MathEX: A Direct-Manipulation Structural Editor for Compound XML Documents
Abstract:
This paper describes how MathEX addresses a number of well-known
issues with direct-manipulation structural user interfaces for mathematics.
The solutions described here allow MathEX to support a diverse collection
of XML vocabularies for mathematics, including Content and Presenta-
tion MathML, XHTML+MathML compound documents, and OpenMath
semantic markup. This paper illustrates how MathEX allows an applica-
tion author to tailor the user experience within a specific XML vocabu-
lary, within a specific document, or within a specific collection of elements
within a document, without the need for a modal interface. MathEX al-
lows an author to customize the notational presentation, keyboard editing,
structural palettes, and other properties of each operator in a document,
whether or not the operator is known to the editor in advance. MathEX
is implemented in Java, and may be used as a stand-alone application, as
a web page applet, or as a Swing component within another application.