MathML

Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML, is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.  The challenge in putting math on the Web is to capture both notation and content in such a way that documents can utilize the highly-evolved notational practices of print, and the potential for interconnectivity in electronic media.

A distinguishing feature of mathematics is the use of a complex and highly evolved system of two-dimensional symbolic notations. J. R. Pierce in his book on communication theory writes that mathematics and its notations should not be viewed as one and the same thing. Mathematical ideas exist independently of the notations that represent them. However, the relation between meaning and notation is subtle, and part of the power of mathematics to describe and analyze derives from its ability to represent and manipulate ideas in symbolic form. 

So, putting math on the Web involves much more than finding ways of displaying traditional mathematical notation in a Web browser. We certainly must account for formatting mathematics on the Web.  But we must also allow for semantic encoding of mathematics.  The Web represents a fundamental change in the underlying metaphor for knowledge storage, a change in which  interconnectivity plays a central role. It is becoming increasingly important to find ways of communicating mathematics which facilitate automatic processing, searching and indexing, and reuse in other mathematical applications and contexts. With this advance in communication technology, there is an opportunity to expand our ability to represent, encode, and ultimately to communicate our mathematical insights and understanding with each other. MathML attempts to address expanding our abilities in this way.

MathML 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation on February 21, 2001.