Fine Structure

Part (and maybe all) of my responsibility on the blog is to report on the intersection of two topics that I'm most fascinated with: science and the internet. Computer science has a natural place on the web since many pioneers of web technologies are computer scientists but science as it pertains to other topics, physics and math in particular, are shoehorned into the web without much capability to search or interact with their mathematical notation.

MathML, an XML-based mathematical notation standard, promised to solve these problems a number of years ago and there are many subsequent rules for how to generate and view math on the web. Unfortunately, it's one thing to write a specification for a project and another thing to get browsers to implement it. MathML has so far been an afterthought of browsers and web technology, relegated to the sidelines of add-on plugins and unsearchable content.

HTML5 hopes to change this situation for numerous web standards, integrating previously plugin-based content like audio, video, graphics and MathML seamlessly into HTML5-based web pages.

Enough backstory, Mozilla (as in the Firefox web browser) has turned on the new HTML5 parser in their most recent development version of Firefox. This means that they're confident in how well the parser works and will probably be integrated into the next major revision of Firefox. Of course, designing web pages with this kind of MathML content won't be a reality until HTML5 gains a significant share of browsers as a whole, which is some time down the line. However, as more browsers support features like HTML5 and MathML, more people will be able to interact with math on the web.

And, finally, the point: Inevitably this leads to the greater visibility of math on the web. For numerous would-be math students who don't have access to instructors or textbooks, the web can become a virtual teacher of sorts. We've definitely be heading in that direction - MathML exists, after all, along with LaTeX and the math features of Wolfram Alpha - but we'll finally be able to unify the display and manipulation of math on the web with HTML5 and the great math applications that come from that are going to be invaluable.