Possible Web Font Issues with Meeting Abstracts

Due to limitations of available browser technologies, there is currently no perfect solution for posting mathematical documents on the web. The drawback with the TTH software used for abstracts on this website is that some math symbols do not display properly in certain browsers. See (1) below for details.

Available Technologies and Their Drawbacks

The following technologies attempt to address the lack of a universal standard for displaying math on the web:

1. Some software, such as TTH, attempts to approximate mathematical notation using constructs and symbols available within HTML. Differences in font handling result in incorrectly displayed symbols in some browsers. Some workarounds are available. Generally, symbols display correctly under IE and Netscape 4, with mixed results in other browsers and under Linux.

2. Math can be displayed as inline graphics. This is the approach taken by latex2html. The math is accurately rendered, but the may be not be well aligned with the rest of the text, and font mismatches give an awkward appearance. The large number of image files involved make this cumbersome.

3. Math documents can be encoded in PDF format. While this provides for accurate representation of mathematics, a significant number of systems lack software for rendering PDF files. Reliable hyperlinking to a particular abstract within a PDF file of abstracts is also not available.

MathML and Unicode promise to overcome the limitations of earlier technologies. However, they are not yet universally adopted.

If you have suggestions or comments on how to improve the usability of abstracts posted on this website, please contact eo@cms.math.ca.