CSA Preface
Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the SCC Mirror Committee (SMC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T).
For brevity, this Standard will be referred to as “CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 40314” throughout.
At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 40314:2016 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA Group will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC.
This Standard was reviewed by the CSA TCIT under the jurisdiction of the CSA Strategic Steering Committee on Information and Communications Technology and deemed acceptable for use in Canada. From time to time, ISO/IEC may publish addenda, corrigenda, etc. The TCIT will review these documents for approval and publication. For a listing, refer to the Current Standards Activities page at standardsactivities.csa.ca.
This Standard has been formally approved, without modification, by the Technical Committee and has been developed in compliance with Standards Council of Canada requirements for National Standards of Canada. It has been published as a National Standard of Canada by CSA Group.
Overview
MathML is a markup language for describing mathematics. It is usually expressed in XML syntax, although HTML and other syntaxes are possible. A special aspect of MathML is that there are two main strains of markup: Presentation markup, discussed in Chapter 3, is used to display mathematical expressions; and Content markup, discussed in Chapter 4, is used to convey mathematical meaning. Content markup is specified in particular detail. This specification makes use of an XML format called Content Dictionaries This format has been developed by the OpenMath Society, [OpenMath2004] with the dictionaries being used by this specification involving joint development by the OpenMath Society and the W3C Math Working Group.
Fundamentals common to both strains of markup are covered in Chapter 2, while the means for combining these strains, as well as external markup, into single MathML objects are discussed in Chapter 5. How MathML interacts with applications is covered in Chapter 6. Finally, a discussion of special symbols, and issues regarding characters, entities and fonts, is given in Chapter 7.
