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Chromium: "MathML is not something that we want at this time"
- eof 13y agoOver at the chrome dev team: "Oh shit, it's in the spec?"
- comex 13y agoEven MathJax would be much better than what many large sites, including Wikipedia, still use - static images. It's very annoying not to be able to search for things inside the math, and the images are low resolution and ugly on a Retina Display. (However, I guess Wikipedia has a MathJax option; I wonder why it's not enabled by default.)
- fusiongyro 13y agoMaybe they get a lot of those mythical users who don't have Javascript enabled.
- comex 13y agoIt's possible to support both options. Alternately, in theory I don't see why the math couldn't be rendered on the server, although I don't think MathJax can currently do this.
- Aqueous 13y agoI don't understand - doesn't Google want the web to be a first-class platform for scientific research? Chrome is supposed to be the standards-compliant browser! Not to mention, if scientists have an easy way of creating markup versions of their LaTeX files you'll see a huge influx of scientific work on the web!
- codezero 13y agoSo maybe they should support LaTeX directly?
- krasin 13y ago(not speaking on behalf of anyone than me) That would be a Chrome-specific non-standard feature. If JavaScript implementation of TeX is too slow, a Chrome-specific solution would be NaCl/PNaCl. But I really recommend to evaluate how to generate high-performance javascript code (like with Emscripten) and have it working fast enough.
- codezero 13y agoThanks. My comment might not seem on the level but I honestly wonder whether LaTeX support would have more broad impact than a subset like MathML.
- mieses 13y agoThat would be ideal but TeX source is supposedly very big and complicated. MathML is a joke compared to LaTeX. HTML + canvas, SVG, or PNG is preferable.
- cliftonk 13y agoI disagree and think that this is best done in userland. Adding native support for features that aren't critical can retard future development significantly.
- Aqueous 13y ago
- tyleregeto 13y agoThis decision is potentially very big. How can Chrome, a browser that has so actively pushed HTML5 forward, reject a component of the spec? I mean IE supports WebGL for crying out loud, I wasn't sure they ever would, but even they're playing ball. We'll see what happens here, its a pretty vague comment right now. What does "at this time" really mean? Is it just delayed so other things can be focused on? I could understand that. Things like the new input controls should be a bigger priority, they are more important for 99% of all users. Very interesting, it makes it hard for Chrome to criticize any other implementation.
- fishd 13y agoPlease read the rest of what Ojan wrote: "In areas where libraries like MathJax are not good enough, we'd love to hear feedback about what APIs we would need to expose so that MathJax, et al, can create an awesome MathML implementation." One of our goals is to make it possible to layer technologies as complex as MathML on top of Blink without requiring Blink to ship everything and the kitchen sink. See new technologies like Custom Elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/custom-elements/ http://www.w3.org/TR/custom-elements/), which are part of this story.
- jokamoto 13y agoThat approach makes sense for technologies outside of the scope of the HTML5 spec, but for a core element like <math> it seems rather silly to propose external implementation using custom elements (and therefore requiring Javascript availability, which shouldn't be taken for granted).
- vidarh 13y agoThe engine obviously does support javascript, so an alternative is ensure extensions can "plug in" these custom elements and implement them in JS in a separate sandbox regardless of whether JS is enabled or disabled for the page itself. Less code with direct OS access sounds good to me.
- jokamoto 13y agoBut you'd still have to download and install the extension in order to use it (or, as was somewhat glibly proposed in a comment on the bug, Google would need to ship a version of MathJax with Chrome). Anyone without the extension and with JS disabled would still be out of luck. So far as direct OS access, I'm having trouble envisioning a situation in which the layout code for MathML would be any more vulnerable than SVG (or the rest of the layout engine for that matter).
- anon1385 13y agoSo why didn't you say that at the time this was being proposed? Now we have yet another part of the standards that people can't actually use because one browser vendor didn't like it for a vague reasons. It undermines the process to go around cheering for HTML5 and then later decide that you don't like it after all.
- chattoraj 13y agoThe Chromium guys really don't like to add new features based on user requests. Here[1] they refuse to add support for SIL Graphite[2], which is essential for making text in certain languages render correctly. (Of course, Firefox already supports it.) Comment #9 was the same guy ranting against libgraphite2's code quality, but it's been deleted now. Thankfully, they've since changed their mind on that one. We might still see Graphite support in Chrome. [1] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=140007#c7 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=140007#c7 [2] http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects.. http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects....
