Strategies for parallel markup

Abstract

Cross-referenced parallel markup for mathematics allows the combination of both presentation and content representations while associating the components of each. Interesting applications are enabled by such arrangements: interaction with parts of the presentation to manipulate and query the corresponding content; enhanced search indexing. Although the idea of such markup is hardly new, effective techniques for creating and manipulating it are more difficult than it appears. Since the structures and tokens in the two formats often do not correspond one-toone, decisions and heuristics must be developed to determine in which way each component refers to and is referred to by components of the other representation. Conversion between fine and coarse-grained parallel markup complicates xml identifier (ID) assignments. In this paper, we will describe the techniques developed for LATExml, a TEX/LATEX to xml converter, to create cross-referenced parallel MathML. While not yet considering LATExml’s content MathMLto be truly useful, the current effort is a step towards that continuing goal.