MathML

A primary impediment to the successful completion of a hypertextbook on the theory of computing has been the inability to include mathematical expressions in a web page. MathML (the mathematical markup language) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (http://www.w3c.org) has been around for quite a while as a solution to this problem. However, until recently none of the mainstream browsers would render MathML natively. Now, all recent versions of the Mozilla-based browsers, notably Netscape and Firefox, do a great job of rendering MathML.

Furthermore, the inclusion of MathML in an HTML document was a laborious, by-hand process. The W3C has long had a test bed browser, called Amaya, that purported to allow MathML to be included seamlessly in HTML documents, but the MathML portion of Amaya was very buggy, causing Amaya to implode at regular intervals. The most recent versions of Amaya seem to be much more robust.

The result is that we are now in position to write a hypertextbook on the theory of computing that incorporates mathematics quite naturally. The following links demonstrate this.

A definition of LR(k) grammars

A proof that no left-recursive grammar is LL(k) for any k

Please note that in order to view these pages properly, you must open them using the most recent version of either Netscape or Firefox. You will probably be prompted to download some special mathematical fonts. Please do this (it is easy).