On behalf of the W3C Math Working Group, David Carlisle (Numerical Algorithms Group) recently announced the availability of an XSL stylesheet for cross browser MathML viewing. The stylesheet "allows conforming XHTML+MathML documents to be rendered, without changing the document, in a range of browsers. This 'Universal MathML stylesheet' makes it possible to author a single form of HTML+MathML that will be viewable in many browsers, including IE5.5, IE6, and Mozilla. Basically the stylesheet detects the environment in which it is running and inserts any <object>, <embed> or other browser-specific markup required. If only presentation MathML rendering is available, it performs a 'Content to Presentation' transformation before passing the document to the rendering engine. This allows the document to be authored in a browser-independent style." The online documentation provides examples using the MathPlayer or Techexplorer plug-ins and standard Web browsers running on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux/UNIX platforms.

Note that a second MathML Conference will be held June 28-30, 2002, in Chicago, IL, USA. This conference "provides a forum in which to present and discuss current research and applications, with major emphasis on MathML and technologies that ease the use of mathematical and scientific content on the web. It is the aim of this conference to bring together those people involved in creating the future of mathematics on the web. The conference embraces all areas of MathML technologies, including authoring, rendering, content management, collaboration, searching, archiving, and conversion. Work involving courseware or other technologies, such as XML, XSLT, web services, typesetting, and computer algebra, is of interest, provided it relates principally to web-based mathematical communication. The conference format includes invited speakers, tutorials, contributed papers, posters, and software demonstrations. Participation is sought in all areas..."

From the W3C Math Activity Statement: "W3C has brought together key players to fill an urgent need for mathematics on the Web. Out of this work has come the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), a format enabling authors to present mathematical expressions on the screen, as well as forming the basis for machine to machine communication of mathematics on the Web. Designed as an XML application, MathML provides two sets of tags, one for the visual presentation of mathematics and the other associated with the meaning behind equations. MathML is not designed for people to enter by hand but specialized tools provide the means for typing in and editing mathematical expressions."