Math ML Hits the Mainstream

Sunday, 8 January, 2006

You can’t go farther than three websites before you come across an ML-ism. In GIS we have GML, in web design HTML and data exchange XML. The presentation of mathematics within webpages has always been problematic; within publishing this has typically been performed through the use of LaTex, however online it usually means PDFs or graphical images. Neither solution being entirely satisfactory. Well, since the early development of XML, MathML has always been on the horizon and, for quite a while, demonstrable with a variety of add-ons. Well the good news is that Firefox 1.5 supports MathML out of the box (almost). The only addition you need are some TrueType fonts to present all the typeset equations; everything else is recognised and rendered by Firefox. So pop on over and install the fonts and then test the output.