Technical aspects of the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions
The NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) Project, begun in 1997, is preparing a handbook and Web site intended for wide communities of users. The contents are primarily mathematical formulas, graphs, methods of computation, references, and links to software. The task of developing a Web handbook of this nature presents several technical challenges. We describe the goals of the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions Project and the realities that constrain those goals. We propose practical initial solutions, in order to ease the authoring of adaptable content: a LATEX class which encourages a modestly semantic markup style; and a mathematical search engine that adapts a text search engine to the task.
digital library mathematical search mathematical markup mathematical notation