About MathML

We are using MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) to represent the mathematical content in the DLMF. The use of the Presentation subset of MathML allows us to present the mathematics in a way less dependent on your screen size and resolution. You can adjust the font size to enlarge or shrink the formula in a way not easily possible with math represented by images. In addition, MathML should provide more opportunities for making the material accessible for those with disabilities.

Unfortunately, not all browsers currently support MathML. For those browsers where we detect MathML support, we send the mathematics in that form; for others we fallback to using images to represent the math. Our goal is that the DLMF be usable by all users, but encourage you to give MathML a try, if an appropriate browser is available for your platform.

In the future, we also hope to be able to deliver the Content form of MathML, a form which more faithfully preserves the semantic information of the mathematics. This should allow easier reuse of the mathematics, such as copying the formula into other documents, computer algebra systems or other computation engines.

We are aware of MathML support in the following browsers. Please note our Disclaimer.

• Firefox, version 3 or later (we recommend the STIX fonts, see below), or other Gecko-based browsers,

• Internet Explorer, version 6 or greater, with the MathPlayer plugin (version 2 or greater).

• Amaya, the W3C’s editor/browser.

We are also aware of partial support for MathML in Opera (supporting the CSS Profile of MathML) and Safari(initial support in version 5.1, but lacking support for multiscripts). Since we exercise the full profile of MathML, we do not currently deliver MathML to these browsers by default. We continue to monitor developments of these browsers; in the meantime, you may wish to experiment with the settings at Customize DLMF.

Since the display of mathematics involves many unusual and special symbols, a MathML renderer generally needs a set of special fonts. When a browser cannot find a particular glyph, it typically shows up as a ? or a box like ; if you see these in unexpected places, it may be that the fonts on your system are not sufficient. Check the websites for your browser, plugin and operating system for more information about installing fonts.

MathPlayer

is usually able to get access to enough fonts for MathML by including them and using Windows system fonts. Using the latest version of MathPlayer is also advisable. If available, Microsoft’s Cambria font should provide good coverage.

Firefox

and other Mozilla based browsers rely on fonts made available by third parties. Currently the beta release of the STIX fonts is strongly recommended, at least until release 4 of Firefox, as it is the only font which Firefox can stretch as needed — in some cases, the square root enclosing a fraction may be too short and appear to affect only the numerator! Some operating systems may offer the STIX fonts through their standard software distribution mechanisms; for example, Fedora offers it in the stix-* packages.

See MathML-fonts for a convenient add-on providing math fonts to Firefox, or Fonts for MathML-enabled Mozilla for general information and links. Using the latest available version of Firefox is advisable.

Well, it could be that you need to take more math courses! But seriously, if you really are seeing most of the math displayed as greek characters, it may be that you have a problem with the symbol font.

Although this problem should have disappeared with current releases, on some older X-windows based systems (Unix and Linux), Mozilla expects a PostScript version of the symbols font, by default. If your system has a TrueType version instead, Mozilla may use them without realizing the difference. The problem is that the two font versions have different encodings.

If this seems to be the case, the solution is to modify the configuration file mozilla-directory/res/fonts/fontEncoding.properties. There are two lines that are commented out:

# encoding.symbol.ttf = Adobe-Symbol-Encoding
# encoding.symbol.ftcmap = mac_roman

Simply remove the comment characters (#) from the beginning of each line, and restart Mozilla.