[tex4ht] not translating math

[William F Hammond]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 3:09 AM, Matteo Gamboz <gamboz at medialab.sissa.it>wrote:

> Hi all,
>   I'm looking for a way to keep math as it is. For example:
>
> J\`er\'ome $\alpha < x^{\infty}$ end
> →
> Jèróme <math><![CDATA[$\alpha < x^{\infty}$]]></math> end
>
> but, by now I'm only able to get to this:
> Jèróme <math><![CDATA[α &#x003C; x∞]]></math> end
>
>
For translating LaTeX to DocBook you want, as I understand it, to have TeX
source put inside <math> tags whose content is the literal TeX source as a
CDATA marked section.  Yes, your .cfg sets up the beginning and end of the
CDATA marked section, but it does not give tex4ht a way to understand that
the TeX math markup should be passed untouched.  Probably, one could write
an alternate version of dblatex to do this.

The real problem here is that DocBook is not a very satisfactory
translation target for LaTeX.  Apart from math it's too rich, and for math
the options are poor.  Common practice, aside from MathML islands, cf.
dbmlatex, is insertion of TeX source

It would be far better if DocBook incorporated, say, the XML guise of the
profile for LaTeX math represented by the TeX input for MathJax --
something that is author-friendly.  Then it would be straightforward to
accommodate that in something like dblatex, as well as to revise standard
DocBook processors.  With that hypothetical what would make sense for the
output would be something like this:

          Jèróme <math><alpha/> < x<sup><infty/></sup></math> end

N.B., <alpha/> rather than α because the mathematical \alpha in TeX should
not be regarded as the same as α in a unicode-capable version of LaTeX.

           -- Bill


-- 
William F Hammond
Email: gellmu at gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/william.f.hammond
http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/
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