1 Introduction

The NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) Project², begun in 1997, is preparing a handbook and Web site intended for wide communities of users. The contents are primarily mathematical formulas, graphs, methods of computation, references, and links to software. This project revises and extends Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions [1]. An overview of the project can be found in [11]. This paper addresses some of the technical aspects of the project. The route that we will take is to first describe the goals of the DLMF. That some of these goals conflict with reality leads to discussion of how we have adapted to those conflicts.

There are two underlying themes to this paper. The first theme is finding the most practical way of obtaining a variety of information from the project's authors, much of which may seem unusual to them. The second theme is how to make the information available to users through different media and via appropriate search capabilities. We must extract from the author's manuscripts a close approximation to the semantic content, especially the mathematical content, in a form that will allow the broadest, most long-term usage. It must be noted that this project is a work-in-progress; many of the most interesting problems have not yet been completely solved; and even the notion of `best solution' will evolve with the evolution of the web, itself.

Footnotes

... Project²

http://dlmf.nist.gov/