MathMonarch and MathML:

MathMonarch 5.0 has 100% MathML compatibility, allowing for smooth and accurate export of math equations into web pages. Its advanced flexibility allows for true Presentation MathML 2.0 output or linking to a customized namespace for your own definitions. Using the WWdoc namespace adds life to a document, and allows for production of an in-house or proprietary standard. Options for the WWdoc Namespace, personalized namespace, or even MathPlayer® compliant output are included, putting the power of MathML into the hands of authors and producers alike.

Working with top innovators around the world and a team of innovative mathematicians, MathMonarch is proud to be the first and only software toting the new "Comprehensive Heuristics Technology", the most advanced and intuitive interpretation software for mathematical equations available. The technology, known as CHaT, can actually interpret author, legacy, or production files containing presentable equations into true, Content MathML 2.0. This means that with no user input or manual labor, your equations become solvable from any source. Any language that can be converted to WWdoc via MathMonarch now can contain mathematical data as well as rendering data. Data that was once flat and locked as a picture or placeholder becomes three dimensional and dynamic.

MathML 2.0

MathML 2.0, a W3C Recommendation, was released on Feb 21, 2001. A product of the W3C Math working group, MathML is a low-level specification for describing mathematics as a basis for machine to machine communication. It provides a much needed foundation for the inclusion of mathematical expressions in web pages. MathML is intended to facilitate the use and re-use of mathematical and scientific content on the web, and for other applications such as computer algebra systems, print typesetting, and voice synthesis.MathML can be used to encode both the presentation of mathematical notation for high-quality visual display, and mathematical content, for applications where the semantics plays more of a key role such as scientific software or voice synthesis.

MathML is cast as an application of XML. As such, with adequate style sheet support, it will ultimately be possible for browsers to natively render mathematical expressions. For the immediate future, several vendors offer applets and plug-ins which can render MathML in place in a browser. MathMonarch can generate HTML pages where the math expressions are represented directly in MathML.

MathML is not intended for editing by hand, but is for handling by specialized authoring tools such as equation editors, or for export to and from other math packages.

Presentation MathML

MathML presentation elements suggest specific ways of rendering in order to allow for individual preferences of style. This specification describes suggested visual rendering rules in some detail, but a particular MathML renderer is free to use its own rules as long as its renderings are intelligible. The presentation elements are meant to express the syntactic structure of mathematical notation in much the same way as titles, sections, and paragraphs capture the higher-level syntactic structure of a textual document. An equation created as presentation MathML is unlikely to be fed into a construct program, as the information is likely mathematically inaccurate.

Content MathML

Content MathML adds more mathematical meaning in its description of formulas, consequently allowing its use as an interchange format between mathematical software. It was chosen to include the basic set of most standard areas of mathematics, such as arithmetic, algebra, logic, set theory, calculus, sequences and series, linear algebra, and statistics. Extension mechanisms are defined to complete this list with additional mathematical constructs. Essentially, through the use of content MathML, software that renders a graphic display will display a true display, and software that utilizes the actual content information will formulate a solvable, mathematically accurate equation.

What MathML means to publishers

Presentation MathML allows publishers to move legacy documents into an advanced format suitable for archival or live files. Furthermore, as the presentation of MathML is rendered and not specified, a document's entire display can be altered based off of cascading stylesheets (CSS) and document type definition (DTD) files. Once these centralized files have been changed, there is no need to recode any equations.

Formats that are ASCII compliant and consistently delimited, such as WWdoc or TeX, can easily be converted into presentation MathML without user intervention. A flawless conversion from author or production to a web format opens a new world of possibilities.

What MathML means to consumers:

Through the use of products such as MathMonarch, publishers can easily and quickly convert manuscripts, books, and technical manuals and journals to a web format viewable on your home computer. This technology allows information to be placed literally at your fingertips inexpensively.

What MathML means to mathematicians:

MathML represents the first language that is intended to be capable of possessing content and presentation data simultaneously. Data can be flown from technical documents or books into solvable formats. Because the data is so verbose, it is most likely that only computer software will develop MathML, which was one of its development points. By using standard rules and conversions, information can be ported into formats that work with existing systems, allow for practical application, and permanent, safe archiving.

Where to go from here: