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:
- 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.
- 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.
-
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.
