Heh, I've never seriously tried to use MathML before. On the plus side, 
it does solve the problem I had (i.e., various math symbols have Unicode 
codepoints, but don't exist in any known typeface). On the other hand... 
it's a tad verbose.

With TeX, if you want to write "x" as a mathematical variable rather 
than a piece of text, you simply say "$x$". But by the power of MathML, 
if you want to do this in DocBook, you write

   <inlineequation>
     <math xmlns="http://www.w3c.org/1998/Math/MathML">
       <mrow><mi>x</mi></mrow>
     </math>
   <inlineequation>

which is somewhat more typing. There's probably some trick that removes 
the need to keep typing in the XML namespace URL every time, but even 
then you'd still have

   <inlineequation><math><mrow><mi>x</mi></mrow></math><inlineequation>

which is a lot of typing considering that only one single character of 
that will appear in the final output.

Now I see why people like to use specialised editors to write this 
stuff. ;-) Typing HTML by hand is trivial, but this stuff is just 
mental. (!)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Never heard of Firebug. However, I just installed it, and in about 20 
> seconds flat I got what I wanted.

Glad to have helped!

> If only I knew about this thing sooner...

You don't write much complex javascript, is all. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message

>> Never heard of Firebug. However, I just installed it, and in about 20 
>> seconds flat I got what I wanted.
> 
> Glad to have helped!
> 
>> If only I knew about this thing sooner...
> 
> You don't write much complex javascript, is all. :-)

Oh, only a Mandelbrot plotter and an LZW demo and a Huffman 
encoder/decoder and...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> Never heard of Firebug. However, I just installed it, and in about 20 
>>> seconds flat I got what I wanted.
>>
>> Glad to have helped!
>>
>>> If only I knew about this thing sooner...
>>
>> You don't write much complex javascript, is all. :-)
> 
> Oh, only a Mandelbrot plotter and an LZW demo and a Huffman 
> encoder/decoder and...

It's not complex javascript until you start dicking with the DOM. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message

>>> You don't write much complex javascript, is all. :-)
>>
>> Oh, only a Mandelbrot plotter and an LZW demo and a Huffman 
>> encoder/decoder and...
> 
> It's not complex javascript until you start dicking with the DOM. :-)

...and how do you think the Mandelbrot plotter, you know, plots? :-P

(I got the trick from Slime, by the way.)

Also, my cubic equation solver works by basically opening a new frame 
and dynamically generating the entire content that should go in there. 
(I don't even remember how now...)

Post a reply to this message

On 7/7/2010 11:41 AM, Darren New wrote:
>> Oh, only a Mandelbrot plotter and an LZW demo and a Huffman
>> encoder/decoder and...
>
> It's not complex javascript until you start dicking with the DOM. :-)
>

I would think that a Mandelbrot plotter, an LZW demo and a Huffman 
encoder/decoder would be a /lot/ more complicated than anything you 
could do with the DOM.


-- 
http://isometricland.com

Post a reply to this message

On 7/7/2010 8:20 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Now I see why people like to use specialised editors to write this
> stuff. ;-) Typing HTML by hand is trivial, but this stuff is just
> mental. (!)

I wish it were suipported by browsers though. I've got a handful of 
equations scattered around my website, and it would make the equations 
look a little flashier than plain text.


-- 
http://isometricland.com

Post a reply to this message

>> Now I see why people like to use specialised editors to write this
>> stuff. ;-) Typing HTML by hand is trivial, but this stuff is just
>> mental. (!)
> 
> I wish it were suipported by browsers though. I've got a handful of 
> equations scattered around my website, and it would make the equations 
> look a little flashier than plain text.

Which what were supported? MathML? Seems to work out of the box with 
Firefox.

(Actually no, I think there were a tiny few symbols missing until I 
installed the Math Fonts pack...)

Post a reply to this message

>>> Oh, only a Mandelbrot plotter and an LZW demo and a Huffman
>>> encoder/decoder and...
>>
>> It's not complex javascript until you start dicking with the DOM. :-)
>>
> 
> I would think that a Mandelbrot plotter, an LZW demo and a Huffman 
> encoder/decoder would be a /lot/ more complicated than anything you 
> could do with the DOM.

Well, the LZW demo doesn't use the DOM at all. There's just a field, and 
it reads the contents of that field, and modifies some other fields, all 
in response to clicking a form button.

The Mandelbrot plotter, on the other hand, does use the DOM. 
Specifically, I borrowed this trick from Slime: You have a grid of 
invisible whitespace elements, and you use the DOM "style" property to 
apply CSS styling that turns these elements different colours, greating 
primitive "pixels".

Obviously, web browsers are not even slightly designed for this, so it's 
horrifyingly inefficient...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> With TeX, if you want to write "x" as a mathematical variable rather 
> than a piece of text, you simply say "$x$". But by the power of MathML, 
> if you want to do this in DocBook, you write
> 
>   <inlineequation>
>     <math xmlns="http://www.w3c.org/1998/Math/MathML">
>       <mrow><mi>x</mi></mrow>
>     </math>
>   <inlineequation>
> 
> which is somewhat more typing.

It's also incorrect. That should be a closing tag at the bottom, and the 
correct namespace URL has the domain name www.w3.org (no "c").

Post a reply to this message