Editing MathML on the Web with Amaya

Amaya

• A full-featured Web client
• Goal: experimenting with advanced Web technology
• Implements HTTP1.1, XHTML 1.0, XHTML Basic, CSS, MathML, XML namespaces

  in progress: SVG, XPath, XPointer, XLink, RDF

• Editing and browsing simultaneously
• One-click remote publishing (HTTP Put method)
• Structured editing
• Multi-view interface

MathML in Amaya

• Amaya implements only Presentation Markup
• Focus on editing
• Integration with other Web technologies
• Math editor developed specifically for MathML
• Implementation closely follows the MathML structure:

  Authors benefit from the full power of MathML

MathML Structure

• Internal tree structure
• Tree-based manipulation
• Automatic creation of required elements
• Automatic deletion of unnecessary elements
• Structure transformation

$\frac{a+1}{b}$

User interface

An easy to use interface to manipulate complex structure

• MathML constructs may be entered through a menu, a palette, the keyboard
• No need to enter the full structure
• Character strings are parsed to separate out mi, mo, mn

  input: y=2a.x+b => structure: $y=2a.x+b$

• Structure and Source views help to grasp the structure
• Multi-level undo/redo

MathML and Text

• Namespaces allow XML documents to mix different XML languages
• XHTML pages can be interspersed with mathematical expressions
• Clean integration of mathematical expressions: $\raisebox{1ex}{$2x$}\!\left/ \!\raisebox{-1ex}{$n$}\right.$
• No <object>, no <embed>, no plug-in

MathML and Graphics

• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML language to represent 2D graphics
• Namespaces allow MathML expressions to appear within drawings (and drawings within documents)

MathML and Style

• MathML includes some style attributes: fontsize, color, fontstyle, etc.
• Style attributes are used for some particular elements
• CSS style sheets are used to change style globally and consistently

$x=\frac{-b\pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2n}$

MathML and Hypertext

• MathML itself does not contain any hypertext feature
• XLink provides hypertext functionality to any XML language
• Links may be associated with any element in a MathML structure

$x=\frac{-b\pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2n}$

MathML and Metadata

• RDF (Resource Description Framework) associates metadata with any Web resource
• Using XLink metadata may be associated with any element in a MathML structure
• An application: associating annotations with MathML expressions

$x=\frac{-b\pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2n}$

Current Limitations

• Amaya implements the latest MathML 2.0 public draft (28 March 2000)
• Only presentation tags

  XSLT transformation sheet

• A limited set of characters and symbols

  Support for STIX fonts in progress

• Some more development needed

Conclusion

MathML is not only interesting for itself

Tight integration with other Web technologies bring great advantages

For more information: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

Thank you!