MathJax

Upcoming changes to the CDN

Peter Krautzberger — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:25:43 +0000

We would like to announce a few minor changes to the MathJax CDN.

Switching providers.

On Sunday, May 13, 2012, we will switch CDN providers from Cloudfront to Rackspace. We expect no downtime. You will only have to change your setup if you’ve been using a beta version or https-access to the CDN.

Retiring beta versions.

At the time of the switch, the CDN will stop serving the currently available beta-version of MathJax — v1.1-beta, v1.1a-beta and v2.0-beta.

If you’re using a beta version, you should change your configuration to point to v1.1-latest and v2.0-latest which serve the same content as their respective betas. See the documentation for details on loading MathJax from the CDN.

Change of encrypted CDN access

If you are currently accessing the CDN via https, e.g.

https://d3eoax9i5htok0.cloudfront.net/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js

you should switch to the new stable address at

https://c328740.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js

Note that the old https address will remain active for the next few weeks.

Testing

You can already test the Rackspace CDN at e.g.

http://c328740.r40.cf1.rackcdn.com/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js

This is also a stable address.

If you have any question or encounter any issues, please let us know in the comments or on the MathJax User Group.

The MathJax Team.

Readium adds MathML support via MathJax

Peter Krautzberger — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:36:49 +0000

The Readium developer blog announced yesterday that Readium now renders MathML by integrating MathJax.

Readium is an open source reference system and rendering engine for EPUB publications. It’s a project of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) for creating and testing EPUB 3 content and tools. Readium development started off in January and it is very exciting to get MathML support via MathJax in at an early stage of the development. While Readium is a very early prototype, you can download it as a Chrome extension and take a look at MathJax in action as part of an EPUB book. Because Readium uses MathJax, it inherits MathJax’s ability to zoom and cut-and-paste mathematical content.

Our very own Davide Cervone made the necessary contributions to Readium and you can get Readium’s code on github, including a sample epub with MathML content. For us here at MathJax, Readium is a great example for how easy it is to integrate MathJax into other projects, in particular ebook readers. Developers can easily add MathML rendering via MathJax even if their underlying HTML engines do not yet support MathML rendering natively.

Why cdn.mathjax.org was unavailable for 4 hours on March 13

Peter Krautzberger — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:29:00 +0000

As you may have noticed, we’ve had some technical difficulties at MathJax.org yesterday morning. These difficulties were resolved within a few hours and the CDN was available again around noon Eastern time (~16.00 UTC, March 13).

Timeline

On March 13, our webhost upgraded the server hosting www.mathjax.org; this changed the IP-address of the server. The DNS change we had scheduled to accommodate the switch did not take place as planned. Unexpectedly, the downtime of the webserver also affected the CDN. While we identified what caused this problem, we set up a temporary CDN to help users that needed an immediate workaround.

Around noon Eastern time, we were able to update the DNS configurations and, with the changes propagating, both www.mathjax.org and cdn.mathjax.org came back online.

Our reaction

Over the next couple of days, we will restructure the CDN to avoid similar problems in the future. Currently, we provide the CDN through Amazon CloudFront while the point of origin for the CDN is still located on the server that also hosts www.mathjax.org. This was the reason why the DNS problems for mathjax.org caused problems for the CDN on Amazon CloudFront.

In the future, the origin and the distribution system for the CDN will be hosted at the same service so as to guarantee reliability and eliminate the cause of yesterday’s downtime. We will also re-design our internal procedures for such emergencies: we will improve the monitoring of the CDN (making this information publicly available) and ensure that every team member is able to respond to such problems.
It’s very important to us to stress that we consider the stability of the MathJax CDN to be of utmost importance to the MathJax project. We’re determined to ensure its performance and reliability in delivering MathJax to thousands of sites.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this caused.

The MathJax Team.

MathJax 2.0 and the default rendering in Firefox

Peter Krautzberger — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:59:32 +0000

Last Thursday, Frédéric Wang, MathML contributor to Mozilla and Software Test Engineer here at MathJax, wrote a post on his personal blog entitled MathJax 2.0 no longer uses Firefox MathML support by default . We thought it would be good to explain the situation here, too.

MathJax v2.0 no longer uses Firefox’s native MathML rendering as the default but instead relies on MathJax’s HTML-CSS output. Our main reasons for this switch are new features in MathJax v2.0, most prominently equation numbering and automatic line-breaking, that use MathML properties not implemented in Firefox. Since we expect these features to get widespread use, in particular in on-line versions of papers (and their abstracts), it is crucial that they work well in the default configuration of MathJax.