- DannyBee 13y ago"Comment #9 was the same guy ranting against libgraphite2's code quality, but it's been deleted now." Is there anything to say he was wrong? "Thankfully, they've since changed their mind on that one. We might still see Graphite support in Chrome." So what your saying is that after the serious code quality issues he apparently ranted about disappeared, they reconsidered (that's what the comment stream seems to say ...)?
- wolfgke 13y agoLink [2] fixed: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_home http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects...
- general_failure 13y agoBefore all the chrome and Google bashing starts... The point is why do we need something specific for math. Would people be OK with a musicml? Or say chemicalml? And that's a good question. Why is math so special? Let's try to solve the problem more generically instead of adding specialized domains in the browser.
- bayesianhorse 13y agoWhy is math so special? Asked at Hackernews? Really?
- codezero 13y agoIs asking that off limits? If it's so obvious and easy to understand, explain it. Also, Chrome caters to a very wide audience so dev time has to consider a much broader audience than hackers.
- ovangle 13y agoThe problem is that the Chrome team shouldn't be selectively implementing parts of the html5 standard [1]. It shouldn't matter how many users desire the functionality after it's accepted by the w3c. Of course, Chrome could implement whatever it likes if it drops any claim to be standards compliant, but until that happens... [1] http://www.w3.org/Math/draft-spec/mathml.html http://www.w3.org/Math/draft-spec/mathml.html
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ovangle 13y agoUmmm, no. It is part of the html5 spec, under embedded content. http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-content-0.html#mathml http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/embedded-conten...
- 13y ago
- jonchang 13y agoHere's a Mozilla mailing list thread discussing dropping MathML support. The linked post explains why MathML is desirable (e.g., accessibility, performance, accuracy of rendering, standards compliance, necessary for ebooks). https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/96dZw1jXTvM/rIzKSrRgk18J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/96dZw1j...
- josteink 13y agoObviously. Chrome is only about pushing out features which Google needs to deliver their platforms and products. MathMl, despite being in the spec does nothing to this end.
- VMG 13y agoHow do you explain Google Scholar or the Research feature in Google Docs?
- zepolud 13y agoCreated in the same era as Google Code Search and likely to meet the same fate.
- andor 13y agoThey can probably file it under hiring costs. It's a very effective branding measure targeted towards all the academics they need. While researchers have to search for publications all the time, I don't see many use cases for a code search engine.
- Mindless2112 13y agoYou've not spent much time trying to use insufficiently documented APIs then. I used Google Code Search all the time -- now I search on GitHub. Since Google is a software company as well as a research laboratory (though I would say it is more prominently the former), I would be surprised that they would kill Code Search but keep Scholar alive as a hiring cost.
- riffraff 13y agoI think the "research" feature is way more recent. OTOH, it appears to be targeted at high school students writing an history essay, more than to people discussing phd level algebra.
- DannyBee 13y agoOr, you know, you could not always assume the worst. Did you think the same when mozilla seriously considered dropping it?
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoPlease everyone, stop acting so holy about "the spec". The HTML spec isn't sacred. It's very reasonable to discuss it, even after a feature has been approved. How else will we improve the existing features? If we don't change existing things, the browser will stay the stinking ball of backwards compatible code it is today.
- anon1385 13y ago>Please everyone, stop acting so holy about "the spec". The HTML spec isn't sacred. This argument is never accepted when it comes from Microsoft. When they refuse to implement a standard it's an 'attack on the web' and MS trying to 'kill' the web for their own commercial interests. When Google rejects a standard and their public reasoning is that they can't be bothered to finish the implementation (it was already in Webkit after all) then we should just accept it. But why? Because Google is 'good' and Microsoft is 'bad'? The reality is that MathML isn't in Googles commercial interest so it won't get done. That is the real story behind all the happy sing-alongs about the open web: it is ruled by a couple of teams in large powerful corporations who have the power to kill any part of the standard that conflicts with their commercial interests, or even just fails to promote their commercial interests.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoStop making everything so black and white. No corporation is 'good', nor 'evil'. Yes, the spec is run by corporations. No, that's not evil. Yes, they'll probably promote their own interests. No, that's not the end of the world.
