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MathML

MathML

Overview
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is an application of XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 for describing mathematical
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 pages and other documents. It is a recommendation of the W3C math working group
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...

.
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Unanswered Questions
Encyclopedia
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is an application of XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 for describing mathematical
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 pages and other documents. It is a recommendation of the W3C math working group
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...

.

History


MathML 1 was released as a W3C recommendation in April 1998 as the first XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 language to be recommended by the W3C. Version 1.01 of the format was released in July 1999 and version 2.0 appeared in February 2001. In October 2003, the second edition of MathML Version 2.0 was published as the final release by the W3C math working group. In June 2006 the W3C rechartered the MathML Working Group to produce a MathML 3 Recommendation until February 2008 and in November 2008 extended the charter to April 2010. A sixth Working Draft of the MathML 3 revision was published in June 2009. On 10 August 2010 version 3 graduated to become a "Proposed Recommendation" rather than a draft.

MathML 3.0 was officially released as a W3C Recommendation on 21 October 2010, as a revision of MathML 2.0. MathML 3 is backward compatible with MathML 2.

MathML was originally designed before the finalization of XML namespaces. As such, MathML markup is often not namespaced, and applications that deal with MathML, such as the Mozilla browsers, do not require a namespace. For applications that wish to namespace MathML, the recommended namespace URI is http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML.

Presentation and semantics


MathML deals not only with the presentation but also the meaning of formula components (the latter part of MathML is known as “Content MathML”). Because the meaning of the equation is preserved separate from the presentation, how the content is communicated can be left up to the user. For example, web pages with MathML embedded in them can be viewed as normal web pages with many browsers but visually impaired users can also have the same MathML read to them through the use of screen readers (e.g. using the MathPlayer
MathPlayer
MathPlayer is a program by Design Science that enables the display of MathML mathematical formulae in Internet Explorer. MathML is a 1998 recommendation of the W3C for displaying formulae on the World Wide Web...

 plugin for Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

, Opera
Opera (web browser)
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

 9.50 build 9656+ or the Fire Vox
Fire Vox
Fire Vox is a free and open source extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that transforms it into a self-voicing application. Easy to install and operate, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It can work independently, or together with screen readers such as Orca. Since its debut in 2005,...

 extension for Firefox).

Presentation MathML


Presentation MathML focuses on the display of an equation, and has about 30 elements, and 50 attributes. The elements all begin with m and include token element: x - identifiers; +
- operators; 2 - number. Tokens are combined using layout elements that include: - a row; - superscripts; - fractions. The attributes mainly control fine details of the presentation. A large number of entities are available that represent letters (π), symbols (→) and some non-visible characters such as ⁢ representing multiplication.

For valid XML documents as per the W3C specifications, a MathML file must have a doctype declaration:


"http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/mathml2.dtd">


Thus, the expression could be represented in a valid MathML file as:


"http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/mathml2.dtd">


a


x
2

+
b

x
+
c



Content MathML


Content MathML focuses on the semantic meaning of the expression. Central to Content MathML is the element that represents a function or operator, given in the first child, applied to the remaining child elements. For example x represents and x5 represents x+5. The element represents an identifier, a number, and there are over a hundred different elements for different functions and operators. Content MathML uses only a few attributes.

The expression could be represented as



Example and comparison to other formats


The well-known quadratic formula:

would be marked up using LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

 syntax like this:
x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}
in troff/eqn
Eqn
Part of the troff suite of Unix document layout tools, eqn is a preprocessor that formats equations for printing. A similar program, neqn, accepted the same input as eqn, but produced output tuned to look better in nroff...

 like this:
x={-b +- sqrt{b sup 2 - 4ac}} over 2a
in OpenOffice.org Math
OpenOffice.org Math
OpenOffice.org Math is a tool for creating and editing mathematical notation, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor and is part of the OpenOffice.org office suite. The created formulae can then be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer...

 like this (all three are valid):
x={-b plusminus sqrt {b^2 - 4 ac}} over {2 a}
x={-b ± sqrt {b^2 - 4ac}} over 2a
x={-b +- sqrt {b^2 - 4ac}} over 2a


in ASCIIMathML like this:
x = (-b +- sqrt(b^2 - 4ac)) / (2a)
The above equation could be represented in Presentation MathML as an expression tree made up from layout elements like mfrac or msqrt elements:



x
=



b
±


b
2


4

a

c



2

a






In Content MathML, we cannot use ± (±) because it is a Presentation-only operator. To encode this statement in Content MathML, we must write both roots of the quadratic equation. This helps to illustrate the differences between Presentation and Content MathML.



x





b




b
2


4
a
c





2
a






b




b
2


4
a
c





2
a








The element can be used to embed a semantic annotation in non-XML format, for example to store the formula in the format used by an equation editor such as StarMath or the markup using LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

 syntax. Alternatively, the equation could be represented in Content MathML as an expression tree for the functional structure elements like apply (for function application) or eq (for the equality relation) elements:




x




±



b







b
2



4
a
c


0.5




2
a




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


x={-b plusminus sqrt {b^2 - 4 ac}} over {2 a}



In the expression tree above, elements like times are defined by the MathML specification and stand for mathematical functions that are applied to sibling expressions that are interpreted as arguments. The csymbol element is a generic extension element that means whatever is specified in the document referred to in the definitionURL attribute.

