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[Axiom-developer] RE: [maple8] Maple XML and MATH/ML


From: Bill Page
Subject: [Axiom-developer] RE: [maple8] Maple XML and MATH/ML
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 12:55:16 -0500

On Tuesday, November 26, 2002 10:30 AM I wrote:

  http://www.maplesoft.com/standards/MathML/XSL/pmathml.xsl

>...
> Here are some links to examples of a very simple Maple
> worksheet with the results of these exports
> 
>   http://wspage.tripod.com/maple/xml-test1.mws
>   http://wspage.tripod.com/maple/xml-test1.html
>   http://wspage.tripod.com/maple/xml-test1.xml
> 
>... 
> If you click the 'xml-test1.html' link above, the first
> thing you will notice is the download of a java class to render
> the strange looking encoded math output format apparently called
> XPPMATH, at least that is the tag that is used in both Maple's
> internal mws format and in the exported XML.
> 

The more a look at this the more extraordinary things I see
going on. For example, the "html" file above is not really
a properly formatted HTML document at all! (Ref.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml ). The file generated by Maple
starts with the following *XML* declaration

  <?xml version="1.0"  encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
  <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl"
href="http://www.maplesoft.com/standards/MathML/XSL/mathml.xsl";?> 

and has no doctype declaration at all. In fact, this declaration
is just ignored by the browser which really starts interpreting
the code starting with

  <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>

but if we follow the href on the XML declaration and hack the
stylesheet we find some really interesting (but strange) stuff.

http://www.maplesoft.com/standards/MathML/XSL/mathml.xsl

http://www.maplesoft.com/standards/MathML/XSL/pmathml.xsl

One of the most interesting things I see here is

- <!-- 
Copyright David Carlisle 2001, 2002.

Use and distribution of this code are permitted under the terms of the
 
<ahref="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720";>
W3C Software Notice and License</a>.

  --> 

Also fairly prominent is the statement

<!-- 
 not working, currently
<xsl:when test="system-property('xsl:vendor')='Microsoft' and
/*/@fns:renderer='css'">

< ...

Isn't the penchant for attribution and openness in the Web a
wonderful thing!

But pmathml.xsl is much more interesting

<!-- 
$Id: pmathml.xsl,v 1.6 2002/03/14 23:19:22 davidc Exp $

Copyright David Carlisle 2001, 2002.

Use and distribution of this code are permitted under the terms of the
<a
href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-software-19980720";>
W3C Software Notice and License</a>.

  --> 
<!-- 
 MathPlayer mpdialog code for contributed by
     Jack Dignan and Robert Miner, both of Design Science.

  -->

This XSL stylesheet has some very sophisticat and complex coding
including, but limited to, java and activeX.

Almost all of this clearly seems to be work-in-progress. It
seems pretty amazing to me that this ended up in the current
commercial release of Maple 8 and is still publically
accessibe on the WMI web site. I really wonder what WMI has
in mind here?

Addenda to previous message: Apparently the MATH/ML is being
rendered by a Design Science package related to

  http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/default.htm

There products look quite impressive. Too bad not much of
it is open source.

Regards,
Bill Page.





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