[open-science] Fwd: Help get math turned back on in Chrome

Wed Feb 6 20:58:07 UTC 2013

So to put this in a little bit of real world perspective, Chrome 24, the
first with any MathML support, has been out less than a month, so it's not
like there are millions of people using it for MathML on a daily basis.
 For a less dramatic overview of the state of MathML support in browsers
see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML#Web_browsers  A chart
colorcoded by version is here: http://caniuse.com/mathml

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> This is the sort of thing where we cannot let the infrastructure of the
> browser be determined by the whim of corporations. Anything we can do?
>

Sure.  There are tons of open source browsers that people can contribute
to.  Chromium is another, the WebKit core rendering engine that it depends
on is also open source.  If the development team isn't merging your patches
fast enough, you can do your own private builds and distribution.

Or just switch to a different browser.  Firefox has supported MathML for
many versions.

Tom

>
> I have an impossible dream about the people owning the browser. It used to
> happen with lynx and mosaic. Can we buuild an open science browser?
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Neil Soiffer <NeilS at dessci.com>
> Date: Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 6:12 PM
> Subject: Help get math turned back on in Chrome
> To: "www-math at w3.org" <www-math at w3.org>
>
>
> Chrome 24 had MathML in it.  But they plan to turn it off in Chrome 25!!!
>
> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152430#c32
>
> says
>
>  Note that MathML has had to be turned off because the code is not
>> yet production ready. We hope to turn it on in some future release.
>> We plan to announce this in the Chrome 25 release notes.
>>
>
>
> This is because of a minor layout bug for which a fix has already been
> submitted.  Apparently the folks at google don't care about math much and
> just want to see it die -- the support that is in there was done by someone
> who volunteered his time for a year and finally had to go back to doing
> paid work.
>
> One easy step to show your support for math in Chrome is to go to the
> above link and click on the star in the above left and to get everyone else
> you know to do the same.  That says you care about this bug being fixed.
>
> A harder step is to find a way to get google to wake up to the reality
> that math is used in the classroom everyday and is one of the three "r"s
> (as the saying goes in the US). Not supporting it is a disservice to
> education around the world and to science, math, and engineering in
> general. So blog about Chrome's killing math support, tweet about, or
> create the next viral video about it.
>
> If you care about math support in browsers, do something to show you care!
>
>      Neil Soiffer
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
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