[tex4ht] Starmath in Libre Office (Was: [bug #340] Math issues ...)

[Michal Hoftich]

> Does the name "starmath" go back to the days of "Star
> Office" or even "StarWriter"?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice

Sure, it goes :)

> 
> If the LO people undertake thinking about the situation, I
> would hope that, input notwithstanding, the math in their
> ODF bundles be cast as some form of XML, whether MathML, an
> XML guise of starmath, or ...
> 

I guess that this is not so simple, as ODF is an ISO standard and if
starmath is included in that standard as requirement (I don't know if it
is), then it's not likely that they can change that easily, even if
they wanted :( Also, MS Word can read ODF files, but seems to support
only mathml annotated with starmath, so I guess they don't support
mathml at all.

BTW, the following fragment generated by tex4ht:

<math                                                                                                                                                 
 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"
 xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <mo
 >&#x3C;</mo> <mi
 >c</mi></math>

 is replaced with 

---
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"
 display="block"><semantics><mrow><mrow/><mstyle
 mathvariant="italic"><mtext>c</mtext></mstyle></mrow><annotation
 encoding="StarMath 5.0">{<italic
 "c"}</annotation></semantics></math>
---

So LO not only add the starmath annotation, but it also alters the
mathml, replacing <mo>&#3C;</mo> with <mrow></mrow>, which is something
little bit different, I would say :) 

It seems that in fact, the mathml is generated from the starmath, not
the other way. Only if the starmath is missing, it tries to create it
from mathml.

Best,
Michal