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November 4, 2009
MathML in Webkit
There was a discussion about displaying math on the web, over at Terry Tao’s blog. It was a little disheartening to learn where most peoples’ heads are at, in that regard. Many seems to be excited at the mere prospect of creating a web service that would turn TeX equations into pictures. Such services are not exactly thin on the ground, I retorted, but hardly satisfactory, either. Fortunately, an actual blind user showed up to explain at least one reason why that wasn’t the answer.
Still, being told, “You should use MathML.” is like being told, “Eat your vegetables.” and is just about as likely to be heeded.
One objection is the lack of browser support, which – these days – means that neither Opera, nor Webkit browsers (Safari, Chrome, …) support MathML. The latter, however, seems to be changing. There’s a plan and, more importantly, there’s actually been code checked into trunk.
Of course, it’s far too early to expect anything usable, but if Alex wants to prioritize, here’s a table of MathML elements and attributes used by itex2MML. Things that aren’t yet supported by his patches are marked in bold.