Although less compact than TeX, the XML structuring promises to make it widely usable and allows for instant display in applications such as Web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s and facilitates a straightforward interpretation of its meaning in mathematical software products. MathML is not intended to be written or edited directly by humans.

Embedding MathML in XHTML files


MathML, being XML, can be embedded inside other XML files such as XHTML files using XML namespaces. Recent browsers such as Firefox 3+ and Opera 9.6+ (support incomplete) can display Presentation MathML embedded in XHTML.

e.g. math-test.xhtml:


PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/xhtml-math11-f.dtd">


Example of MathML embedded in an XHTML file




Example of MathML embedded in an XHTML file



Given the quadratic equation


a


x
2

+
b

x
+
c


, the roots are given by


x
=



b
±


b
2


4

a

c



2

a




.






Embedding MathML in HTML5 files


Inline MathML is also supported in HTML5 files in the upcoming versions of WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...

 (Safari
Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...

, Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

), Gecko
Gecko (layout engine)
Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....

 (Firefox) and Presto
Presto (layout engine)
Presto is the layout engine for later versions of the Opera web browser . After several public betas and technical previews, it was released on January 28, 2003 in Opera 7 for Windows, and as of Opera 11 it is still in use. Presto is dynamic: the page or parts of it can be re-rendered in response...

 (Opera).

e.g. math-test.html:




Example of MathML embedded in an HTML5 file



Example of MathML embedded in an HTML5 file



Given the quadratic equation

, the roots are given by

.





Editors


Some editors with native MathML support (including copy and paste of MathML) are MathFlow, MathMagic
MathMagic
MathMagic is a mathematical WYSIWYG equation editor, available for Windows and Mac OS X since its first debut in 1998. MathMagic is known for its DTP quality equations and widely used by Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress users...

, and MathType
MathType
MathType is a software application created by Design Science that allows the creation of mathematical notation for inclusion in desktop and web applications.- Features :...

 from Design Science
Design Science (company)
Design Science, Inc. is a US-based Software Company that develops, markets and supports software for scientific and technical communication.-Profile:...

, Publicon
Publicon
Publicon is a technical publication software marketed by Wolfram Research. It is designed for engineers, physicists, chemists, bioscientists and people who work frequently with technical documents. Although the document technology in Publicon is identical to Mathematica's, the two software packages...

 from Wolfram Research, SciWriter from soft4science and WIRIS. Full MathML editor list at W3C.

MathML is also supported by major office products such as OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...

 (via OpenOffice.org Math
OpenOffice.org Math
OpenOffice.org Math is a tool for creating and editing mathematical notation, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor and is part of the OpenOffice.org office suite. The created formulae can then be embedded inside other OpenOffice.org documents, such as those created by Writer...

), KOffice
KOffice
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...

, and MS Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...

, as well as mathematical software products such as Mathematica
Mathematica
Mathematica is a computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields and other areas of technical computing...

, Maple
Maple (software)
Maple is a general-purpose commercial computer algebra system. It was first developed in 1980 by the Symbolic Computation Group at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada....

 and the Windows version of the Casio ClassPad 300
Casio ClassPad 300
The Casio ClassPad 300 is a stylus based calculator. HP worked on a pen based calculator called the HP-Xpander, as did Texas Instruments under their , yet both projects were cancelled before they were released to the market. The ClassPad comes with a collection of applications that support...

. The W3C Browser/Editor Amaya
Amaya (web browser)
Amaya is a free and open source WYSIWYG web authoring tool with browsing abilities, created by a structured editor project at the INRIA, a French national research institution, and later adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium . Amaya is used as a testbed for web standards and replaced the Arena...

 can also be mentioned as a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

 MathML-as-is editor.

FireMath, an addon for Firefox, provides a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

 MathML editor.

Most editors will only produce presentation MathML. The MathDox formula editor is an
OpenMath editor also providing presentation and content MathML. Formulator MathML Weaver uses WYSIWYG style to edit Presentation, Content and mixed markups of MathML.

