[om] comments on documents

[David Carlisle]

>  It seems from a casual reading, that
>
>   OM encoding doesn't specify presentation.

true

>   MathML doesn't specify content.

false (as is pointed out in the comparison, MathML has a content part
that directly corresponds to OpenMath constructs)

> Both of these are essentially false, easily observed by
> (a) the conversion of OM to MathML and to TeX. So OM specifies
> (or can be used to specify) presentation.

No. In that case the presentation is specified by the transform. You can
have different transformations giving different presentations of the
same OM object. The OM object itself does not prefer any of these
formats. I can decide that I'm going to present every OM function
application as a prefixed function call  as f(x,y) (ie no infix
operations) and write a transform to use that presentation mapping to
TeX or MathML or any other presentation language. At other times I can
use a different transformation that uses infix operators or lisp (f x y)
syntax or any other presentation.

> (b) MathML has a content component, which could either
> point to some OM piece or not.

Yes that is clearly stated with examples in the document that you are
refering to so I'm not sure of your point here.


> One technique used in industry where
> there are competing technologies is to stamp out
> competition by attempting to elevate one proposal
> to be the standard.

But since OM and MML are not competing this isn't particularly
relevant.

> To what established international body is the OM
> standard going to be submitted? 

It may be submitted to some external body but there are no immediate
plans to do so. It's not clear it would serve any immediate purpose.
There's no sign that a change of status would encourage anyone to use OM
who is currently not using it, or vice versa.

David

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