Mathematical content is one of the corner stones of the information society, for education just as much as for science, technology, or business. Advances by European science in representing mathematics on the web enable content actors to create and deliver quality mathematical content to users across Europe, who need it in their work, studies or at home.

The objective of the WebALT project is to showcase a significant application that uses a combination of existing standards for representing mathematics on the web and existing linguistic technologies in order to enable the creation of language-independent mathematical content that is well-suited for localization in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment. While this will require extending both existing standards and existing technologies beyond what is currently available, such extensions are expected to be minor compared to the existing linguistic resources to be combined in this project.

The focus of this project is on showcasing the immense value of combining existing technologies for the generation and localization of high-quality mathematical content in an application that is geared to a multi-lingual and multi-cultural single market. This, we hope, will convince actors both in the content creation and distribution arena and in the linguistic technologies field to adopt the techniques showcased here in their own publication or localization processes.

In order to keep it feasible within the given constraints, the showcase has been chosen, on the one hand, to represent a significant simplification of the ultimate area of application envisaged for the technique it promotes, and on the other hand, to exhibit a reasonable cross-section of localization issues involved in multi-lingual and multi-cultural mathematical content, while offering an important contribution in and of itself towards significant issues and policies in Europe.

Mathematics is a particularly suitable area for electronic learning. With present day information technology it is possible to create interactive learning tools which themselves know an impressive amount of mathematics. This is to a large extent due to the exact and a priori nature of mathematical knowledge. Many areas of the exact sciences rely heavily on basic mathematical knowledge.

European science and technology, including some of the partners in this proposal, have played a fundamental role in the development of the world wide web, and the same has been true for enabling semantically rich representations of mathematical content on the web. Under the heading of “OpenMath”, the EU has supported the development of both OpenMath and MathML, the current standards for communicating semantically rich mathematics via XML. These standards are now supported by commercial software packages such as Word and PowerPoint together with MathType, as well as web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla. Hence MathML and OpenMath are now ready for their prime time.

The WebALT project launches an extensive project that

• Develops tools and methods that allow content providers to create and distribute educational content harnessing the advanced possibilities of MathML and OpenMath to the maximum.


• Develops compelling multi-lingual and multi-cultural content for use in interactive, creative mathematics courses.


• Enables the best educators at European universities, technical institutions and SMEs to create high quality mathematical educational materials.


• Disseminates the techniques for creating and distributing high-quality mathematical content in a truly universal environment.