math metadata

I am looking for information on how to properly tag (ala. “dublin core”:http://dublincore.org/) algebra problems. I would like to be able to have fairly detailed metadata (i.e. this is a *factoring* step of a *quadratic equation* problem).

* “national science digital library”:http://nsdl.org > “Mathematical Sciences Digital Library”:http://www.mathdl.org/ > “Catalog of Commercial Products”:http://www.mathdl.org/lcp/browse/lcp/
* “Mathematics Metadata”:http://mathmetadata.org/ > “Metatags für Mathematische”:http://www.mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de/ak-technik/DMVPreprint-Core.html
* “Math-Net Subject Classification”:http://www.mathematik.uni-halle.de/MathNet/subj-class/mnsc.en.html > “Math-Net Subject Classification Scheme”:http://www.mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de/ak-technik/MathNet/BasicMeta.html
* “Registry for Metadata Use in Indexing Mathematical Resources”:http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/en/institut/dok/metadata/gmr/mdmathen.htm

Summary:

* Most math metadata is about classifying journal articles (too high level) or math web pages (not relevant).
* I can’t find anything detailed enough for my application… so I will have to keep looking and possibly make my own taxonomy…
* Germans like metadata.

more on xhtml

There has been a lot of discussion lately about XHTML 2.0 (which stems from a number of misunderstandings). While looking through the w3c archives I found a mailing list thread that pointed to this article advocating xhtml.

more blockquotes and XHTML

Richard Eriksson is fixing validations problems with MovableType that stem from handling of blockquotes and automatic line breaking.

CSS and HTML tag selection

Over the last several years my use of CSS has changed dramatically. When I first learned HTML I did not understand CSS and its purpose. As I learned more I began to love CSS and its ability to improve design without much overhead.

As part of this new found love I became addicted to using the <div> and <span> tags. By properly combining these two simple tags I could create well structured, pretty and extendable page layouts (although it has done little to improve my spelling). During this period I would seldom use tags like <H1> and <blockquote>.

As I have learned more I am realize that I was throwing the baby out with the bath water. So now I try to use builtin tags as much as possible. These tags impart special semantic meaning to information contained within them. Many search engines incorporate the information provided by these tags while ranking pages. And non-standard browsers (text-based and screen readers) frequently use this information to improve the user experience.

Now I try to use these tags as often as possible to impart semantic meaning to the enclosed text and then use CSS to make them look better if necessary. The important thing to note is that you should not use these semantic tags for presentational purposes. But you should not use presentational tags (div and span) when there is an appropriate semantic tag.

I am going to do some looking around on the web to see if other agree or disagree with the above…

Using XPointer with HTML

An interesting thread about the use of Xpointer to index into HTML… www-annotation@w3.org from January to June 2002: Using XPointer. I was working on a similar idea last year and the best I could come up with was to use text offset. No “killer method” in the above thread but a good read.