Thoughts on scientific HTML documents

Michael C. Grant ([email protected])
Sun, 22 May 1994 21:12:30 -0700


A little while ago, I posted an article on Usenet with a proposal for
adding a "postscript package" extension to HTML readers that would
serve to improve the state of equation rendering in HTML documents.

Well, now that I've investigated things a lot more, I've come up with
several simple extensions to HTML that are independent of PostScript
and that proposal. So I've written a document

http://www-isl.stanford.edu/~mcgrant/equations/

that summarizes my thoughts. In fact, the only part of the document that
HASN'T been touched is the section on EPS support! So for now, ignore
that part and just check out the rest, specically the section on
improved in-line image support.

Anyway, improving the way HTML can handle arbitrary equations is an
important issue, and I'd like your thoughts about my proposals. I'm
planning to put together a set of patches to Mosaic to implement
some of these features, so we can all see what kind of difference
it can make.

Thanks for your consideration,
Michael C. Grant
[email protected]