EQUATIONS such as E = mc2 are commonplace in print, but they
are like a foreign language on the World Wide Web. The standard mark-up language
on the Web, called HTML, cannot cope with mathematical symbols. But this is to
change. The Web鈥檚 ruling body is due to approve a language that will make it
easier for mathematicians to post their work on the Web.
Next week the World Wide Web Consortium, the Web鈥檚 governing body, is
expected to give the new language, called MathML, a 鈥渞ecommendation鈥�. This is
the closest it gets to defining a standard, and will essentially give software
authors the go-ahead to develop applications for MathML.
Mathematicians and scientists have been increasingly frustrated with HTML鈥檚
inability to include mathematical expressions. To show an equation on a Web
page, researchers must create it in an editing program, save it as an image file
in a format such as GIF or JPEG, and embed the image into the HTML. Images take
a long time to load, and the equations can鈥檛 be cut and pasted like text. You
can鈥檛 index them, or search a database for parts of equations.
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鈥淩ight now, you have to go through a lot of contortions,鈥� says Jim Martino,
who teaches calculus at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. As online books
and journals proliferate, so do these GIF files. The American Mathematical
Society says there are 鈥渁round two million or so graphics on our Web server鈥�,
according to the mathematician Ralph Youngen.
MathML is the result of more than two years of negotiations. As well as
capturing equations, it fits seamlessly into the software that mathematicians
and scientists already use. It was not easy. 鈥淧eople are quite fussy about the
way maths is presented, about the way it looks, about what they can do,鈥� says
Patrick Ion, co-chair of the Web consortium鈥檚 working group.
However, MathML is not simple. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not the sort of thing you really want to
edit by hand,鈥� says consortium member Dave Raggett. The mark-up will have to be
encoded by software that will presumably included in equation editors.
MathML is an application of XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language), the successor
to HTML, which the consortium recommended on 10 February. 鈥淚 think everybody
expects to see, in the long run, a wholesale migration to XML out of HTML,鈥� says
Rob Miner, another co-chair of the working group that developed MathML. There
are already several prototype plug-in programs that adapt Web browsers for
MathML, says Miner. Eventually, plug-in programs won鈥檛 be necessary.