MathBook: An XML Application

A specification for XML tags and stylesheets to create usable output.

Rob Beezer, [email protected]

Design Goals:

1. Simple for authors to use - no more complicated logically than LaTeX
2. Capture the structure of writing about mathematics and Sage
3. Processing into a variety of formats
4. A limited number of rational tags, with simple names
5. Minimal use of external shell scripts
6. XSLT 1.0 compatible: ideally the only required tool is xsltproc

Output Formats:

1. HTML web pages, enhanced with MathJax, Sage Cell server, knowls

2. LaTeX input to create PDFs and print with pdflatex

3. HTML for in-browser previewing
4. Doctesting of Sage code examples
5. E-Books, once technically feasible

6. Maybe a DocBook representation for conversion to other outputs

Project Status:

• Funding: Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, National Science Foundation UTMOST Grant
• Late-June 2013: Good basic functionality for HTML, LaTeX output
• Mid-June 2013: initiated, not mature or stable

Files and Examples

Updated: June 25, 2013

(Use your browser to save these files locally, do not simply click on them)

1. Example XML source document

2. XSL transform to LaTeX

3. XSL transform to XHTML

4. FreeBSD documentation CSS

5. MathBook CSS

Easiest: it would be nice if you could view the source file (calculus-article.xml) by opening it in a web browser with the stylesheet (article-html.xsl) in the same directory. This did work on some browsers, and not on others. I've added enough nontrivial features now that this is not working in Firefox.

Easy: use the following command to create XHTML output and view in your browser by opening the output file. You might just want to view the XHTML Output. MathJax does the math, Sage Cell Server does the code, knowls do the citations.

xsltproc article-html.xsl calculus-article.xml > calculus-article.html

Alternate: issue the following to produce PDF Output. Sage cells are being styled now.

xsltproc article-latex.xsl calculus-article.xml > calculus-article.tex
pdflatex calculus-article.tex

Advanced: create a Sage Cloud worksheet from the same source. I have this working in the lab. Posted soon.

Features

• Article structure with numbered sections (subsections will be easy)
• Numbered theorems
• Sage input/output: live Sage cells in HTML, styled in LaTeX
• Bibliography + citations: knowls in HTML version

• Math: normal LaTeX for PDF, MathJax in HTML, macros in source once

To Do

• Cross-references
• Index for book structure
• Options for numbering sections, theorem-like structures
• Improved CSS for HTML
• Doctesting framework for Sage code
• Sage notebook, Sage Math Cloud output formats
• HTML chunking (one HTML file per section, chapter, etc)
• Customization options (layers, HTML head insertions)
• LaTeX spacing hints

Other Projects

• tbook looks very much like what I am imagining. I have hacked a bit of it to work with the xsltproc processor with mixed success. Only 80 elements. But for a very short article, I have found cross-references broken and manufacturing a bibliography begins with BibTeX, so that requires some research (and shell scripts). Maybe some examples later.

• DocBook is big, complicated and full of features. But the emphasis is on technical documentation and support for mathematics and academic publishing is very lacking. The extensive structure is intimidating if you just have small project.