For now, Firefox’s native MathML rendering does not support equation numbering and automatic line-breaking. There are also a number of other, less apparent problems with MathML rendering in Firefox that have we identified over the last year, such as printing issues, differences in display spacing, and issues when the STIX fonts aren’t installed. All of these make it harder to maintain a consistent set of results for MathJax output when Firefox’s MathML renderer is used.

Of course, even though MathJax v2.0 is faster than v1.1, the native MathML rendering is still faster. So we leave the decision to trade consistency for speed to the user. Page authors who wish to set the defaults for Firefox differently can do so and we’d encourage that whenever their content can be rendered accurately by Firefox. Readers who prefer to use the native MathML support of Firefox can still do so by setting the math renderer to NativeMML in the MathJax contextual menu. But since it does entail a potential loss of information (e.g., equation numbers) we no longer make that the default.

We cannot stress enough how encouraging it is to see Firefox’s many MathML improvements in recent versions, and the fine work Fred has done in helping to bring that about.

We look forward to revisiting this decision in the future and we hope that Firefox will continue to take the lead in native MathML rendering.

MathJax version 2.0 now available

Peter Krautzberger — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:57:25 +0000

MathJax v2.0 is now available on the CDN, and for download from GitHub or the download page at http://www.mathjax.org/download/.

Version 2.0 is available on the CDN at

http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.0-latest/MathJax.js

and the files at the

http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js

address have been switched over the v2.0 as well, but it will take some time for them to propagate out to the distributed cloud servers.

During the time that the files are making their way out to the servers, there may be a mixture of files in your users’ caches, and so they may need to clear their cache and restart their browser in order to get a consistent version of the files. If this turns out to be problematic for you, you can change (temporarily) to the mathjax/2.0-latest URL instead of mathjax/latest since that is a new address that will not have any cached older versions to worry about. Change back after a day or two when the new version has migrated to all the locations in the cloud.

See http://www.mathjax.org/docs/2.0/whats-new-2.0.html for details about the changes in v2.0, and some caveats about the effect of these changes on existing sites.

We anticipate a smooth upgrade from v1.1 to v2.0, but as always, let us know if you experience problems with this new version of MathJax. Thank you for your continued support.

Davide Cervone
MathJax developer

MathJax v2.0-beta now available on CDN

Peter Krautzberger — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:51:47 +0000

For the past eight months, we’ve been busy putting together version 2.0 of MathJax, which includes a number of important new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. The most significant of these are described below. Today we are releasing a public beta version of MathJax v2.0, available at http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.0-beta/MathJax.js which you can load in place of the current version of MathJax that you are using. Alternatively, you can get a ZIP archive to use locally via https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/zipball/v2.0-candidate or you can check out the v2.0-candidate branch of MathJax by using the commands

git clone git://github.com/mathjax/MathJax.git MathJax-2.0
cd MathJax-2.0
git checkout v2.0-candidate

at an appropriate location on your server.

Remember that this is still beta software, so if you are not an experienced user, you may want to wait for the official 2.0 release. We do not recommend that you use the 2.0-beta version for production environments, but do encourage you to test your sites with it to be sure there are no problems before the cutover to v2.0 occurs, which should be within the next two weeks. At that point, the http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest address will begin to serve MathJax v2.0, but you can continue to use v1.1a by linking to http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/1.1-latest instead, and you can change to that version at any point (it is available now). Once the official 2.0 release is made, the 2.0-beta address will be removed.

While the code is complete, we are still working on the documentation. Many of the new features are new extensions that you can add to your configuration; see http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.0-beta/unpacked/extensions/ and its TeX and HTML-CSS subdirectories. The comments in the extension files should tell you what they do and how to configure them. Other features are controlled by new configuration parameters, which you will find in http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.0-beta/config/default.js so look there for some information as well. There are a number of new combined configuration files that include the new input and output processors in different configurations, so check them out at http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.0-beta/config.

The official release of v2.0 should occur within the next two weeks, but we wanted you to be able to start to test out the v2.0 features now. Please report any bugs you find to the issue tracker at https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/issues.

Thanks for your interest in MathJax. We hope that this new release brings you new features that you have been looking for.

Davide P. Cervone
MathJax Developer

_____________________________________________________

New Features in MathJax v2.0:

Major speed improvement for HTML-CSS output, particularly in IE:

The HTML-CSS output processing was redesigned to avoid the page reflows that were the main source of the speed problem in Internet Explorer 8 and 9. For test pages having between 20 and 50 typeset expressions, we see an 80% reduction in output processing time for IE8, a 50% reduction for IE9, and between 15% and 25% reduction for most other browsers over the v1.1a times. Since the processing time in v1.1a grows non-linearly in IE, you should see even larger savings for pages with more equations when using v2.0. Forcing IE7 emulation mode is no longer necessary (and indeed is no longer recommended).

