MFG discussion document Task 1: Organization 1 Summary of math font-related activities mote the use of MathML on the World Wide Web at EuroTEX '98 without being restricted to the symbol complement provided by the system fonts. 1 Introduction Information about the list of symbols collected The subject of math symbol fonts has been one of by the STIX project currently resides on internal the major topics of interest at the 10th European pages on the AMS Web server [2] and is kept in a TEX Conference (EuroTEX '98), which was held on format similar to the Unicode symbol tables [3], but March 29{31, 1998 at St. Malo, France as part of there are plans to release a printable version of these the 2nd Week on Electronic Publishing and Digital tables in PDF format to the general public soon. Typography (WEPT '98). It was pointed out that a printable version of During the conference a paper summarizing the the symbol tables from the MathML specification is 1 MFG supposed to be available in PDF format on the W3C activities of the Math Font Group ( ) [1] was 2 presented and two BOF sessions on math fonts were Web server [4]. The latest version of the MathML held, bringing together members of the MFG and specification also includes some background infor- representatives of other interested parties, such as mation about the STIX project and references to the W3C MathML working group, the STIX project, various other glyph collections [5, Chapter 6]. as well as publishers and typesetters. 3 Implementation of new 8-bit math fonts In addition, there were also many private dis- for (LA)TEX cussions on math fonts at lunches, dinners, and at informal get-togethers in the local caf´es or pubs. On the second topic, the status of the activities of The discussions at the BOF sessions primarily the Math Font Group was reported in a conference revolved around two major topics: paper [6] presented by Ulrik Vieth in the morning session on the first day of the conference. • the organization of math symbols in general, So far, a set of encodings for new 8-bit math including their representation on the WWW, fonts for (LA)T X has been developed based on a • E the development and implementation of new proposal dating back to TUG '93 [7], which aims to A 8-bit math fonts for (L )TEX in particular. fulfill certain design goals and to satisfy a number of technical constraints. 2 Organization of math symbols These encodings, which consist of three primary On the first topic, Barbara Beeton and Patrick Ion encodings and several additional ones, have been of the AMS provided some information about the so- implemented as a set of virtual font using glyphs called STIX project, which is driven by a group of taken from existing or newly-developed METAFONT scientific and technical publishers (STIPUB). or PostScript fonts. Several such sets of virtual fonts So far, the primary goal of the STIX project has have been developed, covering most of the presently all been to compile a comprehensive list of math available sets of math fonts usable with TEX, but symbols used by the participating publishers (also the implementation unfortunately remains incom- including what many people might call \unreason- plete in several cases. It also doesn't yet take into able" ones), to document their intended meanings, account many of the symbols identified by the STIX and to provide examples of their use in support of project, which may have to be added to the proposed an application to the Unicode Consortium and the encodings if they are really needed. ISO working group on coding standards. A LATEX interface to access the new encodings A preliminary list of symbols has already been and to switch between different font sets implement- submitted to Unicode in March 1998, but it appears ing these encodings is already in place and may be that there are quite a few symbols that have been used either as a module to build a modified LATEX missed, so the Unicode submission will have to be kernel or as an add-on package for use with stan- followed up when more material is available. dard LATEX. However, a Plain TEX interface is still Apart from compiling a comprehensive list of missing and remains to be developed. math symbols, there is also a commitment to com- Given all these preparations, the question re- mission the production of a set of high-quality fonts mains whether the encodings developed by the MFG implementing all the symbols, which should be freely distributable. It is hoped that the availability of 2 Unfortunately, these symbol tables seem to have disap- such a font set will be a crucial step to help pro- peared about a week after the conference when the MathML `Proposed Recommendation' was updated and promoted to 1 also known as: LATEX3 Project / TUG Technical Work- an ‘Official Recommendation'. Hopefully, they will be put ing Group on extended math font encodings (WG 92-01) back after they have been updated as well. Task 1: Organization Task 1: Organization 2 Task 1: Organization MFG discussion document are acceptable to the user community and whether fonts, so as to have a real METAFONT font that could they satisfy the needs of scientific and technical pub- be converted more easily with MetaFog. lishers. While there wasn't a clear answer to this New symbols from the STIX collection could question, there seemed to be a consensus that new then be added by new METAFONT designs, which 8-bit math fonts addressing the organizational prob- shouldn't be too difficult to develop in most cases, lems of the old 7-bit math fonts were indeed needed as many symbols can be realized by combinations or and that the work of the MFG provides a suitable variations of existing symbols. starting point, which may have to be refined later On the other hand, there seems to be little that during the implementation process. can be done about the versions based on commercial In particular, there was a suggestion to relax font sets such as MathTime or Lucida New Math, the strict requirement for compatibility with Plain which will probably remain restricted to whatever TEX or LATEX within the first four math families, symbol complement is provided in the present ver- and to adopt a slightly more rational organization sions of the base fonts, unless the suppliers of these which would allow to have fewer missing glyphs in font sets will invest some work themselves. some implementations of the primary symbol font by Another suggestion also discussed was to have leaving out some problematic glyphs and relocating a set of 8-bit fonts serving as glyph containers or- them to one of the extra symbol fonts. ganized by types of symbols, which could either be Another request came from A. Berdnikov, the used as the basis for a virtual font implementation of coordinator of the 8-bit Cyrillic encodings for TEX, 8-bit math fonts, meeting the technical constraints who pointed out that Russian math typesetting tra- of TEX, or combined into a single huge 16-bit math ditions required different shapes of big operators, font for Omega. While this might be an interesting such as upright integrals and bigger versions of sum- option for the future, it was pointed out by several mation and product signs, and asked to support such participants that neither Omega nor virtual fonts variants in the new math font encodings as well. could be assumed to be available everywhere and Since it is clear that it will be necessary to that a straightforward METAFONT implementation add several additional symbol font encodings if all of new 8-bit fonts for TEX was still needed. the STIX glyphs are to be incorporated eventually, Finally, it was discussed what to do about the minor adjustments to the present proposal may be Plain TEX support of the new math fonts. Since needed anyway and should not present a problem. Kluwer Academic Publishers are using Hans Hagen's In any case, the encoding tables presented at the ConTEXt package, which happens to be based on conference should not be taken as the final word. Plain TEX, Taco will take care of this task as well, A strong driving force to push forward the im- since he will need it for his own work. plementation of new 8-bit math fonts for (LA)TEX A suggestion to use the existing LATEX support came from Taco Hoekwater of Kluwer Academic Pub- on top of a Plain TEX emulation of the NFSS inter- lishers. As part of his professional activities, he face was rejected, since the LATEX-like syntax doesn't is currently working on a project to implement as easily fit into the framework of the ConTEXt system, many mathematical symbols as possible in Type 1 so a low-level Plain TEX interface is preferred. format by the end of this year, possibly including everything in the list of STIX glyphs. 4 Summary and Conclusions Since Kluwer Academic Publishers consider their In summary, one might say that the EuroTEX '98 products to be journals and books, not fonts, Taco is conference was a great success for math font-related allowed to put all the fonts he produces for Kluwer activities in that it helped to bring together mem- into the public domain. He has already converted bers of several working groups and other interested several existing METAFONT symbol fonts (including parties, who so far have been working on closely re- rsfs, stmary and wasy) to Type 1 format using the lated topics independently of each other.