Display Openmath in a webpage

Question

I'm surprised that I can't find this question answered already. If it has been covered please let me know.

I'm currently using the MathDox Formula Editor (here) to allow users to directly manipulate equations on a webpage. The editor works by allowing interaction with a canvas, which then stores the equations to a textarea in the OpenMath xml format. I then store the OpenMath xml to my database.

I'd like to take my stored OpenMath and open it as a non-interactive display for users viewing their own work or that of others. I think that MathML is usually the storage medium for equations and that it is more easily handled by Firefox, but the editor's MathML conversion engine isn't entirely debugged, so I'd rather use OpenMath if possible. I've seen people use xml stylesheets for MathML displays, and it seems like there might be plugins for converting the xml to a canvas.

Am I approaching this correctly? What kind of display method should I use?

Answer 1

If you go from OpenMath to canvas you'd have to implement an entire Math Layout engine which is a big job. Almost all OpenMath on the Web is converted to Presentation MathML for rendering. MathML is a standard part of html5 and supported in firefox safari development versions of chome and to a limited extent in Opera, it also works in IE with MathPlayer. Browser based XSLT is freely available on the openmath site to do this conversion, you can see the effect in any of the OpenMath CDs such as

http://www.openmath.org/cd/arith1.xhtml