Re: [docbook-apps] SVG graphics, & MathML

[Justus dot Piater at ULg dot ac dot be (Justus H. Piater)]

Nicolas Pillot <nicolas.pillot@polymtl.ca> wrote on Fri, 6 Feb 2004
11:03:48 -0500:

>   - I need to include MathML in DocBook. Googling, i found JEuclid, but it
>     seems quite old (no problem with that if it works). I will test it and see
>     if it suits my needs, but i'd like to know if there is something else out
>     there doing the convertion from MathML to SVG. If it is able rasterize the
>     equations to a bitmap, that would a good thing too, but not mandatory.

There have been postings on the apache-forrest list these days
indicating that JEuclid is still functional and may even be
reactivated. Check the their archives.

>   - I had no problem so far processing extern SVG from DocBook, with
>     mediaobject, imageobject, imagedata, and the role attribute. (as in
>     sagehill.net example) But when i try embedded SVG, i get a message about
>     no matching templates for svg, g & circle tag. And my idea was to write
>     something that would convert inline SVG to extern SVG, but i wondered if
>     there was any existing solution to that kind of thing.

I don't know about your problem, but I use SVG with DocBook for HTML
output. Since the only usable SVG browser support seems to be Adobe's
plugin, and since this plugin is not triggered by inline SVG, I wrote
a little XSLT hack that puts inlined SVG into its separate file, and
in the HTML output places those <object> tags used to pull in external
media. Is this what you need?

BTW, I find MathML tedious to code by hand, and hard to read too for
non-trivial formulas. I have a setup that allows me to code all my
math in LaTeX syntax, and a Makefile setup that uses an external Perl
script and Ian Hutchinson's TTM to convert inlined LaTeX code to
external MathML files that are then XIncluded. This allows me to
hand-code math conveniently in LaTeX (which is processed directly by
PassiveTeX until there is a FO processor that can render MathML), and
convert it to MathML for the Web.

If JEuclid is successfully reanimated, I may one day abandon
PassiveTeX and go LaTeX -TTM-> MathML -JEuclid-> SVG -fop-> PDF.

Any volunteers for adding MathML support to fop directly? :-) I'm not
even sure this is desirable; perhaps MathML -> SVG is the best way to
go. Any opinions?

Justus

-- 
Justus H. Piater, Ph.D.         http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~piater/
Institut Montefiore, B28        Phone: +32-4-366-2279
Université de Liège, Belgium    Fax:   +32-4-366-2620


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