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@further info (math on the web)
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@<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta name="keywords" content="equations, math">
<meta name="description" content="Additional information on putting
mathematics on the web.">
<meta name="author" content="Abby Fox">
<link rev="made" href="mailto:ajfox@@mit.edu">
<title>ACS Notes: Displaying Math on the Web -- Further Information</title>
</head>

<body bgcolor="#ffffff" LINK="#325A0a" vlink="#663300" ALINK="#
000000">

<center><IMG SRC="topline3.gif" ALT="MIT - Academic Computing" WIDTH=640 HEIGHT=50></center>

<h1 align=center>Displaying Math on the Web -- Further Information</h1>


<center><img src="handy_eqn.gif" width=250 height=100 alt="hand-drawn equation: the integral from zero to infinity of e to the (minus x squared) dx equals (the square root of pi) over 2"></center>


<hr>
<!-- **** Begin Navigation Bar **** -->
<center>
<a href="contents.html">Displaying Math on the Web</a>:
<a href="samples_and_tools.html">Samples and Tools</a>
| <a href="comparison.html">Comparison of Approaches</a> 
| <strong>Further Information</strong>
</center>
<!-- **** End Navigation Bar **** -->

<hr>

<h2>Contents</h2>
<ul>
  <li><a href="#then_and_when">History and the horizon</a>
  <li><a href="#alt">Alternate viewers and tools</a>
  <li><a href="#mathsw">Math software integration</a>
  <li><a href="#access">Accessibility for the visually impaired</a>
  <li><a href="#links">Resources and further reading</a>
</ul>
<hr>

<h3><a name="then_and_when">History and the horizon</a></h3>

There have been various efforts to incorporate mathematics into HTML,
but aside from the addition of tags for simple subscripts and
superscripts, little concrete change has been visible in final
specifications. However, larger changes under way bode well for the
future, in particular the current draft specification to redefine HTML
as an application of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and public
statements of support for XML from both Microsoft and Netscape.  <p> In
the spring of 1998, the <a href="http://w3c.org/Math/">W3C Math</a>
Working Group produced an initial recommendation for MathML, an
XML-based format for marking up equations both in terms of presentation
and structure. It is intended not only to encode mathematical notation
for visual display, but also to capture semantics in a way that lets
other tools process the content of equations.  MathML basically consists
of a set of HTML-like tags used hierarchically to represent the
structural relationships between elements in a mathematical
expression. It can be read by humans, but is extremely verbose and is
intended not for direct editing but rather for machine-to-machine
communication, including authoring tools or syntax converters.  <p>
Ultimately, the hope is that browsers will be able to render MathML
directly. It is already being incorporated into authoring tools,
applets, and plug-ins aimed at the scientific community.  While it is
too early to predict the outcome of this approach, the progress of
MathML and the general move toward support of XML and associated
standards for structural markup hold out distinct hope for mathematics
on the Web.


<h3><a name="alt">Alternate viewers, plug-ins, and tools</a></h3>
<p>
The <a href="http://w3c.org/Amaya/">Amaya</a> test-bed browser/editor
from the W3C renders MathML and includes a WYSIWYG editor; playing with
it or just looking at screen shots on the Web page gives a good idea of
how browser integration of MathML might eventually work. At this
writing, only an early beta version (0.95) of Amaya is available on
Athena.  Version 2.0 has recently been released and should be installed
before long, but in the meantime the early version can be run by typing:

<pre>
     athena% add outland; amaya
</pre>

<p>
The <a href="http://www.icesoft.no/ELite/">e-Lite</a> browser from
ICESOft uses the WebEQ rendering engine to render MathML; it is
written in Java, and is thus available cross-platform.

<p>
The <a href="http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/EzMath/">EzMath editor</a>
can convert a notation inspired by spoken mathematics to either MathML
or markup which can be rendered by the EZMath plug-in.  At this
writing, EZMath is available only for Windows.

<p>
The <a href="http://www.software.ibm.com/enetwork/techexplorer">IBM
techexplorer Hypermedia Browser</a> is a plug-in for Netscape and
Internet Explorer which renders at least "basic" TeX/LaTeX markup
directly; at this writing it is available for several varities of Unix
and Windows, but not the Mac.  Support for MathML has recently been
announced.

<p>
The TeX Users Group maintains a list of software related to 
<a href="http://www.tug.org/interest.html#web">TeX on the web</a>,
including many converters and a few browser plug-ins.

<p>
The producers of <a href="http://www.mathtype.com/">MathType</a>, a
commercial equation editor widely used with MS Word and other packages
will include a MathML export feature in their next release.


