OMDoc FAQ
OMDoc Frequently Asked Questions
This FAQ is never complete, please help us by sending suggestions to users@omdoc.org or directly edit and check this file in the Subversion repository.
Questions
- What is new in OMDoc 1.1?
- What is the goal and state of development for OMDoc 1.2?
- What is the road-map for further development in OMDoc?
- Isn't OMDoc much too verbose?
- Doesn't communication between mathematical services in OMDoc waste bandwidth?
- How do I edit OMDoc documents?
- How can I transform legacy documents into OMDoc?
- Is there a mailing list for OMDoc?
- How can I become involved in OMDoc development
OMDoc Answers
- What is new in OMDoc 1.1?
- The changes are mainly non-disruptive in often-used parts of OMDoc, e.g. adding optional attributes and children. The main changes are the addition of a new referencing and presentation system for OMDoc elements.
- What is the goal and state of development for OMDoc 1.2?
- The main goal for OMDoc 1.2 is to modularize the specification, so that the development of OMDoc 2.0 can proceed on the modules alone. The only user-visible change will be the addition of content MathML as a representation format for mathematical formulae.
- What is the road-map for further development in OMDoc?
- The development of OMDoc 2.0 has already begun, this will be a general (backwards-incompatible) overhaul of the document format, that will take all the experiences with OMDoc 1 into account and track all the developments of web standards since OMDoc1.0. For instance, the Dublin Core Initiative has put out a recommended DTD and schema, that needs to be merged into OMDoc. OpenMath is adopting a treatment of structure sharing in the OpenMath 2.0 standard, that is incompatible with OMDoc. OMDoc should use the XInclude and XLink standards.
- Is'nt OMDoc much too verbose?
- he OMDoc format is mainly intended for machine consumption. You do not want to look/edit it in this form. For viewing, transform it into html or LaTeX (see the tools section), for editing use an OMDoc or xml editor (see FAQ).
- Does'nt communication between mathematical services in OMDoc waste bandwidth?
- If you are concerned about disk space and bandwidth, consider using xml-specific compression tools like xmill or xmlppm. They take document structure into account during compression and very often realize compressed files that are smaller than the non-xml/OMDoc format of the data.
- How do I edit an OMDoc document?
-
There are no specialized OMdoc editors until now. So you will have the choice of
either
- using a general-purpose editor to edit the straight OMDoc
representation in ASCII. Emacs supports this with a variety of modes,
- psgml is a general SGML mode that also supports XML.
- The CMU Course Capsules Project has contributed a native OMDoc mode for emacs.
- a specialized XML development environment like XML Spy, nMXL mode for emacs,...
- One of the main problems while editing OMDoc is to edit the OpenMath Formulae, there are a couple of solutions for this from the OpenMath home page.
- using a general-purpose editor to edit the straight OMDoc
representation in ASCII. Emacs supports this with a variety of modes,
- How can I transform legacy documents into OMDoc?
- There are some rudimentary tools, they are discussed here. For help on this matter contact the OMDoc mailing list at users@omdoc.org or see its archives.
- Is there a mailing list for OMDoc?
- We have a users mailing list for general discussions on the released versions
of the OMDoc format. It is users@omdoc.org, to (un)subscribe, use the
administrative interface at archives. It
is archived here.
There are developers mailing lists as well. - How can I become involved in OMDoc development?
- There are multiple possibilities, you can
- extend the set of OMDoc tools, or
- join one of the Mailing lists, or
- file bugs in our bug tracker and join the discussions there, or
- adopt one of the OMDoc Modules