Design Science News

MathML 3 now an official W3C Recommendation

MathML 3 just became a W3C recommendation, so we've written some information up about the new features in MathML 3 and what problems they solve.  There are too many new things to list them all here, but some of the major ones in presentation MathML are:

• support for linebreaking and indentation;
• elementary math support;
• bi-directional text support, especially for Arabic languages;

On the content side of MathML (the elements aimed at semantics, not display), there has been a huge amount of work to align MathML with OpenMath.  The other big deal about MathML 3 is that it is a part of HTML 5, a replacement for HTML 4 that has a lot of people excited. Being a part of HTML 5 means that MathML steps out of the shadows of being an XHTML-only solution.

For a complete list of changes, see our pages and examples for what is new MathML 3. I'm happy to say that the forthcoming version of MathPlayer already passes 98% of the 1,680 tests at the W3C.  Not bad for something that just became a recommendation!

Creating and using accessible mathematical content: AHEAD conference, July 20-25, 2009

The Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) hosts an annual conference for professionals in the fields of higher education and disability. This year's conference will be in Louisville KY, where Steve Noble from The University of Louisville will present a session titled Creating and Using Accessible Mathematical Content. Many educators are now required to produce accessible materials for their own students. One of the products Steve will demonstrate is our newest product, MathDaisy. He will show how easy it is to use MathDaisy with Microsoft's "Save As DAISY" Word add-in to create accessible math materials from Microsoft Word.

To see other conferences where Design Science products and technology will be demonstrated, refer to the Events page on our website.

MathType 6.5 for Windows is Now Available!

We just announced the release of MathType™ 6.5 for Windows, a new version designed to work with a wide variety of education and scientific applications and websites. Not just for Word and PowerPoint anymore, we also introduced our Equations Everywhere and Anywhere!™ initiative, hosting the MathType Interoperability Registry on our website (www.dessci.com), which is a listing of several hundred popular educational and scientific applications and websites that MathType now works with. This new version also includes translators for Mathematica and Maple, MathML import, and enables users to type TeX/LaTeX equations directly into Microsoft Word. Download a full version 30 day trial and then be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the new features!

Math on the Web at the Joint Mathematics Meetings

For the sixth year in a row, a consortium of software vendors has teamed up with the American Mathematical Society to present the Math on the Web Pavilion at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. This year's meeting was held in San Diego with the most varied slate of speakers ever, both from business and academia. Twelve speakers presented a total of fifteen sessions, including these from Design Science:

• Managing Math in Moodle, by Bob Mathews
• Speaking of Math: Spoken Math and Accessibility, by Neil Soiffer (presented by Bob Mathews)
• MathType ∈ Word ∩ TeX ∩ Wikipedia, by Robert Miner

It was good to see such enthusiasm among the JMM attendees for our new MathType 6 release for Windows, which includes TeX input and Wikipedia copy/paste. Read more at JMM Math on the Web Pavilion 2008.

Design Science software certified as FDCC compliant

In accordance with OMB Memo m07-18, Design Science has tested MathType 6.0c, MathFlow 1.7, and MathPlayer 2.1b with the Security Configuration Automation Protocol using Secutor Prime by Threat Guard. We have certified these 3 software products as being compliant with the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC), which is an OMB-mandated security configuration that exists for Microsoft Windows Vista and XP operating system software. Read more at FDCC Compliance.