the meeting, I've never used
>> one) but if
>> > _anyone_ does know of (or can help produce) a good plan for
>> mathml on
>> > the mac the working grouop would certainly be pleased to
>> promote that,
>> > and if it can be integrated with the XSLT stylesheet to work in a
>> > cross platform way I'm more than happy to add whatever's needed...
>>
>> As far as I know there is:
>> -> a poor (i.e. withou font metrics) port that has worked
>> some time ago
>> on special Mozilla Mach-O builds (the Riscky Mozilla), it may
>> or may not
>> include MathML in current releases, I did not check. However, for a
>> proper rendering, there are two major bugs: Bug 107146 - "ucvmath not
>> working with Fizzilla"
>> (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107146)
>> Bug 74821 - "Implement GetBoundingMetrics() on the Mac"
>> (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=74821).
>> The latter is the hard part, for a good implementation, only ATSUI is
>> the good technology and its brand new and pretty hard to
>> master (BBEdit
>> didn't manage it yet...). It will bring complete Unicode
>> metrics however
>> (which Linux does very badly, e.g. for russian characters).
>> (several other bugs exist about MacOS implementation of MathML)
>>
>> -> Amaya under XWindows (requiring some work in terms of installation,
>> and giving the poor user-experience of Amaya)
>>
>> > However at the last MML conference 18 months ago, MathML couldn't be
>> > easily be rendered in standard versions of any "standard"
>> browser on any
>> > platform although it was available in special mathml-builds
>> of mozilla,
>> > and
>> > in Amaya. Now at this MathML conference if you are on windows
>> > or unix then all you need have is the latest version of internet
>> > explorer, netscape, mozilla, and amaya, and you can easily
>> view mathml
>> > documents. I hope that we can be pleased with this progress even if
>> > the Mac is lagging behind.
>>
>> We all hope it's going to happen, presumably on Mozilla, but the Mac
>> community is sufficiently small that its intersection with the Math
>> community is very small. Plus, on MacOSX, there's three
>> implementations
>> of Mozilla: Carbon Mozilla (slow network, good graphics),
>> Mach-O Mozilla
>> (fast network, good graphics, not-mature), Chimera
>> (Cocoa-based, not a
>> complete Mozilla (e.g. no XUL, no sidebar), but good graphics
>> and good
>> network, very fast)
>>
>> A central community effort is really needed, I guess.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> --AAA699647.1025766246/camel.math.ca--
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