Thoughts on updating MathML documentation

[Frédéric Wang]

Hi all,

In a previous thread, some people complained about the fact that the
MathML project page are outdated and doesn't show what is currently made
on MathML implementation. Update of MathML documentation was also
mentioned. Since then, I've worked on bug triage for MathML: I've closed
duplicate bugs or very old bugs that were no longer valid, I've open new
bugs (in particular regarding the features of MathML 3) and added
dependencies to improve organization. I've also worked on some MathML
bugs and fixed a few of them. I think I've now a better understanding of
the MathML code and I'm able to propose a roadmap for the MathML
project. Hence I plan to add documentation for contributors (i.e. in (1)
below). If I understand well, the documentation is organized as follows:

(1) wiki.mozilla.org, used to plan and document the development. There
is currently no entry for MathML.
(2) developer.mozilla.org, used to describe Mozilla/Web technologies for
developers. There is only one and very incomplete entry for MathML.
(3) www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml, the MathML project homepage.

Ideally, I think we should really keep in (3) an overview of the
project: link to mozilla's resources (newsgroups, (1) and (2))
information for users of mozilla products (essentially, the installation
of fonts), updates and general roadmap. Demos, links to MathML software
tools, guidelines for authoring etc should be moved to the wiki (2) and
can be completed by contributors (however it may currently not be
possible to move demos because of the requirement to serve pages as
XHTML). Status of the development can be moved in (1) or (2) (or both?).
The text from 1999 can be removed from the frontpage (probably kept
separately for nostalgic people) and replaced by a short description of
the status of project. In that way, the project page will not need to be
updated so often as opposed to wiki (which are more convenient for
contributors).

FYI, I've opened bug 553915.

[Robert O'Callahan]

On 22/03/10 7:36 AM, Frédéric Wang wrote:
> (1) wiki.mozilla.org, used to plan and document the development. There
> is currently no entry for MathML.
> (2) developer.mozilla.org, used to describe Mozilla/Web technologies for
> developers. There is only one and very incomplete entry for MathML.
> (3) www.mozilla.org/projects/mathml, the MathML project homepage.
>
> Ideally, I think we should really keep in (3) an overview of the
> project: link to mozilla's resources (newsgroups, (1) and (2))
> information for users of mozilla products (essentially, the installation
> of fonts), updates and general roadmap. Demos, links to MathML software
> tools, guidelines for authoring etc should be moved to the wiki (2) and
> can be completed by contributors (however it may currently not be
> possible to move demos because of the requirement to serve pages as
> XHTML). Status of the development can be moved in (1) or (2) (or both?).
> The text from 1999 can be removed from the frontpage (probably kept
> separately for nostalgic people) and replaced by a short description of
> the status of project. In that way, the project page will not need to be
> updated so often as opposed to wiki (which are more convenient for
> contributors).

I think that's a good plan, but I think we should go further and move
everything to the wiki and make mozilla.org/projects/mathml redirect to
the wiki page. For now we can simply link back to the www.mozilla.org
pages for the demos. In the slightly longer term, when the HTML5 parser
is enabled by default we should ensure we can put MathML in the wiki
HTML markup!

Rob

[Frédéric Wang]

FYI, I've started to write MathML doc in wiki.mozilla.org:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/MathML:Home_Page

I think I don't have the permissions to add a link to this page on the
Main Page or to add a "namespace" for MathML.

[Karl Tomlinson]

Frédéric Wang writes:

Looks great, thanks Frédéric.

I don't know the "right" way to ask a sysop to do these things for
you. I would start by filing a but at

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Websites&component=www.mozilla.org

and, even if that's not the right place, then I expect someone
will redirect.

[Justin Wood (Callek)]

I think I have the (peer recognition) power to do this.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&diff=211053&oldid=209464

Though, I'm not sure an "official" namespace is warranted/needed. Either
way I don't have the technical power to do that.

--
~Justin Wood (Callek)

[Frédéric Wang]

> I think I have the (peer recognition) power to do this.
>
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&diff=211053&oldid=209464
>
> Though, I'm not sure an "official" namespace is warranted/needed. Either
> way I don't have the technical power to do that.
>

I took the SVG homepage as a model for the MathML one. A namespace is
typically used to displayed all the child pages:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages&from=&namespace=110

However, this is less important than adding the MathML homepage to the
main page (thanks for this, BTW!) so I think we can wait until more
content is added in the MathML section.

[Frédéric Wang]

> I think that's a good plan, but I think we should go further and move
> everything to the wiki and make mozilla.org/projects/mathml redirect to
> the wiki page. For now we can simply link back to the www.mozilla.org
> pages for the demos. In the slightly longer term, when the HTML5 parser
> is enabled by default we should ensure we can put MathML in the wiki
> HTML markup!
>
> Rob

I've created a new directory Mozilla_MathML_Project/ on MDC:

https://developer.mozilla.org/Special:Tags?tag=MathML

The doctype used in MDC is XHTML 1.0. I've tried to use <math/> tags,
but they are not accepted by the editor.