Thoughts on LibreOffice Math

[Khaled Hosny]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 08:17:02AM +0200, Frédéric WANG wrote:
>
> I didn't look at the rendering code, but Khaled Hosny mentioned on bug
> 32362 that it would have to be rewritten from scratch and I suspect
> one issue is the StarMath internal tree.

Don't take my word on it. I had only a cursory look while ago, but my
prejudice against any math renderer not based on TeX algorithms, and the
very low typographic quality of the output gave me the impression that
nothing worth saving there.

> I'd like to propose to center LibreOffice Math around the MathML
> syntax (and corresponding DOM structure) instead:

If I were to do it, I'd retire Math as separate application (may be keep
it for old documents or people who really want to use it), and integrate
math in text editing as a first class citizen, so editing a math formula
is just like editing a table for example. And since MathML is the math
language of ODF it should be natively supported and the rendering model
be written around it.

> Khaled Hosny mentioned a
> fork of GtkMathView that has support for Open Type MATH and can
> produce a good rendering.

Intends to have Open Type MATH support, currently it is just wishful
thinking on my part (some people should interest in sponsoring the work,
but they stopped talking to me for some reason :), and I'm not actively
working on this at the moment).

Regards,
Khaled