Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML, is 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 Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. The challenge in putting math on the Web is to capture both notation and content in such a way that documents can utilize the highly-evolved notational practices of print, and the potential for interconnectivity in electronic media.

This chapter introduces the basic ideas of MathML. The first section describes the overall design of MathML. The second section presents a number of motivating examples, to give the reader something concrete to refer to while reading subsequent chapters of the MathML specification. The final section describes basic features of the MathML syntax and grammar, which apply to all MathML markup. In particular, Section 2.4 MathML Syntax and Grammar should be read before Chapter 3 Presentation Markup, Chapter 4 Content Markup and Chapter 5 Combining Presentation and Content Markup.

The following sections describe the interfaces that have been defined in the Document Object Model for MathML. Please refer to Chapter 8 [Document Object Model for MathML] for more information.

Itex2mml transforms webpages with embedded itex (a dialect of latex) into xhtml and MathML pages, suitable for viewing with Mozilla.

We present the capabilities of Maple, a system for symbolic and numeric computations, with respect to its abilities to handle MathML. Maple allows import of mathematical expressions encoded using MathML. The imported expressions can be used in any computations within the Maple system. The resulting expressions of any such computation can be exported back to MathML or published to the web.

The Cascading Style Sheet sample given here is not normative. It is provided as a guide to illustrate the sort of CSS stylesheet rules which a MathML renderer should include in its default stylesheet in order to comply with both the CSS and MathML specifications. In particular, there is a need to provide rules to prevent the descent of CSS font rules into MathML expressions embedded in ambient text, and to provide support for the mathfamily, mathslant, mathweight, mathsize, mathcolor and mathbackground attributes.

The IDL binding is also available as an IDL file at http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-MathML2-20001113/mathml-dom.idl.

MathML structure in a document can be viewed by choosing Show Structure from the Views menu. Choosing this option opens the Structure view, which reveals the main structure of the document, the math elements, and their contents.

This page contains links to each of the Notes that is under development by the MathML working Group.

At the current time few browsers have "native" support for MathML, and none have native support for the Content part of MathML. However Mozilla and Amaya have good support for Presentation MathML, and for other browsers there are a range of extensions that will render MathML (in particular, WebEQ and MathPlayer from Design Science and Techexplorer from IBM).

Written mathematics encodes complex information succinctly and relies on the eye's ability to read a mathematical expression in any one of several desired ways. Providing equivalent functionality when presenting mathematics aurally requires access to the underlying representation and meaning of a math expression as opposed to any specific visual appearance.

This section contains Terms entries in the "Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0" glossary.

The following sections describe the interfaces that have been defined in the Document Object Model for MathML. Please refer to 8 Document Object Model for MathML for more information.

To be effective, MathML must work well with a wide variety of renderers, processors, translators and editors. This chapter addresses some of the interface issues involved in generating and rendering MathML. Since MathML exists primarily to encode mathematics in Web documents, perhaps the most important interface issues are related to embedding MathML in HTML [HTML4.0] and XHTML [XHTML1.0] and [XHTML1.1].

Many people are somewhat familiar with HTML-style syntax. In HTML, one mixes keywords in angle brackets with the text to be displayed to indicate logical sections like paragraphs and titles. Different kinds of logical blocks display in different styles. Often, one can specify variants on a theme by adding attributes in the start tags of a particular block. For example, in HTML, the start and end tags <table> and </table> mark a table section, and you can specify variations by adding attributes like <table width="85%">.

This module adds support for MathML in the DocBook XML DTD. With this module, elements from the MathML namespace may be used inside equation and inlineequation elements.

You can create and use links in mathematical expressions. These links are represented using a draft version of the XML Linking Language (XLink). Only simple unidirectional hyperlinks are available, but you can associate a link with any part of a formula.

This document extends the Core API of the DOM Level 2 to describe objects and methods specific to MathML elements in documents. The functionality needed to manipulate basic hierarchical document structures, elements, and attributes will be found in the core document; functionality that depends on the specific elements defined in MathML will be found in this document.

This section contains known issues of Amaya MathML.

The top-level element for math tagged according to the MathML DTD. See documentation for the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) 2.0 DTD.