From MathWeb

MathML is a markup format based on XML for mathematical knowledge representation. It is standardized by the W3C.

MathML comes in two flavors:

Presentation MathML

for presentation (like LaTeX)

Content MathML

for structural semantic markup, similar to OpenMath

MathML implementations

More and more softwares support MathML. Here is a short overview :

browser

The two most used browsers are Firefox and Internet Explorer. Firefox has a native MathML support and it is even possible to embed formulae in SVG diagrams. About Internet Explorer you have to install the MathPlayer plugin, but there is a lot of problems : you can't zoom, you can't load xml document, you have to add a stylesheet... Also, note that the last version of Opera has a MathML support.

editor

As indicated in MathML recommandation, editors are important as, because of its complexity, it is difficult to directly edit source code of MathML. Amaya allows to edit presentation markup of MathML thanks to a Wysiwyg mode : more than one hundred predefined constructions are available. You can both create a single formula (mml) or integrate formulae in a XHTML document. Word processors like Abiword, Kformula or OpenOffice have an import option (mml files). Among the three, Abiword seems to have the better MathML implementation. It is more limited for OpenOffice : it only supports MathML 1.0 and have to insert his own code in the xml source to reload files. Authoring MathML for Mozilla

converter

LaTeXML allows to convert LaTeX to MathML. You can also displayed MathML as LaTeX source code using XSLT style sheets (see xsltml).

viewer

GTKmathview is a viewer for MathML files but is not installed by default.

servers

ActiveMath uses template-based XSLT style sheets for rendering OMDoc as Presentation MathML.

mail client

It seems Thunderbird can be configured to view MathML in e-mails (see [1] and [2]) but this have to be checked. Amaya allows to send documents by mail (maybe with MathML ?), but only with a SMTP that does not require authentification.

scientific computation

Mathematica and Maple supports import and export. The open source software Maxima contains an experimental implementation. According to this message, some people are working on a support of MathML in Axiom.

blog

Blog using MathML are now really common. The example often mentioned is [3].

wiki, forum or other discussion groups

For mailing lists, see the mail client issue above. Forum and wiki issues are related, as both already allow to convert LaTeX source to images. It would be interesting to allow MathML input and MathML output (rather that images). Some works seem to have started in MediaWiki though the option is not avalaible yet. See the talk page for this article and the Blatex project.

MathML Test

It is important to have tools to check the respect of MathML syntax. For the people who create MathML pages, the W3C validator is the reference to validate their Markup. The developers of MathML software can use some MathML Tests :

• The W3C MathML Test Suite
• A MathML Torture Test from Mozilla.
• Another MathML Test used for Amaya.
• A test about MathML combined with other W3C standards (XHTML, CSS, SVG, SMIL and XLink).

Resources

• homepage
• The W3C MathML software list
• Why you should use MathML