Q&A

Q Why is MathML so different from the other markup languages?

A Markup languages often have to make a choice between being purely presentational or being semantic (information oriented). Many find an uneasy compromise by mixing the two. MathML is unique in that it still mixes presentational and semantic markup, but it does it with two parallel markup sets.

Q Why are graphics such an important area for XML?

A Graphics are a sort of black hole on the Web. You can't link into them and you can't link out of them (although you can link to them and you can link from them). Worse, it's almost impossible to include them in searches unless, for example, someone happened to name the graphic file something useful. XML has the potential to make graphics as accessible as XML markup.

Q Why are behaviors such a profitable application area for XML?

A Adding code (scripts and so on) to HTML pages is becoming a bottleneck in the Web page production line. The current method of simply putting code in pages also makes re-use almost impossible. XML and CSS make it possible to externalize the behavior of elements, allowing the development effort to be shared and code to be re-used.

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