[Om3] OM/MathML synchronization (was Re: Language Dictionaries)

[Michael Kohlhase]

Dear David, dear Lars, dear all,

let us start a separate thread on this. I will answer David's other
thougths on the original thread.

On 1.5.14 12:11, David Carlisle wrote:
> On 30/04/2014 08:23, Lars Hellström wrote:
>> Michael Kohlhase skrev 2014-04-23 15.24:
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> In thinking about OpenMath3, we have problem that there are some
>>> language extension proposals, but at the same time, we have the
>>> problem that we have to keep MathML3 compatibility.
>>
>> No, we don't (as far as OM3 is concerned); that Unicode 1.1 became
>> ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993 didn't prevent the creation of Unicode 2.0
>> (which introduced notable features such as surrogate pairs). It may
>> still be desirable to stay compatible with MathML3, but it cannot be
>>  an a priori limit on the evolution of OpenMath.
>
>
> It's true that MathML doesn't necessarily constrain OpenMath (but it
> might:-) but I don't think the Unicode example is relevant. The Unicode
> and ISO standards are kept (more or less) in step and overseen by the
> same technical committee, so basically that example is just saying that
> standards can be updated, just as we have MathML3 following 2 and
> OpenMath 3 probably following OpenMath 2.
>
> So coming back to OpenMath/MathML, structurally it is _highly_ unlikely
> that there will be a revised MathML standard anytime soon. Even if we
> started to re-charter a group to revise the standard now it would be a
> couple of years to go through the process, and in fact there are no
> plans to re-charter (and the current working group has been extended to
> 2016).
>
> So the OpenMath Society should consider MathML3 as essentially a fixed
> thing. We can choose whether that affects us or not, it does not have
> to, but one of the possible aims in the list that Michael listed when
> kicking off this process in Bath was to have a new OpenMath encoding
> using MathML rather than the "traditional" OpenMath namespace OMA etc.
> If we make that a design aim that does constrain any extensions to be
> encodable in MathML3. "encodable" might involve some work, it doesn't
> imply there has to be a 1-1 element mapping, but it probably ought to
> be lossless and reversible to count as an "encoding" that is: any MathML
> that is used to encode the new constructs can not also be read as
> encoding existing constructs. But we don't _have_ to do this, it may be
> that not all the desired things are required (or in fact desired when
> examined more closely).

David, thanks for the clarification to the group.

Let me add that we worked very hard in MathML3 to align content MathML
and OpenMath, and that is not something I would lightly want to
endanger. It would be very hard to sell that we have two differing
standards for content representation of mathematical formulae again.

But on the other hand, I think that the extension requests on the table
show us that we probably need more language structures to adequately
represent the content and structure of mathematical objects.

Michael


-- 
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 Prof. Dr. Michael Kohlhase,        Office: Research 1, Room 168
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