6 SVG and MathML
Just two paragraphs are devoted to the vector standard SVG and the Mathemati-
cal Markup Language MathML in the HTML5 specification. Yet the integration of
these two XML dialects is another milestone on the way toward web applications
of the future. Whereas MathML delights primarily the science sector, everyone
profits from SVG: Incorporating a standardized vector format into the browser is
long overdue. The topic SVG alone fills entire books and would be far beyond the
scope of this book, just as a detailed guide to MathML would not be appropriate
here either. So in this chapter, we will only discuss the integration of SVG and
MathML in an HTML5 document.
Prerequisite for using SVG and MathML in HTML5 is of course the implemen-
tation of both components in the browser. In addition, the parser also has to
recognize svg and math elements and be able to pass their values to the layout
engine to be represented as a graphic. At the time of this writing, only Firefox 4