Gnome Help Browser 2 - MathML

[Thomas Canty <tommydal ihug com au>]

Hello peoples,

I did some investigation after people inquired about the use of MathML in docs.

Mozilla has the ability to render mathML, provided support for mathML is
compiled in.
I downloaded mozilla with mathML compiled in, and it does look impressive.

Have a look at www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml/ for more information. There is
a milestone build
with support for mathML built in. (M15)

However there are still a number of issues which really prevent the use of
mathML in the 
new help browser. These include:

* mathML rendering in mozilla is not complete (but looking promising)

* two fonts, CMSY10, CMEX10 are required for mathML (1.8mb worth)

* mathML is not compiled in by default into mozilla 

* mathML ideally needs an editor -> it's not supposed to be written from
source. 

Docbook provides an example of an alternative method, to introduce simple
mathematical equations, 
have a look at http://www.docbook.org/tdg/html/equation.html -> the example at
the bottom which 
uses a screenshot to display mathematical formula. This is not ideal for either
inline formulas and symbols 
or documents with a lot of mathematical display in them

So there u have it - something to chew on,

Thomas