References: <199812092035.VAA16014@na6.mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de>
            <13938.39518.68424.927988@fell.open.ac.uk>
Message-ID:  <199812140945.JAA02920@nag.co.uk>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
In-Reply-To:  <13938.39518.68424.927988@fell.open.ac.uk> (message from Chris
              Rowley on Sat, 12 Dec 1998 18:05:25 +0100)
Date:         Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:45:07 GMT
From: David Carlisle <davidc@NAG.CO.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: portable LaTeX
Status: R

> Could we please see some examples of MathML, or is it XML, macros that
> might appear in a document?

It isn't macros really (although the TeX community tends to call
anything that results in some code running somewhere, a macro).

However you can put in your document whatever you like, within
the constraints of XML syntax. So <SteenrodAlgebra> or &MonsterGroup;
or whatever. You can (or rather will be able to) then specify in a style
sheet how this is supposed to get transformed to MathML.

> I have been reliably informed that XSL does not allow specifications
> that are expressive enough to do this job (basically since it knows
> nothing about maths, in the sense that it has no concept of arithmetic).

If you compare the first draft submission of XSL to the first working
draft of XSL 1.0, which came out only a few months later, you will
see that they are essentially completely different languages.
XSL is a rapidly moving target, and currently it is moving behind the
closed doors of W3C working group processes, so there is not a lot of
point worrying now about any particular lack of features. You just have
to have faith that it will be alright on the day. If by chance it is not
alright on the day, you will be able to do the transformation in a lower
level language, such as java or ecmascript interfacing through the DOM.
(You can't do this either at the moment as there are no math formating
objects that you can transform to, but the public document does say
these will be added in a later draft).

Most TeX users will never want to author in XML, however there are many
advantages in authoring in tex and  transforming to XML (even if
eventually the document is printed by transforming back to tex).
It gives a mechanism for consistency checking and communicating with
the wider non-tex world, that is simply not available in an all-tex
solution.


David