MathML is XML:
Maximize Your Investment

Introduction

Unless you are publishing poetry, chances are your enterprise has mathematical notation in its content. From research articles to technical documentation to financial analyses, many kinds of content contain math. Unless you are already working with MathML, math in your content is locked away as image data or old, hard-to-maintain math formats (GIF, TeX, LaTeX, old Epic equations, etc.). Image and legacy formats raise the cost of processing and maintaining those documents, and limit your ability to locate, reuse, and repurpose that content in the future. In other words, your enterprise will be missing many of the advantages of XML. Forward-thinking enterprises are working with MathML for encoding mathematical notation. MathML is the W3C standard for representing math in XML, and is supported by many related software systems, including web browsers, XML editors, computer algebra systems, search engines, screen readers, and rendering and composition engines. It is the archival math format for the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed Central database, and has been integrated with other popular XML standards such as XHTML, DocBook, CellML, and others. It has been in use for nearly a decade in production workflows in enterprises as diverse as the US Patent Office, journal and textbook publishers, education, government, aerospace and other industries.

Types of Content that Contain Important Math Notation

Technical Documentation:

• Engineering/product design specifications
• Patent applications

Research:

• Scientific, economic, and business research papers

Educational Materials:

• Math and science textbooks
• Online learning materials
• Online testing and assessment

Financial Analysis:

• Financial modeling
• Sales modeling

Benefits of MathML for your Enterprise

Adds Value and Functionality

• Multi-media delivery. Enterprises need to deliver content in several formats such as PDF for print and HTML for the web. Leading composition systems including Arbortext Publishing Engine, Arbortext Print Publisher, XPP, and Antenna House XSL Formatter support MathML, either natively or in conjunction with Design Science MathFlow Composer™, and SDK components for custom composition solutions. At the same time, MathML is natively supported in Firefox, and in Internet Explorer with Design Science’s MathPlayer™ extension. MathML is also popular for interactive web applications such as online test assessment.
• Accessibility. MathML is being adopted as the math standard for DAISY and PDF/UA, both important accessibility standards. Disability legislation will mandate that publishers provide electronic versions of texts in DAISY format in many contexts, especially education. Design Science MathPlayer’s math-to-speech technology currently works with leading screen readers, and we are developing accessibility support for PDF.
• Searching. Educators, students, researchers, and other technical knowledge workers often need to search for information related to a particular mathematical expression, and may not know appropriate keywords for a text search. Since MathML incorporates mathematical notation directly into XML documents in a highly structured way, it can be effectively searched using a variety of techniques. Several math search engines are under development, including one being developed by Design Science under a National Science Foundation grant.
• Computing. Important scientific computation software such as Mathcad, Mathematica, Maple and others support MathML. Readers can copy expressions from documents and paste them into these systems. Through integration with OpenMath, MathML is used in many research projects in mathematical knowledge management.

Reduces Costs and Risks

• MathML is XML. If you are using XML, encoding your math as MathML has a clear payoff. Since MathML is XML, it integrates seamlessly into your other XML content, eliminating expensive content management issues such as storing hundreds or thousands of equations as separate image files, or in non-XML islands in your documents that have to be processed separately with external tools.
• Uniform validation and processing. With MathML, you can validate all your content together, and apply style sheets and data transformations uniformly across all your content, using common, industry-standard XML tools. The result is more regular data with fewer ad hoc processing steps.
• Vendor neutral. Since MathML is a public standard, there is no vendor lock-in. There are hundreds of software packages that support MathML, with more appearing every day.
• Ease of repurposing. Unlike images, MathML encodes the notation without locking in style data such as fonts and sizes. Using standard XML techniques such as namespaces and schemas, MathML can be easily incorporated into other XML languages, often without any special tool support. MathML can also be converted into many other formats including graphics, algorithmic computer code, and text for speech to ease reuse in specialized contexts.
• Make your archival data safer. Unlike other formats, MathML encodes mathematical structure in open, accessible XML, making it well-suited to convert to other formats via standard tools and techniques such as XSLT. Because of MathML’s status as a popular public standard with no competitors, tools that understand and work with it will exist for the foreseeable future.

Flexible Deployment

A wide range of software applications now has MathML support, either natively or via integration with tools such as Design Science’s MathFlow™ line of products. This facilitates deployment in many contexts throughout the enterprise.

• Distributed authoring systems. It is commonplace today for projects to involve geographically distributed team members. Consequently, many enterprise publishing contexts now require distributed authoring systems. Design Science’s MathFlow and WebEQ™ equation editors run in a web browser, and can be integrated with other browser-based XML editing platforms.
• Centralized production. When authors are distributed, content is typically stored in a central repository, together with a centralized production process. For example, Design Science’s MathFlow Composer integrates seamlessly with PTC’s Arbortext Publishing Engine and popular content management systems such as Documentum. Our MathML components for producing EPS, GIF, and other image formats are also frequently used in custom production systems.
• Desktop tools. In workflows based around desktop tools, MathFlow Editor integrates with PTC’s Arbortext Editor, JustSystems’ XMetaL, XyEnterprise’s XPP, and an SDK will soon be available for other desktop XML editors. Design Science MathType™ and Microsoft Word are also common choices in desktop workflows, especially when interacting with authors without special training. Several software packages, including Design Science’s MathFlow Exchange™, can be used to convert Microsoft Word + MathType into XML + MathML.

About Design Science. Design Science develops software used by publishing professionals, scientists, engineers, and educators, including MathType, Equation Editor in Microsoft Office, MathFlow, WebEQ, MathPlayer, and TeXaide, to communicate math on the web and in print. Ninety percent of all documents that contain mathematical notation submitted to publishers are authored using Microsoft Word with our MathType or Equation Editor products.