##### Sunday May 23rd, 1999

Reader MPT has submitted to us an article in response to some statements about Mozilla and MathML made in a previous forum. Click Full Article below to continue.

The opinions expressed within do not necessarily reflect the opinions of mozillaZine.org.

#### #22 Re:Reader Opinion: MathML's Viability

by Roger B. Sidje <>

Thursday May 27th, 1999 7:06 PM

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MathML is much awaited in the academic and scientific world because it will ease the frustration of millions of users who have been forced to cope with lots of math.gif (heavy, ugly, misaligned), java applets (slow, discourage re-visits), and other tricks (non portable). Moreover the support of MathML will open up the possibility of fully deploying other applications (e.g., flexible-delivery of lectures, distance learning, digital journals/libraries --save the environment). By getting rid of those math.gif and applets that crowd the internet and eat the bandwidth, *your* internet connection would perhaps be faster :-)

There is a specific provision in the MathML effort in Mozilla <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/> for alternative notations. By only considering the MathML spec in its internal working, the MathML engine in Mozilla will be as terse as one could get, with the displaying niceties that other MathML supporters have argued about. And through the transformation API, TeXies would be able to contribute a (separate) add-on to convert TeX/LaTeX in MathML on the fly. In other words, it would be possible to write a simple and readable $\Delta = \sqrt{b^2-4ac}$ directly in the HTML. The best of all worlds in the lizard. Isn't what we want?