Several of the following definitions of terms have been borrowed or modified from similar definitions in documents originating from W3C or standards organizations. See the individual definitions for more information.
A child of a presentation layout schema. That is, "A is an
argument of B" means "A is a child of B and B is a
presentation layout schema". Thus, token elements have no arguments,
even if they have children (which can only be
malignmark).
A parameter used to specify some property of an SGML or XML element type. It is defined in terms of an attribute name, attribute type, and a default value. A value may be specified for it on a start-tag for that element type.
The axis is an imaginary alignment line upon which a fraction line is centered. Often, operators as well as characters that can stretch, such as parentheses, brackets, braces, summation signs etc., are centered on the axis, and are symmetric with respect to it.
The baseline is an imaginary alignment line upon which a glyph without a descender rests. The baseline is an intrinsic property of the glyph (namely a horizontal line). Often baselines are aligned (joined) during typesetting.
The bounding box of the actual size taken up by the viewable portion (ink) of a glyph or expression.
The rectangular box of smallest size, taking into account the constraints on boxes allowed in a particular context, which contains some specific part of a rendered display.
A rectangular plane area considered to contain a character or further sub-boxes, used in discussions of rendering for display. It is usually considered to have a baseline, height, depth and width.
A language that allows authors and readers to attach style (e.g. fonts, colors and spacing) to HTML and XML documents.
A member of a set of identifiers used for the organization, control or representation of text. ISO/IEC Standard 10646-1:1993 uses the word "data" here instead of "text".
A data type in SGML and XML for raw data that does not include markup or entity references. Attributes of type CDATA may contain entity references. These are expanded by an XML processor before the attribute value is processed as CDATA.
Distance between the baseline and bottom edge of the character glyph or expression. Also known as the descent.
Distance between the baseline and top edge of the character glyph or expression. Also known as the ascent.
Horizontal distance taken by the character glyph as indicated in the font metrics, or the total width of an expression.
A MathML content element used to place a mathematical condition on one or more variables.
A is part of B's content.
A non-empty MathML Content element that is used to construct a mathematical object such as a number, set, or list.
MathML elements that explicitly specify the mathematical meaning of a portion of a MathML expression (defined in Chapter 4 Content Markup).
Content element having only PCDATA, sep
and presentation expressions as content. Represents either an identifier
(ci) or a number (cn).
Information provided during the rendering of some MathML data to the rendering process for the given MathML expression; especially information about the MathML markup surrounding the expression.
An instance of the declare element.
(of a box) The distance from the baseline of the box to the bottom edge of the box.
A sub-expression directly contained in E.
A is a child of B (as defined in XML), in other words A is contained in B, but not in any element that is itself contained in B.
A model in which the document or Web page is treated as an object repository. This model is developed by the DOM Working Group (DOM) of the W3C.
A method of specifying the formatting and transformation of SGML documents. ISO International Standard 10179:1996.
In SGML or XML, a DTD is a formal definition of the elements and the relationship among the data elements (the structure) for a particular type of document.
A font-relative measure encoded by the font. Before electronic typesetting, an "em" was the width of an "M" in the font. In modern usage, an "em" is either specified by the designer of the font or is taken to be the height (point size) of the font. Em's are typically used for font-relative horizontal sizes.
A font-relative measure that is the height of an "x" in the font. "ex"s are typically used for font-relative vertical sizes.
(of a box) The distance from the baseline of the box to the top edge of the box.
mrowAn mrow element that is
"inferred" around the contents of certain layout schemata when
they have other than exactly one argument. Defined precisely in Section 3.1.6 Summary of Presentation Elements
Embedded objects such as Java applets, Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) objects (e.g. ActiveX Controls and ActiveX Document embeddings), and plug-ins that reside in an HTML document.
An operator, including any "embellishment" it may have, such as superscripts or style information. The "embellishment" is represented by a layout schema that contains the operator itself. Defined precisely in Section 3.2.5 Operator, Fence, Separator or Accent (mo).
A sequence of ASCII characters of the form &name; representing some other data, typically a
non-ASCII character, a sequence of characters, or an external source of
data, e.g. a file containing a set of standard entity definitions such as
ISO Latin 1.
A simple dialect of SGML intended to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web.
In typesetting, bracketing tokens like parentheses, braces, and brackets, which usually appear in matched pairs.
A particular collection of glyphs of a typeface of a given size, weight and style, for example "Times Roman Bold 12 point".
