Using MATHML in HTML: Answers for Novice Web Builders

[neurocomp2003]

hey, novice building a science website...
is mathml the only web language?

If so how do you integrate it into html? is there an external program i need to use it? Or should it be defaulted into the IE/moz browers. I've seen the MATHML website that dduardo linked to but maybe its late, i found how to script MATHML but i can't seem to find how to integrate it into the text of a html file OR if you can..

thanks in advance.
neurocomp2003

 

[chronon]

MathML is an XML based language, and so needs to be part of an xml page rather than an html page. Usually this means just modifying your html page to give it an xml header and making sure all elements have closing tags.

Also, anyone reading your website will probably need to have installed a plugin such as MathPlayer for their browsers to be able to display MathML.

 

[TenaliRaman]

You can avoid MathML. Check this out,
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/textogif/textogif.html

-- AI

 

[chronon]

As for alternative ways of showing mathematical equations, most websites convert them into images for display.

I did come across EzMath, which gives a simpler way of coding expressions. Again this needs a plugin for the browser, and unfortunately this is a 'Netscape' plugin and doesn't seem to work with Internet Explorer.

You can also try to use standard HTML, using tables and the like to get symbols in the right place. See the text accompaning my Coupled Pendulums applet for an example of this.

I would also point out that Internet Explorer doesn't display all of the symbols you are likely to require, although it can be made to. For instance after much trial and error I found it would display $$\nabla$$ or $$\in$$ if I had the MS Mincho font installed, while to display $$\notin$$ (which you would think would be the same as $$\in$$ ), I had to set the font in the html code to 'Lucida sans Unicode'. See how they come out on your system $$\nabla$$=∇,$$\in$$= ∈, $$\notin$$=∉ ,$$\notin$$=∉ (with font set in html)

 

[ComputerGeek]

you could use LaTeX and take the resulting PDF and export it to a GIF and insert those to the page. LaTeX is much faster to type out that mathML.