Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 Draft Published

W3C's Math Working Group has published a Working Draft of "Mathematical
Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0." This is the third draft of
MathML, an XML application for describing mathematical notation and
capturing both its structure and content. The specification defines the
Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML, as an XML application for
describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and
content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served,
received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled
this functionality for text. This specification of the markup language
MathML is intended primarily for a readership consisting of those who
will be developing or implementing renderers or editors using it, or
software that will communicate using MathML as a protocol for input or
output. It is not a User's Guide but rather a reference document. MathML
can be used to encode both mathematical notation and mathematical
content. About thirty-five of the MathML tags describe abstract
notational structures, while another about one hundred and seventy
provide a way of unambiguously specifying the intended meaning of an
expression. Additional chapters discuss how the MathML content and
presentation elements interact, and how MathML renderers might be
implemented and should interact with browsers. Finally, this document
addresses the issue of special characters used for mathematics, their
handling in MathML, their presence in Unicode, and their relation to
fonts. While MathML is human-readable, in all but the simplest cases,
authors use equation editors, conversion programs, and other specialized
software tools to generate MathML. Several versions of such MathML
tools exist, and more, both freely available software and commercial
products, are under development.