This article makes excellent points in how we should go about publishing articles on the web. Much of what it recommends applies to non-mathematical articles and math writings. Below is what I submitted in comment. Take a minute to read the article and then my comments.
The article presents some excellent points for authors such as staying away from propietary products like Word or Excel. Also, it makes the point that while the author may lay out an article in a certain format the is no way to know how the reader will see that article. Hence authors should be careful with reliance on formatting and instead concentrate on content.
Who can say how, for example, Firefox will display compared to Opera?
All good points and worth saying. I must, however, disagree with the articles reliance on MathML. I've not seen any software that make MathML easy to use. Furthermore, it is only beginning to see support so readers can't count on their browser supporting it.
If you're writing an article with equations how do you go about doing so easily? I don't see MathML as a solution because there's no software that I found that allows authors to use this easily. Easy is the key, especially for equations.
I suggest authors write their work in whatever software they want but post the article in pdf format. Sure, pdf is Adobe's format but the reader software is free and compatible with most operating systems. The reader will see the text and equations as intended by the author. I don't know how it will display on a PDA but I don't think you can get everything anyway. We just can't get universal article presentation on any device in any format.
Also, I would like to point out that Octave is an open source product (free) that is very close to Matlab. It is easy to download, install, and use. If authors would use it for their programming, readers could use Octave to run the scripts without needing costly software like Matlab, Mathematica or Maple.
1 comment:
MathML can be displayed in the Mozilla/Firefox family of browsers and in Internet Explorer with my company's free MathPlayer plugin. Mac Safari is the biggest holdout.
Authoring can be done via a number of tools. My company's MathType can copy equations to the clipboard as MathML, as well as enable MS Word on both Mac and Windows to save web pages with equations as embedded MathML. There are many other products that produce MathML and more are added every day.
Paul Topping
Design Science, Inc.
www.dessci.com/mathplayer
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