Re: [Texmacs-dev] HTML, XML, XSLT (was: texmacs installation problem)

[Felix Breuer]

> My question is if math is being considered in the whole discussion, or
> only the most basic HTML structure, so that the website (which is simple
> in structure) can  be exported from TeXmacs. Would XSLT be able to
> generate a reasonable representation for math? (note that alqua.com
> pages use the mathematical features of HTML 3.2, not images. Hevea or
> TTH prefer this approach, while LaTeX2html uses raster formats for the
> formulas).

What is a resonable representation of math in HTML? Using rasterized
image for every equation bloats the page (in terms of KB) and
prerendered images may not fit well to the surrounding text (the "let"
in "let n=2" might have a different font size than the "n=2", etc.).
However, neither HTML math nor MathML are properly supported by current
browsers yet. I had a look at your page and Mozilla 1.1 does not render
integral signs or decorated variables properly, even though it can cope
with sub- and superscripts. Mozilla handels MathML a bit better [1] but
I do not think IE does (natively at least, there is a plugin [2]
though). So, widespread math support in HTML is still a long way of.

Nevertheless, I think that MathML is the way to go, even though it is a
low level format (extremely verbose). There are tex->mathml and
mathml->tex converters, editors, and mathml->ps, mathml->svg renderers
[3]. Specifically, GTKMathView [4] can create postscript output and
there does exist a script [5] which puts the generated images at the
apporpriate places in a web page. So you could give visitors the option
whether they would like their formulas prerendered in raster images or
rendered by their Browser from MathML. GTKMathView is also used by the
HELM project [6] which is in some ways similar to yours. 

All of this leads to the question: is direct export from TeXmacs to
MathML feasable (indirect export via TeX is (almost) possible already)?
I think that is possible but requires a lot of work; whether you do it
via XSLT or not.

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/
[2] http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/
[3] http://www.w3.org/Math/implementations.html
[4] http://helm.cs.unibo.it/mml-widget/
[5] http://www.math.mcgill.ca/~drew/mathmlrender/
[6] http://helm.cs.unibo.it/

> Finally, I would like to note that if some XML work is done perhaps
> TeXmacs would spark some interest in the (big) XML community and receive
> some helping hands to advance XML integration. 

I agree.

> On the other hand, having
> a simple HTML output that supports bulleted/enumerated, sectioning,
> italic/bold and links would do at least partially for all non
> mathematical folks (a book on Geography of Spain is being written with
> TeXmacs for the alqua project) and certainly for the website, and may
> come faster.

I will look into this.

Regards,
Felix