The actual shape (bit pattern, outline) of a character. ISO/IEC Standard 9541-1:1991 defines a glyph as a recognizable abstract graphic symbol that is independent of any specific design.
A is contained in B, but not directly contained in B.
A single instance of the top level element of MathML, and/or a single instance of embedded MathML in some other data format.
A mathematical function that, when composed with the original function acts like an identity function.
A mathematical expression used to define a function in terms of variables and an expression in those variables.
A presentation element defined in chapter 3, other than the token
elements and empty elements defined there (i.e. not the elements defined in
Section 3.2 Token Elements and Section 3.5.5 Alignment Markers, or the
empty elements none and
mprescripts defined in Section 3.4.7 Prescripts and Tensor Indices
(mmultiscripts)).
The layout schemata are never empty elements (though their content may
contain nothing in some cases), are always expressions, and all allow any
MathML expressions as arguments (except for requirements on argument count,
and the requirement for a certain empty element in mmultiscripts).
The markup language specified in this document for describing the structure of mathematical expressions, together with a mathematical context.
An XML element that forms part of the logical structure of a MathML document.
A single instance of a presentation element, except for the empty
elements none or
mprescripts, or an instance of malignmark within a token element (defined below);
or a single instance of certain of the content elements
(see Chapter 4 Content Markup for a precise definition of which ones).
A set of specifications that offers a way to interchange text in languages with different character sets, and multimedia content among many different computer systems that use Internet mail standards.
A mathematical object that is applied to arguments using the
apply element.
mo
element
Used to represent ordinary operators, fences, separators in MathML
presentation. (The token element mo is defined in
Section 3.2.5 Operator, Fence, Separator or Accent
(mo)).
A general representation language for communicating mathematical objects between application programs.
An SGML/XML data type for raw data occurring in a context where text is parsed and markup (for instance entity references and element start/end tags) is recognized.
Point is often abbreviated "pt". The value of 1 pt is approximately 1/72 inch. Points are typically used to specify absolute sizes for font-related objects.
One of the empty elements defined in Section 4.2.3 Functions, Operators and Qualifiers and used with the apply
construct to build function applications.
MathML tags and entities intended to express the syntactic structure of mathematical notation (defined in Chapter 3 Presentation Markup).
A presentation element that can have other MathML elements as content.
A presentation element that can contain only parsed character data
or the malignmark element.
A MathML content element that is used to specify the value of a specific named parameter in the application of selected pre-defined functions.
A MathML content element used to construct expressions such as a < b.
Faithfully translate into application-specific form allowing native application operations to be performed.
Schema (plural: schemata or schemas). See "presentation layout schema".
The portion of a MathML document in which a particular definition is active.
maction element)
The argument of an maction element (a
layout schema defined in Section 3.6 Enlivening Expressions) that is (at any
given time) "selected" within the viewing state of a MathML
renderer, or by the selection attribute when the
element exists only in MathML data. Defined precisely in the abovementioned
section.
A MathML expression that is ignored by the suggested rendering
rules for MathML presentation elements when they determine operator forms
and effective operator rendering attributes based on operator positions in
mrow elements. Defined precisely in Section 3.2.7 Space (mspace).
An ISO standard (ISO 8879:1986) that provides a formal mechanism for the definition of document structure via DTDs (Document Type Definitions), and a notation for the markup of document instances conforming to a DTD.
A MathML expression contained (directly or indirectly) in the content of E.
Defined throughout Chapter 3 Presentation Markup; the ones that use other terms defined here occur mainly in Section 3.2.5 Operator, Fence, Separator or Accent (mo) and in Section 3.6 Enlivening Expressions.
A software system developed by Professor Donald Knuth for typesetting documents.
Presentation token element or a Content token element. (See above.)
math (defined in Chapter 7 The MathML Interface).
A typeface is a specific design of a set of letters, numbers and symbols, such as "Times Roman" or "Chicago".
MathML data that (1) conforms to the MathML DTD, (2) obeys the additional rules defined in the MathML standard for the legal contents and attribute values of each MathML element, and (3) satisfies the EBNF grammar for content elements.
The distance from the left edge of the box to the right edge of the box.
A style language for XML developed by W3C. See XSL FO and XSLT.
An XML vocabulary to express formatting, which is a part of XSL.
A language to express the transformation of XML documents into other XML documents.