Mathematics is an essential aspect of science and education. So, to realize the potential of the Web for science, it must be possible to use mathematics on the Web. Mathematical expressions must move seamlessly between the Web and a wide range of environments including authoring tools, content management systems, XML-based work flows, e-learning environments, and scientific computing software.
W3C brought together key players and major stake holders and formed the Math Working Group. It created and maintains the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), a highly structured, information-rich, XML encoding for mathematical expressions.
MathML facilitates authoring and presentation of mathematical expressions in print and on the screen, and forms the basis for machine to machine communication of mathematics on the Web. MathML provides two sets of tags, one for the presentation of mathematics and the other associated with the meaning behind equations. MathML is not designed for hand-editing; specialized tools provide the means for typing and editing mathematical expressions.
The MathML1.0 Recommendation appeared on 7 April 1998. Four subsequent revisions followed, culminating with the MathML2.0, 2nd Edition on 21 October 2003. MathML2, 2nd Edition is fully synchronized with Unicode4.0. It is also integrated with XHTML and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), and interoperates well with other W3C technologies such as XSL (the Extensible Stylesheet Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and XML Schema.
Development of the next update of MathML, called MathML3.0, started in 2006. It supports, among other things, additional notations, online assessment (online learning) and right-to-left formulas (in particular for Arabic).
The Math WG works together with the CSS WG, the CDF WG and the HTML WG on a common framework for compound documents that supports typographically correct mathematics.
The Math WG publishes a roadmap, a live document with the status of the various deliverables. It recently also set up an aggregator for MathML-related news. Recent publications include a Working Draft for MathML 3.0 and another for XML Entity definitions for Characters.
Goals in the recently renewed charter of the Math WG include finalizing MathML3 and cooperating with OpenMath to integrate its Content Dictionaries into MathML.
Unicode5 added more then 2,500 new characters especially for mathematics and they will be usable in MathML3. The Math WG also takes up the development of an easy, non-XML input syntax for MathML, for which there was no time under the previous charter.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Math Working Group (participants) | Patrick D F Ion, Robert Miner | Bert Bos | Chartered until 30 April 2010 |
This Activity Statement was prepared for the October 2008 W3C Advisory Committee Meeting (Members only) per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
Bert Bos, Math Activity Lead
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