Conversion


Several utilities for converting mathematical expressions to MathML are available, including converters between TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

 and MathML. ConTeXt
ConTeXt
ConTeXt is a general-purpose document processor. It is especially suited for structured documents, automated document production, very fine typography, and multi-lingual typesetting. It is based in part on the TeX typesetting system, and uses a document markup language for manuscript preparation...

 does the reverse and uses TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

 for typesetting MathML (usually resulting in PDF documents). MathType
MathType
MathType is a software application created by Design Science that allows the creation of mathematical notation for inclusion in desktop and web applications.- Features :...

 from Design Science
Design Science
The term design science was introduced in 1963 by R Buckminster Fuller who defined it as a systematic form of designing. Design science was taken up in Gregory’s 1966 book of the 1965 Design Methods conference where he drew the distinction between “design as a science” and the “science of design”...

 allows users to create equations in a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

 window and export them as MathML.
Also, Wolfram Research provides a web page to convert typed mathematical expressions to MathML, and to render MathML as an image.

GNU TeXmacs is a WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

 editor with extensive support for mathematics. Converters exist for presentation MathML in both directions. TeXmacs can be used to write mathematical articles that are exported to XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

 with embedded MathML.

Another WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...

 equation editor MathMagic
MathMagic
MathMagic is a mathematical WYSIWYG equation editor, available for Windows and Mac OS X since its first debut in 1998. MathMagic is known for its DTP quality equations and widely used by Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress users...

 supports MathML saving and reading, including options for "TeX" encoding and other annotations. MathMagic also supports MathML batch conversion from/to TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

, LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

, EPS
Encapsulated PostScript
Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions which is intended to be usable as a graphics file format...

, PDF, PNG, GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....

, JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....

, BMP, Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

 equation, and other formats.

Web browsers


Of the major web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s, recent versions of Gecko browsers (e.g., Firefox and Camino
Camino
Camino is a free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system...

), support MathML natively.

While the WebKit
WebKit
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...

 layout engine does have development version of MathML, this option is only available in version 5.1 and higher of Safari
Safari (web browser)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...

, which is based on WebKit. Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

, which is also based on WebKit, does not currently have this option enabled.

Opera
Opera (web browser)
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

, since version 9.5, supports MathML for CSS profile, but is unable to position diacritical marks properly. Prior to version 9.5 it required User JavaScript or custom stylesheets to emulate MathML support.

Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

 does not support MathML natively. Support in IE7 and IE8 can be added by installing the MathPlayer
MathPlayer
MathPlayer is a program by Design Science that enables the display of MathML mathematical formulae in Internet Explorer. MathML is a 1998 recommendation of the W3C for displaying formulae on the World Wide Web...

 plugin. MathPlayer is not currently compatible with IE9.

The KHTML
KHTML
KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome...

-based Konqueror
Konqueror
Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment...

 currently does not provide support for MathML.

The quality of rendering of MathML in a browser depends on the installed fonts. The STIX Fonts project have released a comprehensive set of mathematical fonts under an open licence. The Cambria Math font supplied with Microsoft windows had a slightly more limited support.

Web conversion


ASCIIMathML
ASCIIMathML
ASCIIMathML is a client-side mathematical markup language for displaying mathematical expressions in web browsers.Using the JavaScript script ASCIIMathML.js, ASCIIMathML markup is converted to MathML at the time the page is loaded by the browser, natively in Mozilla Firefox and via a plug-in in IE7...

 provides a JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 library to rewrite a convenient Wiki-like text syntax used inline in web pages into MathML on the fly; it works in Gecko-based
Gecko (layout engine)
Gecko is a free and open source layout engine used in many applications developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation , as well as in many other open source software projects....

 browsers, and Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

 with MathPlayer
MathPlayer
MathPlayer is a program by Design Science that enables the display of MathML mathematical formulae in Internet Explorer. MathML is a 1998 recommendation of the W3C for displaying formulae on the World Wide Web...

. LaTeXMathML does the same for (a subset of) the standard LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

 mathematical syntax. ASCIIMathML
ASCIIMathML
ASCIIMathML is a client-side mathematical markup language for displaying mathematical expressions in web browsers.Using the JavaScript script ASCIIMathML.js, ASCIIMathML markup is converted to MathML at the time the page is loaded by the browser, natively in Mozilla Firefox and via a plug-in in IE7...

 syntax would also be quite familiar to anyone used to electronic scientific calculators.

MathJax
Mathjax
MathJax is a cross-browser JavaScript library that displays mathematical equations in web browsers, using LaTeX math and MathML markup. MathJax is released as open-source software under the Apache license....

