re: HTML+ support for eqn & Postscript

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Date: 	Mon, 14 Jun 1993 07:21:18 -1000
From: Torben Noerup Nielsen <torben@hawaii.edu>
Sender: Torben Noerup Nielsen <torben@hawaii.edu>
Subject: re: HTML+ support for eqn & Postscript
To: Dave_Raggett <dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
Cc: janssen@parc.xerox.com, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
In-reply-to: <9306140936.AA00563@manuel.hpl.hp.com>
Message-id: <MailManager.740078478.151.torben@foralie.net.hawaii.edu>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Dave,
>Well both of these will be possible with the HTML+ DTD, by using the
>capability to embed foreign formats inline in the HTML+ source, e.g.
>
>         <H2>A example of an equation</H2>
>
>         <EMBED TYPE="text/eqn">zeta (s) ~=~ sum from k=1 to inf
>          k sup -s ~~~ (Re s &gt; 1) </EMBED>
>
>The browser identifies the format of the embedded data from the "type"
>attribute, specified as a MIME content type. Certain characters need to
>be escaped using entity definitions, e.g. ">" by "&gt;" in the example.
>
>Building in support for a range of formats has the danger of leading to
>very large programs for browsers. This could be avoided by using a common
>API for rendering foreign formats, e.g. as functions that take a sequence
>of bytes and return a pixmap.

Well, it may be the best that we're going to get. However, I still feel that
equations are too basic to not be supported directly. Note that the more
successful text processing systems (and that's part of what this will have to
be) all support text, equations and tables nicely.

Thanks, Torben