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Sun Apr 24 04:47:25 EDT 2011
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MathML3 is a W3C Recommendation -

The W3C Director has advanced MathML version�3.0 to a W3C Recommendation. The press release has more information. Several companies have already expressed support for the new standard.

The W3C Director approved the publication of the MathML version�3.0 specification and its companion, the MathML for CSS Profile, as Proposed Recommendations. Until September 10, the two documents undergo what should be the final review by the W3C members, before becoming W3C Recommendations. MathML3 was until now a Candidate Recommendation, which means it was being tested in practice. Becoming Proposed Recommendation means the tests were successful. You can see with the test suite (and the test results of a number of current implementations) how well your software supports MathML.

Paul Libbrecht and the MKM Conference are organizing MathUI10, the 2010 Workshop on Mathematical User Interfaces. The workshop offers a forum discussing how users can interact with the mathematical objects represented on a computer, how they can manipulate them to feel their mathematical nature, how they can create them, how they can visualize them, and how they can understand them. The deadline for submissions is May�20.

As expected, the specification XML Entity Definitions for Characters has become a W3C Recommendation. The W3C members expressed support for the specification and had no further requests for changes.

The specification XML Entity Definitions for Characters has advanced to the status of Proposed Recommendation, the final step before becoming a standard. It contains names for many mathematical and other symbols, all from the Unicode standard, and thus allows those symbols to be written into XML documents in environments where typing them directly would be difficult or impossible. The specification is used by several types of documents, such as HTML5, DocBook, and, of course, MathML. W3C members have until March 11, 2010, to review the document. The specification should become a W3C Recommendation three or four weeks later.

The W3C Director today advanced the status of MathML3 from Working Draft to Candidate Recommendation (CR). That means that W3C is now asking people to not only send comments on the text, but to implement the specification and send feedback on any problems found in actual use. The MathML for CSS profile, which describes a subset of MathML3 that can be rendered with existing CSS renderers, was advanced to CR at the same time. The next step for both specifications is PR, as soon as there are sufficiently many implementations. The working group expects to start testing implementations around March 2010. Feedback can be sent to the mailing list.

The Math Working Group published a new draft of the MathML�3.0 specification, which is intended to be the last one before the specification becomes a Candidate Recommendation, around the end of the year. That means this is the last call for comments. Please, send comments to . The deadline is November�11. See the status section and appendix�F for an overview of the major changes.

The Math Working Group published new drafts of two specifications, Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 and A MathML for CSS profile. The new draft of MathML�3.0 especially affects chapter�4, on content mark-up, but there are smaller improvements throughout the document. The new draft profile adds some elementary math (e.g., long division) and includes sample CSS rules for displaying elementary math formulas. See the drafts for the details and for how to give feedback.

The Math Working Group published the fourth draft of MathML version 3. Some more of the non-normative text has been removed in favor of a separate Primer. The presentation mark-up now allows the author to insert rendering hints in case the renderer has to insert extra line breaks. But most of the editorial effort has gone into defining the underlying semantics of content mark-up (chapter 4): it is now almost completely expressed in terms of OpenMath Content Dictionaries. That should not affect authors, but it enables software to convert between different math systems. Chapter 8 will eventually describe the structure of those Content Dictionaries. Comments on the draft are very welcome on the group's ( archived ) public mailing list, . There will be at least one more draft before the specification becomes Candidate Recommendation.

The charter of the Math Working Group expired earlier this year, and, after a few months' extension to determine the contents of the next charter, W3C decided to renew the charter until April 2010 without any changes to the work items. The updated schedule puts a Candidate Recommendation for MathML 3.0 at the end of 2008 and the group currently expects it can finish all its work, including all test suites, in early 2010. W3C Members can use a form to join the Working Group.