Comments on: Presentations preview MathML support, ideas on copy and paste

By: Casey Stark

Casey Stark — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:07:54 +0000

@David

What do you mean exactly? MathJax accepts TeX and MathML as input, but it’s not a solution for writing either of those.

Are you looking for a TeX or MathML editor?

By: David Beckwith

David Beckwith — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:49:54 +0000

What’s the equivalent of MathJax for input?

By: Bill Hammond

Bill Hammond — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:54:01 +0000

But just to be clear: the slides are great and Mathjax is great!
— Bill

By: Bill Hammond

Bill Hammond — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:48:03 +0000

Robert,
As to handling XHTML+MathML without enclosing in tags there are at least three issues:

1. Standards compliance: see
http://www.w3.org/Math/XSL/

2. Eliminating the need for content providers to serve dual content, i.e., fast xhtml for browsers with native support of mathml and mathjaxed html for other browsers.

3. Related to (1), the ability of content providers to run structural validators on their content.

By: robertm

robertm — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:41:00 +0000

Basic MathML support will probably appear in svn within a few weeks, and we will rebuild another distribution shortly after. Initially, it will just contain rendering support for the core constructs. Finishing off the more obscure MathML features will likely take several months.

It is not yet entirely clear what will be possible with eliminating script tag delimiters from around the MathML. There is a significant difference with the LaTeX situation, in that built-in browser parsers will process the MathML as unknown tags in various browser-dependent ways, whereas by and large, the browser parser leaves LaTeX code alone. Thus, without script delimiters, it is a matter of determining whether a preprocessor can reconstruct enough of the original markup from what is left over after the browser parser is finished with it. I’m optimistic, but a precise statement will have to await detailed, per browser investigations.

On the subject of XHTML, it is worth remembering that MathJax is primarily targeting HTML, not XHTML. However, I guess I’d like to understand what is motivating the question better. I certainly understand generating de facto XHTML for publication using XML tools like XSLT. However, the motivation for server the result with the XHTML mime type is less clear, since past experience suggests that mostly just introduces complexity and compatibility problems. If the motivation is merely to take advantage of native browser MathML rendering for XHTML (i.e. in FF) the current thinking is that MathJax could arrange for the math to be rendered in XHTML iframes, or whatever it takes, even though the document is served as HTML.

If you have concrete ideas or proposals, we should start a general discussion on the MathJax open discussion forum.

By: John Orr

John Orr — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:19:32 +0000

(Looks like the website removed the tags I type. I mean to say the MathML is enclosed in SCRIPT tags and, for XHTML, I’d like the directly inside the document without the script tags.)

By: John Orr

John Orr — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:17:56 +0000

Very nice set of slides! Thanks for posting.

I’m particularly interested in the rendering of MathML (and eager to know when it will be available for download) so it was good to see the demo in the slides.

One thing – I see that in HTML the MathML is wrapped in tags. For XHTML is it possible to avoid this, and use directly within the document tree?