<h3><a name="mathsw">Math software integration</a></h3>
Various vendors of math package including notebook-like front ends
inlcuding Maple and Mathematica continue to introduce features to make
their programs more interoperable with the web.  For example, Maple
users can now:

<ul>
  <li> export worksheets to HTML (equations are converted to GIF images)
       
  <li> open worksheets in Maple directly from web URLs

  <li> export worksheets to a format usable with their new <a
       href="http://www.maplesoft.com/me/me_announce.html">Maple
       Explorer</a> interactive browser (Windows only at this writing)

</ul>

<p>
Generally, such features are either one-way, platform-restricted, or
reliant on proprietary formats, but do provide convenient tools for
users of the package.  Support for MathML is increasigly being promised 

<p>

On a related note, vendors also recognize that web browsers can be used
to provide an interface to some portion of their computational engines.
Matlab Release 11 introduces the <a
href="http://www.mathworks.com/products/webserver/">Matlab Web
Server</a> and Wolfram Research has an interactive Mathematica demo on
the web called <a href="http://www.integrals.com">The
Integrator</a>.  Each of these is intended to allow a user to
perform computations without access to the full software package.

<h3><a name="access">Accessibility for the visually impaired</a></h3>

Making mathematics notation accessible to the visually impaired is an
important goal, and there are numerous centers around the country
working in this and related areas of web accessibility.  Computer-based
approaches include audio screen readers and braille converters
(using Nemeth Code, the standard North American braille code for
mathematics and science notation).  Two projects funded by the NSF 
include the following (each has links to other sites):

<ul>
  <li>
       <a
       href="http://www.nmsu.edu/~mavis">MAVIS</a> (Mathematics Accessible To
       Visually Impaired Students) at New Mexico State University
  <li> The <a
       href="http://dots.physics.orst.edu/">Science Access Project</a> at
       Oregon State University
</ul>

For general information about making web materials accessible to those
with disabilities, see:

<ul>
  <li> <a href="http://w3c.org/WAI/">Web Accessibility
       Initiative</a> (W3C)
  <li><a href="http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/index.html">Designing
       More Usable Web Sites</a> (Trace Center)
  <li><a href="http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/">MIT's ATIC lab</a>
       (Adaptive Technology for Information and Computing)
</ul>       
       
<h3><a name="links">Resources and further reading</a></h2>
There is a wealth of information and opinion on the web about math on
the web: 

<ul>

  <li> For official details on MathML, see the <a
       href="http://w3c.org/Math">W3C Math</a> pages; for general 
       information on web standards and working groups, start at the top
       level of the <a href="http://w3c.org/">W3C (World Wide Web
       Consortium)</a>.


  <li>The WebEQ <a href="http://www.webeq.com/mathml/">MathML Information
       Center</a> includes a resource list, sample documents, and a
       WebEQ-based service for rendering and validating MathML.
  <li>

       Brian Hayes' <a
       href="http://www.amsci.org/Amsci/issues/Comsci98/compsci1998-09.html">Bit
       Rot</a> article in American Scientist discusses the general evolution of
       data formats and provides good context for thinking about the spectrum
       from paper to TeX to XML.

  <li>

       Robert Miner's <a
       href="http://www.geom.umn.edu/~rminer/w3c/interface/">HTML Math
       Implementation Goals</a> dates from a couple of years ago, but
       provides illuminating examples to motivate requirements for
       supporting math notation in browsers.  

  <li>
       
       Ian Hutchinson's <a
       href="http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/mmlreview/">Comparative Review
       of World-Wide-Web Mathematics Renderers</a> compares Amaya, e-Lite, and
       Netscape; he also has a useful overview of <a
       href="http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/webmath.html">Approaches
       to WWW Mathematics Documents</a>.


  <li>
       Richard Fateman's <a
       href="http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/MVSD.html">More
       Versatile Scientific Documents</a> provides a through
       collection of references related to electronic
       representation of mathematics, interspersed with sound
       editorial comments.

  <li>

       The April 1999 issue of <a
       href="http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/">IEEE Spectrum</a> (members only)
       included an article on "Math on the Internet" which discusses both
       web-publishing and web-interactive computational features from software
       vendors.

</ul>

...and there are numerous projects to keep an eye on, whether directly
devoted to math on the web or to related developments:
<ul>
  <li>
       The <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/">MathML in
       Mozilla</a> project may ultimately lead to MathML rendering
       in Netscape.

  <li>
       The <a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgmlnew.html">SGML and
       XML News</a> page is a good place to keep abreast of 
       implementations, adoption of standards, and general announcements.
</ul>


<hr>
<!-- **** Begin Navigation Bar **** -->
<center>
<a href="contents.html">Displaying Math on the Web</a>:
<a href="samples_and_tools.html">Samples and Tools</a>
| <a href="comparison.html">Comparison of Approaches</a> 
| <strong>Further Information</strong>
</center>
<!-- **** End Navigation Bar **** -->

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</body>
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