Re: [Boost-docs] More equation woes.....

Subject: Re: [Boost-docs] More equation woes.....
From: Paul A. Bristow (pbristow_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-02-02 12:52:27

> -----Original Message-----
> From: boost-docs-bounces_at_[hidden] [mailto:boost-docs-bounces_at_[hidden]] On Behalf Of
> John Maddock
> Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2012 11:19 AM
> To: Discussion of Boost Documentation
> Subject: [Boost-docs] More equation woes.....
> 
> Some more experimentation reveals that:
> 
> * IE9 will only support the MathJax scripts if the script is loaded from a subdirectory of the one
containing
> the HTML (a non-starter) otherwise you get a security warning (which I missed the first time), and
if you
> either miss the warning or just follow IE9's advice and block the script then all the equations
disappear :-(

Looks a non-starter :-(

But MathML should 'just work'. IE9 says clearly

"Note: Your browser does not support Native MathML rendering".

So IE users will not get equations - end of story?

> * I tried using SVG's instead of MathML or Tex, and Oh dear that's as bad :-( Yes IE9 supports
SVG's,

:-)   - they all look the same, and are nice and sharp and can be magnified without going fuzzy.

> but in order for a graceful fallback be provided for earlier IE users 

Nobody should be using older versions still?  (On security grounds at least).

Can we just only support IE9? - or some standards compliance browser - like any of the others!

> you have to use <object> tags - that's OK that's
> what the Docbook stylesheets generate - except IE9 (and only IE9) won't then display either the
SVG or the
> fallback image unless the image has explicit width and height attributes.  If that's not bad
enough, IE and
> all the other browsers
> handle the width and height attributes differently.
>   I'm mean seriously what the &&^%$$ does MS think it's doing here?  

It doesn't solve the problem immediately, but should we report this to MS.  (After all equations are
a long running saga!)

> Anyhow, I simply can't find a magic combination of
> factors that works on all the browsers... possibly removing the width/height attributes from the
SVG and
> adding them to the HTML only would work (just checked it does work - but content gets blocked by
> default, and breaks PDF generation, besides how do you know what attributes to use once they're
gone
> from the SVG?  Two sets of SVG's maybe?????), having the attributes on both just totally screws up
the IE
> display BTW.   Likewise using <embed> doesn't help at all.

As Victor Meldrew would say " I do not believe it!"

In summary, my view is that we should accept that IE viewers won't be able to see the equations
until native MathML is supported.
(And then only for IE9).

(Do we still need SVGs for PDF generation?)

So is that acceptable?  It is to me but what do others think?

> Sorry for the rant, but really, there's no way this should be this hard!

Sympathy, and thanks for enduring this.

Paul

---
Paul A. Bristow,
Prizet Farmhouse, Kendal LA8 8AB  UK
[phone]  07714330204
pbristow_at_[hidden]