matintag

Matintag is a hypothetical metadata tagging scheme intended for encoding and discovering mathematical content within digital documents and online resources. The name is derived from the words math and tag, signaling its focus on labeling mathematical material to improve searchability and interoperability.

Design goals include improving searchability, enabling semantic understanding of mathematical expressions, and supporting accessibility across platforms. In concept, matintag would assign each mathematical expression a consistent set of attributes, such as mode (inline or display), notation (presentation MathML, Content MathML, LaTeX, or other forms), and a semantic type (for example, expression, formula, or identity). It would also include provenance information (source document, author credits, license), accessibility safeguards (alt text or spoken-text compatibility), and references for interoperability (links to OpenMath or RDF types). The schema would be designed to integrate with existing web technologies, using wrappers like RDFa, JSON-LD, or microdata to embed metadata in digital documents.

Implementation and adoption of matintag remain conceptual rather than a deployed standard. If developed, it would complement existing representations of mathematical content, such as MathML and OpenMath, as well as schema.org metadata used by educational platforms and libraries. Potential benefits include improved indexing by search engines, easier reuse of mathematical content, and better accessibility for assistive technologies.

Limitations include a lack of consensus on a single specification, possible performance overhead, competing tagging schemes, and challenges in representing diverse notations and semantics. See also MathML, OpenMath, RDFa, JSON-LD, Content MathML, and Semantic Web standards.