- anon1385 13y agoI wasn't saying I think they are good or evil. I was saying that kind of black and white thinking seems to be what leads the web community to attack MS for ignoring standards but defend Google for doing the same. >Yes, the spec is run by corporations. No, that's not evil. Yes, they'll probably promote their own interests. No, that's not the end of the world. It's fine as long as we have native open platforms that we can use instead. However Google and Mozilla want us all to be running web based OSs. In that world yes it would be a huge deal for one player to block a standard.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y agoI don't particularly care that it's in the spec, personally. MathML is horrid. This page covers it well: http://aiju.de/rant/XML/MathML http://aiju.de/rant/XML/MathML
- anon1385 13y agoIf we were going to reject technologies because they were horrid there wouldn't be much of the web left. HTML is horrid. CSS is horrid. Javascript is horrid.
- dagw 13y agoMathML is not meant to written by hand, but to be an easy to implement and easy to parse compiler target.
- sharpneli 13y agoThis is actually somewhat funny. It combines the best parts of binary and text formats! It's slow to parse just like text and impossible to change by hand just like binary! But seriously. MathML is a huge mistake. They could've designed an actually writable format, but they didn't. It's one of the best examples of XML architects going over the top.
- rch 13y agoI've been using bing as an experiment for the last three weeks or so. Google is far better for academic searches, and better support for math rendering would help extend the lead in that category. Isn't that reason enough?
- ameoba 13y agoGoogle exists to advertise. Academics are woefully underpaid. Who wants to advertise to a bunch of broke intellectuals that are just going to ignore your ads anyways?
- rch 13y agoDoctors are perfectly good candidates for ad targeting, and some are paid quite well (even at academic research hospitals). Those institutions also have quantitative science departments.
- mbq 13y agoSure, great decision! If nerds want math, they can type it with -xxx-border-radious hacks. Seriously, the only cross-browser way left to have nice looking equations without MathJAX is to make SVGs with dvisvgm, of course for the cost of interoperability.
- eddieh 13y agoHopefully Gecko and WebKit will forge ahead with this. There are members of the community willing to work on MathML: http://www.maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic/?post/2013/10/12/Funding-MathML-Developments-in-Gecko-and-WebKit http://www.maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic/?post/2...
- protomyth 13y agoDoes MathJax play well with screen readers and other accessibility solutions?
- ianbicking 13y agoDoes MathML? (Excluding imaginary screen readers – imaginary screen readers can support anything.)
- protomyth 13y agoimaginary screen readers? Yes, there are solutions for MathML for accessibility.
- mindcrime 13y agoThere's a part of me that feels like the web has gone too far in the direction of overly concentrating power into the hands of the browser vendors. I would love to see somebody fork Firefox or Chromium and create a browser that: a. does implement all the relevant web standards ( like MathML, SVG, etc., etc.) b. is more responsive to the community than current Firefox or Chrome c. can serve as a testbed for experimenting with new web based technologies. Sadly, a lot of that is what Mozilla purported to be waaaaayyyy back in the early days (I'm talking 1998 or so), but at some point they (Mozilla) decided that competing with IE for market-share was the #1 priority. Of course part of the problem is that browsers are big, complicated, difficult projects, and it takes a lot of resources to maintain and build one. So I'm not too optimistic about seeing this mythical "more community driven browser" emerge anytime soon. sigh All of that said, I'd love to see some experimentation around actually making a sharp distinction between documents and applications and some mechanisms for "handing off" application "stuff" to something other than the browser where the goal is to remote out the UI to an app. JNLP was a good start on that, but Sun's failure to deliver something like the Consumer JRE about 7 years sooner, and then the rash of JRE security bugs, more or less killed that as a viable possibility. But something like JNLP, not tied to Java, and with fast startup times and without the security bugs, could be very interesting. I just wish I had time to experiment with this myself, but sadly I'm too heads down grinding on other things. :-(
- JeremyBanks 13y ago"... several engineering weeks had already been spent trying to resolve the security issues before we were forced to disable the code." It's not clear what other issues are causing them to not adopt MathML, but this was at least a severe one, and nobody in any of these comments seems to have acknowledged it. The sentence quoted in the title may have been a bit of a mis-statement, since every other bit of discussion is about maintenance and security issues, not a philosophical rejection. (I'm not sure I understand this correctly, but the other comments here have not helped at all.)