, a JavaScript library for inline rendering of mathematical formulea, can be used to translate LaTeX into MathML for direct interpretation by the browser.

Blahtex is a TeX-to-MathML converter intended for use with MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

.

Equation Server for .NET from soft4science can be used on the server side (ASP.NET
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...

) for TeX-Math (Subset of LaTeX
LaTeX
LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

 math syntax) to MathML conversion. It can also create bitmap images (Png, Jpg, Gif, etc.) from TeX-Math or MathML input.

jqMath is a JavaScript module that dynamically converts a simple TeX-like syntax to MathML if the browser supports it, else simple HTML and CSS.

LaTeXML is a perl utility to convert LaTeX documents to HTML, optionally either using MathML or converting mathematical expressions to bitmap images.

Support of software developers


Support of MathML format accelerates software application development in such various topics, as computer-aided education (distance learning, electronic textbooks and other classroom materials); automated creation of attractive reports; computer algebra systems; authoring, training, publishing tools (both for web and desktop-oriented), and many other applications for mathematics, science, business, economics, etc. Several software vendors propose a component edition of their MathML editors, thus providing the easy way for software developers to insert mathematics rendering/editing/processing functionality in their applications. For example, Formulator ActiveX Control from Hermitech Laboratory can be incorporated into an application as a MathML-as-is editor, Design Science
Design Science
The term design science was introduced in 1963 by R Buckminster Fuller who defined it as a systematic form of designing. Design science was taken up in Gregory’s 1966 book of the 1965 Design Methods conference where he drew the distinction between “design as a science” and the “science of design”...

 propose a toolkit for building web pages that include interactive math (WebEQ Developers Suite,).

MathML Version 3


Version 3 of the MathML specification was released as a W3C Recommendation
W3C recommendation
A W3C Recommendation is the final stage of a ratification process of the World Wide Web Consortium working group concerning a technical standard. This designation signifies that a document has been subjected to a public and W3C-member organization's review. It aims to standardise the Web technology...

 on 20 October 2010. A proposed recommendation of A MathML for CSS Profile has also been published; this is a subset of MathML suitable for CSS formatting. Another subset, Strict Content MathML, provides a subset of content MathML with a uniform structure and is designed to be compatible with OpenMath. Other content elements are defined in terms of a transformation to the strict subset. New content elements include which associates bound variables () to expressions, for example a summation index. The new element allows structure sharing.

Other standards


Another standard called OpenMath
OpenMath
OpenMath is the name of a markup language for specifying the meaning of mathematical formulae. Among other things, it can be used to complement MathML, a standard which mainly focuses on the presentation of formulae, with information about their semantic meaning...

 that has been designed (largely by the same people who devised Content MathML) more specifically for storing formulae semantically can also be used to complement MathML. OpenMath data can be embedded in MathML using the element. OpenMath content dictionaries can be used to define the meaning of elements. The following would define P1(x) to be the first Legendre polynomial



P1

x



The OMDoc
OMDoc
OMDoc is a semantic markup format for mathematical documents. While MathML only covers mathematical formulae and the related OpenMath standard only supports formulae and “content dictionaries” containing definitions of the symbols used in formulae, OMDoc covers the whole range of written...

 format has been created for markup of larger mathematical structures than formulae, from statements like definitions, theorems, proofs, or example, to theories and text books. Formulae in OMDoc documents can either be written in Content MathML or in OpenMath; for presentation, they are converted to Presentation MathML.

The ISO
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization , widely known as ISO, is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization promulgates worldwide proprietary, industrial and commercial...

/IEC
International Electrotechnical Commission
The International Electrotechnical Commission is a non-profit, non-governmental international standards organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies – collectively known as "electrotechnology"...

 standard Office Open XML (OOXML) defines a different XML math syntax, derived from Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

 products. However, it is partially compatible through relatively simple XSL Transformations
XSL Transformations
XSLT is a declarative, XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents. The original document is not changed; rather, a new document is created based on the content of an existing one. The new document may be serialized by the processor in standard XML syntax or in another format,...

.

See also

  • CSS
    CSS
    -Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...

  • List of document markup languages
  • Comparison of document markup languages
    Comparison of document markup languages
    The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of document markup languages. Please see the individual markup languages' articles for further information.-General information:...

  • Formula editor
    Formula editor
    A formula editor is a name for a computer program that is used to typeset mathematical works or formulae.Formula editors typically serve two purposes:...

    s
  • LaTeX2HTML
    LaTeX2HTML
    LaTeX2HTML is a converter written in Perl that converts LaTeX documents to HTML. This way, e.g., scientific papers—primarily typeset for printing—can be put on the Web for online viewing....


Specifications


Software


Miscellaneous