The Formulator MathML Editor Project: User-Friendly Authoring of Content Markup Documents

TL;DR

This paper presents the Formulator MathML Editor, a user-friendly WYSIWYG tool for editing Content MathML formulas that simplifies authoring for non-technical users and is accessible via a web browser.

Contribution

It introduces a novel MathML editor that enables intuitive editing of formulas without requiring users to understand MathML structure, including an online browser-based version.

Findings

Successfully implemented a WYSIWYG MathML editor

Enhanced accessibility through a web-based version

Facilitated easier MathML content creation for non-experts

Abstract

Implementation of an editing process for Content MathML formulas in common visual style is a real challenge for a software developer who does not really want the user to have to understand the structure of Content MathML in order to edit an expression, since it is expected that users are often not that technically minded. In this paper, we demonstrate how this aim is achieved in the context of the Formulator project and discuss features of this MathML editor, which provides a user with a WYSIWYG editing style while authoring MathML documents with Content or mixed markup. We also present the approach taken to enhance availability of the MathML editor to end-users, demonstrating an online version of the editor that runs inside a Web browser.