[texhax] Math in HTML (was Blogs)

Uwe Lück uwe.lueck at web.de
Wed Jul 19 23:46:24 CEST 2006


At 13:54 19.07.06, you wrote:

> > Unsearchable? Definitely you cannot search in pdf a part of
> > mathematical formula
>
>Precisely: neither can you make it accessible or any of the other
>psuedo-features that Adobe claim to provide.
>
> > but I am not sure that you can do this in MathML
> > either because the same expression can be generated differently
>
>Well, a whole heap of money was poured into the MathML project
>precisely to provide searchable maths databases, so let's hope they
>got it right.  There are also many ways to write that last sentence
>but that does not prevent full-text searches having limited but
>imnportant uses.

May I ask here, reading the first time on these things,
for additional information!?
[A question as a(n applying) mathematician etc.,
  not so much about TeX.]
What is the point of searching for parts of formulas?
Primitive counter-example:
$e^i$ may appear where e is the Euler constant and i that
imaginary square root of -1; or e may be anything and i a
non-negative integer.
Moreover, sometimes same things are expressed by different
notations. E.g., in order theory there are standard terms
like `poset', `linear order', `interval order', `semi-order'
(good enough for searching)
where the basic relation may be notated as `P', `R',
`<' or \lesseq, \prec ...
-- May be in certain areas there are standard notations
and certain exponents or the like classify sub-areas ...

Cheers,
   Uwe.




More information about the texhax mailing list