I am a passionate advocate of open-source standards. The development and growth of the web (one of the most profound revolutions in history) was due in no small part to a simple, open, text-based mark-up langauge (HTML) that was not owned or controlled by a single corporation.

In order to understand the future of math on the web, it’s important to understand the larger issue of the standard XML family of mark-up languages. XML stands for eXtensible Mark-up Language, and is really a “meta-language” that can be used to create mark-up languages for specialized types of information. The modern, cleaned-up verson of HTML, known as XHTML is an XML. The Mathematics Markup Langauge (MathML) is an XML. But there are dozens of other–for finance, music, chemistry, graphics, and so on. The content-rich, well-behaved web document of the future will consist of a number of XMLs working in harmony.

In particular, the well-behave math document of the future will consist of basic exposition in XHTML, mathematical expressions in MathML, graphics in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), and possible lots of other stuff–interactive “mathlets” in Java or Flash, audio clips, video clips, worksheets, and so on. XHTML is the expository glue that hold these elements together, and provides the basic document structure (headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on).

The real power of XML is that it has rigid, consistent rules and thus can be processed easily by various hardware and software agents (standard PCs, small, hand-held devices, printers, readers for the blind, mathematical software, and so forth).

The future is potentially very bright for web-based mathematical documents, but as always, the forces holding us back are ignorance and inertia. If you are interested in these issues, I recommend that you browse the web site of the World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body for the web.