MathML for Math and Science Communication

MathML is a powerful new language for encoding mathematics. Its original purpose was to provide a way for marking up mathematics in Web pages, since HTML provided no easy way of handling it. However, because of the enormous influence of the Web on all types of communication, MathML has begun to influence the way mathematics are shared between all kinds of math and science applications.

Brief History

The need for standards became apparent very early in the development of the Web. In 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded, and began putting in place a process to recommend standards for the Web. Almost at once, proposals for adding math capabilities to HTML began circulating at W3C, and in 1995, the formal development of MathML began. The first release of the MathML Specification was in 1997.

Design Science has been involved in the development of MathML from early in the process, and Dr. Robert Miner, the editor of the MathML specification, is Director of New Product Development for Design Science.

Why MathML is Important

MathML is similar in many ways to earlier encoding for math expressions. However, the thing that sets MathML apart is the amount of information encoded. Most previous encoding stored only information about what an equation looked like. By contrast, MathML stores information about the logical structure and meaning of equations as well as their appearance.

The philosophy of storing information about structure as well as appearance is very much a part of the Web viewpoint. This is no accident, since from the outset, MathML was intended for use in Web pages. This is also evident in two other ways. First, MathML is defined in terms of XML. XML is another W3C recommendation that defines the characteristic angle bracket syntax used in HTML and many other data formats. Secondly, MathML tries to be as media independent as possible, with support for interactivity, computation, and speech synthesis, as well as traditional paper publishing.

Although there is a price to be paid for the ambitious goals behind MathML -- it is a verbose, complicated language not well suited to hand editing -- the payoff in terms of power and versatility is quite impressive:

• More information about structure and meaning allows better conversion to other formats
• More information allows better searching and indexing
• Ability to encode expressions in a structured, media-independent way allows greater interoperability between a wide range of software
• Ability to encode meaning allows expressions to be evaluated as well as displayed in many cases

Because of these advantages, many math and science software vendors have begun adding MathML support to their products, or are planning to add support soon. As a result, the now well-known "network effect" has already begun to boost the importance of MathML even further -- once a critical mass of applications support MathML, the interoperability benefits start to outweigh the costs of conversion.

MathType, MathPlayer and WebEQ

MathType and the WebEQ Developers Suite are among the oldest and most comprehensive software applications for working with MathML available.  MathPlayer is the leading way of displaying MathML in Internet Explorer.  

The WebEQ Browser Control applets offer powerful cross-platform support for displaying, entering, graphing and evaluating MathML in web pages. The WebEQ Editor and Publisher directly edit and process MathML.  

MathType and WebEQ also work well together. If you use MathType in Microsoft Word, you can use MathType's MathML translation capabilities to author Web pages containing Viewer Control applets. Consult Authoring MathML with MathType for more information.

Learning More about MathML

There are many resources for learning more about MathML. Some of our favorites include

W3C MathML 2.0 Specification

The latest official MathML specification.

W3C MathML Working Group Home Page

The official site for news about the MathML specification.

A Gentle Introduction to MathML

An introduction and tutorial to MathML along with a reference section on the WebEQ implementation of MathML