techexplorer and OpenMath:
WWW Scientific Publishing
(techexplorer logo)
Robert S. Sutor
Mathematical Sciences Department
IBM Research Division
T.J. Watson Research Center
Yorktown Heights, New York 10598 USA
Introduction
- IBM's techexplorer
Hypermedia Browser formats and displays expressions and documents
containing mathematical and scientific markup.
- techexplorer can help authors and publishers effectively extend
the commercial reach of their articles, books, and journals by making them
available on the Internet.
- The first product available that uses this technology is a no-charge
Netscape Navigator plug-in for Windows
95 and Windows NT.
- The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd. is using a version of the stand-alone
edition of techexplorer as the user interface for its new AXIOM
for Windows product.
- Unlike PDF or plain TeX and DVI solutions, at all times we understand
the document structure and not just the output format.
- When it was in its initial development, techexplorer was called
Saturn.
Technology and project goals
- High quality rendering of a large subset of TeX and LaTeX, plus AMS-TeX
and AMS-LaTeX.
- Extensions for multimedia and electronic publishing.
- Tools for the production of documents optimized for electronic
publication.
- Editions for multiple document delivery and operating system platforms.
- Inclusion of third-party document components.
- Inclusion of mathematical objects with structure and semantics.
- Use as a general purpose front-end for multi-step interactive scientific
applications.
- Wide-spread use of core technology with multiple language parsers.
Potential markets
- Publishing
- Education
- Research
- Engineering
- Economics
Where we would use OpenMath
- Display of documents containing usable math objects:
- Journals
- Technical reports
- Text books and distance learning
- Student homework
- Transmission of objects via drag-and-drop and the clipboard.
- Intermediate format for communicating with multiple back-ends.
- Note that we have proprietary solutions for each of the above.
- We want to avoid multiple conversion formats:
- techexplorer to AXIOM
- techexplorer to Maple
- techexplorer to Lotus 123
A problem
With or without the OpenMath effort,
there will soon be math standards for HTML and SGML.
- Moreover, TeX allows the expression of all the information in an OpenMath
object.
- The OpenMath Consortium needs to
- influence the other standards efforts (quickly),
- provide TeX macros that allow for visual formatting and semantic content,
and
- provide filters to and from the other formats (these may lose information
or require additional analysis).
- It is likely that techexplorer will need to add support for
HTML Math, SGML Math, and OpenMath-enriched TeX.
Our needs regarding OpenMath
- Non-conversational ASCII representation.
- Must be high bandwidth and not require onerous conversion or loss of
type information.
- Visual formatting information.
This page is part of the OpenMath Web archive,
and is no longer kept up to date.