maybe Blogger is not such a good host for this blog, technically

Well, although I picked a Blogger template that was XHTML compliant, when I applied it to the blog - the resulting document was not XHTML compliant.

I think there are some issues arising from the preprocessor generated parts of this document. I expected them to match the syntax required by the template itself. It looks like they do not do that. Unfortunately, it seems like they are written to presume HTML - not XHTML syntax. So even when a template says it is XHTML, when used in a blog - the blog will not be valid XHTML.

Oh, well. I guess I will put this blog aside for now - until the Blogger tag preprocessor gets an upgrade to generate valid XHTML.

Apple is working on SVG and MathML support for Safari

Apple packages a lot of the functionality of their state-of-the-art web browser, Safari, as an open source software library called WebKit.

Lots of companies and open source projects have already used Apple's WebKit in their devices and desktop web browsing application software. Apple uses it not just in their Safari web browser - but also in other programs that come with the Mac.

So this way of organizing things benefits not only Apple's efforts towards altruism, it also makes sense from a commercial standpoint too. After all, they are practical too when it comes to engineering.

Well, the WebKit team is working on two more things that are pretty exciting:

• MathML - Math Markup Language
• SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics

This is pretty terrific for the country where I live, America. Here in America, some of our schools - and since we try to send all of our children to school - this is a lot of schools - have lots of students who have fallen behind in math and science. Understandable: these are hard subjects. Problem: this is the 21st century.

These days everyone needs to understand math and science fundamentals.

If farmers in Kanas do not understand why they need to rotate their crops because they did not take an earth sciences class in school, they might deplete the soil and turn Kansas into a Dust Bowl again. That would be unfortunate. Kansas would see its state economy crater, the farmers that did that would go bankrupt. The people used to getting wheat from bread and sunflower seeds for snacks would have to get their products elsewhere, pay higher prices, and possibly endure shortages of certain foods.

If an executive running a major biotech company did not understand the basics of biology, he would not realize that plants reproduce via pollen - which is carried either by the wind or by insects. Next thing you know, he might be suing farmers across the street from farmers using his genetically engineered wheat or corn for stealing his product because DNA tests revealed it had the same genes. Hello? Pollination!

If scientists working at a major food company and their counterparts at a major pharmeceutical company did not take chemistry in school, they would not realize that certain chemical additives to their products were mutually incompatible and produced a hazardous compound. Not that it has happened, but it could. And a knowledge of chemistry would be part of what would prevent a major consumer catastrophe.

Scientists are not whackos. They are guys and gals who make sure your economy runs smoothly, you do not get sued, and you do not get sued without justification. They help you survive and prosper.

However, that requires good math and science education.

That is where SVG and MathML come in. They are working on a growing number of platforms and devices. Tons of browsers will be supporting them by next year. They are already available on every major platform in at least one browser. By next year that will be 2 or 3 browsers on each platform supporting them.

That is important because schools do not have a lot of money - be they publicly or privately funded. So they cannot afford to be locked into a single vendor. That costs them in terms of flexibility, price, and ultimately the number of computers and classroom experiences they can offer students.

It is important to all of us, not just those students, that they get those experiences. So SVG and MathML will help them.

In the future, I will be posting some high impact examples of how some simple use of SVG and MathML can really get across a concept. That is important for people creating educational materials - and that is important for students.

Since they are based on approved standard ways of doing things, they will still work in a decade - maybe two. That is important for teachers, schools, communities, and parents.

If computing resources must be completely replaced every few years because of some proprietary product sea change, then everyone in the community's pocketbooks and wallets will take a huge hit. Then teachers, who already have days filled with teaching/grading/studying/planning will have to learn completely new courseware.

When I was in school, computer advances really did not touch us directly unless we were taking a computer class. Today, things are different.

Apple's work on MathML and SVG could help a lot of people, in a lot of ways.

Web is so quickly advancing - are you so quickly falling behind?

I have been using computers for several decades. I am used to change. I am used to the stillness that precedes the death of a technology, a product line, and a company.

And I take huge strides in the advancement of things in computing as a given.

I just do not expect them to be coming from the same organization all the time.

Organizations hit a ceiling, get locked in a groove, stuck in a rut - you know all the clichés. Well, clichés come from real life.

Linux has been around for a decade and a half - it is not stagnating. Richard Stallman has been creating text editors, C compilers, and a lot of the vital organs Linux developers all rely on for decades - he is not stagnating. Apple Computer has created the first super popular personal computer with color graphics, then the first popular personal computer with windows, icons, mouse, pointer, then breathed life into the digital music industry - they are not stagnating.

Another thing that is not stagnating is Mozilla.

Back in the early half of the 1990s, NCSA at the UIUC created a series of useful tools including: Internet connectivity and a TELNET application for the Mac ...and NCSA Mosaic.

After that, the team of students who created NCSA Mosaic got hired as the founding employees of a west coast company called Netscape. Then Netscape created Mozilla, a start-from-scratch, open source, free web browser.

Mozilla embraced a lot of W3 recommendations created just as it was being created in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It did so about as quickly as the W3C technical recommendations were approved. Then, new recommendations came out. Mozilla implemented them too.

A couple years ago, Firefox came out. A year later, they released version 1.5 - adding support for even more modern web things.

This blog is not going to attempt to work with web browsers that were designed/written in the 1990s at all. If your browser came out in 2001, you are going to find that lots of posts here will not display properly in your browser. They will be missing content, the content will display wrong, or there will be an admonition somewhere in the content that tells you to get a more up-to-date browser.

If you want to read this blog without your old, beleaguered browser hobbling your efforts to browse - I suggest you get a better one. For instance, get Firefox.

The W3C has done some great work. They hammered out standard ways of doing things that all browsers makers could use. Firefox seems to have adopted more of them than any other browser at the moment. Apple is catching up - as are Opera, KDE Konqueror (for Linux), and even some little hand-held devices that are using Apple's open source WebKit.

There are other players in the race to the future. Some have dropped far behind. Others will probably join those in the lead now - one of these years. Maybe one day, all the browser makers will catch up with where these guys are today.

Anyone can use Firefox to look at this blog. All that is required is that you have a computer running Mac OS X or Windows 98 (or later). So I do not feel I am being exclusionary or elitist by using modern types of content in this blog.

I want to showcase what I can do and what anyone can see. That is as long as they do not mind spending 20 minutes updating their browser in order to catch up with half a decade of progress.

Personally, I would do that any day.