pml – a language for authoring and editing physics text
Ian Lawrence · Journal of Physics Conference Series · 2019
Abstract Expressing physics on a web page with the fruitful precision required in order to best support learning tends to be a demanding technical task for authors and content curators. That is as a result of the need to adhere to various conventions, such as the spacing between numbers and units, and ensure that unhelpful distributions of words do not detract from meaning, such as splitting equations over lines, or placing number and unit on different lines, whatever the display device. In short, there is a lot to get right. Current standards in markup languages such as html do not lend much support to avoiding of these kinds of mis-steps. Some current techniques suggest a mixture of technologies, such as embedding LATeX via MathJax to represent equations, but this is inelegant, introduces dissipative friction into the authoring and editing systems, and results in extra difficulties in separating content from display technologies whilst ensuring representational consistency across the different technologies deployed. A system using this physics markup language can be implemented using standard web technologies (generating clean, standards-compliant and mobile-friendly html, with hooks for CSS, and relying only on JavaScript) and authoring can be in any text editor.