MathML

The MathML or Mathematical Markup Language is an XML-based markup language, whose goal is to express mathematical notation in a way that different machines can understand, for use in combination with XHTML in web pages, and for information exchange between mathematical programs in general.

MathML support is great in math programs (such as Maple or Mathcad), but still lacking in browsers. As of 2016, Gecko/Mozilla Firefox had the best MathML support, followed by Webkit-based browsers (such as Safari). Google Chrome had inherited the functionality from Webkit, but it was removed starting with version 25. Opera, once almost fully supported, also lost it from version 13 after migrating to Blink/Chrome. In Internet Explorer it has never been available, except through a plugin. Web site authors can rely on the MathJax script to render MathML in browsers that do not have native support.

History

MathML 1 appeared as a W3C recommendation in April 1998, being the first XML language recommended by the W3C. Version 1.0 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 a final version by the W3C math working group.

MathML was originally designed before the completion of the XML namespace. However, it was assigned a namespace immediately after the XML namespace recommendation was completed. For use in XML, elements must go with the namespace and URI http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML. When MathML is used with HTML (as opposed to use in XML), the namespace is automatically inferred by the HTML parser and does not need to be specified in the document.

MathML version 3

Version 3 of the MathML specification was released as a W3C Recommendation on October 20, 2010. A recommendation for A MathML for CSS Profile was released later on June 7, 2011; is a subset of MathML suitable for CSS formatting. Another subset, Strict Content MathML, provides a strict subset of content MathML with a uniform structure and is designed to be compatible with OpenMath. Other elements of content MathML are defined in terms of a transformation to strict subset. New content elements are <bind>, which binds a bound variable (<bvar>) to expressions, for example an index in a summation. The new <share> allows structure sharing.

The development of MathML 3.0 proceeded through a number of stages. In June 2006, the W3C commissioned the MathML Working Group to develop a MathML 3 recommendation through February 2008, and in November 2008, the commission was extended to April 2010. The sixth draft of the MathML 3 revision was released in June 2009. On August 10, 2010 version 3 graduated to be a "proposed recommendation" instead of being a draft.

Example

The well-known solution of the quadratic equation (quadratic formula):

x=− − b± ± b2− − 4ac2a{displaystyle x={frac {-bpm {sqrt {b^{2}-4ac}}}}{2a}}}}{2a}}}

is written in TeX syntax as follows:

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

and using MathML like so:

≤2
≤2
≤3
أعربية
≤3
≤2
≤2
≤3
≤3
Δ/mrow
أعربية
≤2
≤2
Δmsup
≤3
≤2 tax/mn
◊
≤3
≤2
≤3⁄4”
≤3⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2
≤3;
≤3⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2
≤3
Δ/mrow
Δ/mrow
Δ/msqrt
Δ/mrow
≤2
≤2 tax/mn
≤3⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2⁄2
≤3;
Δ/mrow
Δ/mfrac
Δ/mrow
≤2

Despite being less compact than TeX, the XML structuring promises to make it widely usable and allows its instant visualization in applications such as web browsers, as well as facilitating a direct interpretation of its meaning in mathematical programs. MathML is not intended to be directly written or edited by humans.