[texhax] MathML from LaTeX equations

[CV Radhakrishnan]

On Sat, January 15, 2005 6:48 pm, Robin Fairbairns said:

>> What I'd like to ask now is: does anyone have experience of building
>> html with MathML equations from LaTeX source? I really prefer the
>> textual approach of hyperlatex over embedding of bitmaps, but why not
>> use the mathml? Any disadvantages?
>
> there are some i know of that offer mathml.  ttm, a relative of tth,
> was mentioned at one stage but i don't know where it's got to; eitan
> gurari, i'm fairly sure, still has a tex4ht mathml variant underway.

In my experience, Eiten Gurari's TeX4ht is obviously the best solution for
generating MathML from LaTeX sources. It creates flawless MathML and is
highly configurable to suit different situations.  It can also digest the
author macros/definitions seamlessly, since TeX compiler is used for the
translation. TeX4ht is a remarkable piece of software written in TeX.

> the disadvantage is that mathml support is not yet widespread in
> browsers.  this is fairly remarkable, given how long it's been around,

I would respectfully disagree with you, Robin.  Mozilla and the whole lot
of Mozilla offshoots like FireFox, etc have native support for MathML. At
least for the last one and half years, these browsers render MathML, I can
vouch it.  You might take a look at the following screenshots of MathML
rendered in FireFox with the help of a simple CSS (I just colored the math
formulae and equations to make it more visible):

 http://www.river-valley.com/cvr/mathml1.jpg
 http://www.river-valley.com/cvr/mathml2.jpg
 http://www.river-valley.com/cvr/mathml3.jpg
 http://www.river-valley.com/cvr/mathml4.jpg

These are screeshots from my laptop running GNU/Linux.  Internet Explorer,
Win32 zealots do claim, will render MathML with the help of a plugin
called mathplayer available in the net.

> but i sense that there's (finally) a will to progress with it.  the
> problem of font support has been another barrier, but there's light
> coming over that horizon, too.

Mozilla have provided a version of CMR fonts required for rendering MathML
in the browser, which can be downloaded from their site and installed
within seconds.  It is trivial.  Mathematica fonts are also available. 
You might also consider the STIX project
<http://www.stixfonts.org/stixnew.html> and seventeen font files released
so far by Elsevier Science, one of the participants.

Best regards

-- 
Radhakrishnan