Reduced flickering during typsetting:

In the past, each expression was displayed as soon as it was typeset, which caused a lot of visual flickering as MathJax processed the page. In v2.0, the output is processed in blocks so that typeset expressions are revealed in groups. This reduces the visual distraction, and also speeds up the processing. The number of equations in a block can be controlled through the EqnChunk parameter in the HTML-CSS block of your configuration. See config/default.js for details.

If the page URL includes a hash reference (a link to a particular location within the page), MathJax v2.0 will jump to that location after the page has finished typsetting. (Since the size of the page may have changed due to the mathematical typsetting, that location may no longer be visible on screen, so MathJax moves there when it is done with the initial typesetting.) You can control this behavior with the positionToHash parameter in the main section of your configuration.

Automatic equation numbering of TeX formulas:

The TeX input jax now can be configured to add equation numbers (though the default is not to number equations so that existing pages will not change their appearance). This is controlled through the equationNumbers section of the TeX block of your configuration (see config/default.js for details). You can request that the numbering follow the AMS-style numbering of environments, or you can request that every displayed equation be numbered. There are now \label, \ref, and \eqref commands to make it easier to link to particular equations within the document.

Automatic line breaking of long displayed equations:

MathJax now implements the MathML3 specification for automatic line breaking of displayed equations in its HTML-CSS output. This is disabled by default, but can be enabled via the linebreaks section of the HTML-CSS block of your configuration (see config/default.js for details). Note that automatic line breaking only applies to displayed equations, not in-line equations, unless they are themselves longer than a line. The algorithm uses the nesting depth, the type of operator, the size of spaces, and other factors to decide on the breakpoints, but it does not know the meaning of the mathematics, and may not choose the optimal breakpoints. We will continue to work on the algorithm as we gain information from its actual use in the field.

New AsciiMath input jax and SVG output jax:

MathJax currently processes math in either TeX/LaTeX format, or MathML notation; version 2.0 augments that to include ASCIIMathML notation (see http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html for details on this format). This is a notation that is easier for students to use than TeX, and has been requested by the user community.

In addition to the HTML-CSS and Native MathML output available in v1.1, MathJax v2.0 includes an SVG-based output jax. This should prove to be more reliable than the HTML-CSS output, as it avoids some CSS, web-font, and printing issues that the HTML-CSS output suffers from, and it currently has no browser-dependent code. The SVG mode even works in some ebook readers (like Apple iBooks and Calibre).

New combined configuration files:

Pre-defined configuration files that include the AsciiMath and SVG processors are now available with MathJax v2.0. These include AM_HTMLorMML, TeX-AMS-MML_SVG, and TeX-MML-AM_HTMLorMML.

MathJax contextual menu now available on mobile devices:

MathJax v2.0 provides access to its contextual menu in mobile devices that are based on the WebKit (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) engines. For Mobile Firefox, the menu is accessed by a tap-and-hold on any expression rendered by MathJax (this is Mobile Firefox’s standard method of triggering a contextual menu). In Mobile Safari, use a double-tap-and-hold. This is the first step toward providing a better interface for mobile devices.

Improved support for screen readers:

Some issues surrounding the use of screen readers and their interaction with MathPlayer have been resolved in MathJax v2.0. In particular, there are additional menu items that allow the user finer control over some aspects of MathJax’s interface that were interfering with some screen readers’ ability to properly identify the mathematics. Several stability issues with MathPlayer have also been addressed.

Many new TeX additions and enhancements:
- New mhchem chemistry extension (adds \ce, \cf, and \cee macros)
- New cancel extension (adds \cancel, \bcancel, and \cancelto macros)
- New extpfeil extension (adds more stretchy arrows)
- New color extension (makes \color work as a switch, as in LaTeX). Adds \definecolor, other color models, LaTeX named colors, \colorbox, \fcolorbox, etc.
- New begingroup extension to allow macro definitions to be localized. Adds \begingroup and \endgroup for isolating macro declarations, and defines \let, \renewenvironment, \global, and \gdef.
- New enclose extension to give TeX access to elements. Adds \enclose{type}[attributes]{math} macro.
- New action extension to give TeX access to elements. Adds \mathtip{math}{tip}, \texttip{math}{tip}, and\toggle{math1}{math2}...\endtoggle macros.
- New \mmToken{type}[attributes]{text} macro for producing , , , and other token MathML elements directly.
- New \bbox[color;attributes]{math} macro to add background color, padding, borders, etc.
- New \middle macro for stretchy delimiters between \left and \right.
- New \label, \ref, and \eqref macros for numbered equations.
- Better implementation of \not so it produces proper MathML when possible.
- Better implementation of \dots that selects \ldots or \cdots depending on the context.
- Better implementation of \cases that automatically uses \text on the second entry in each row.
- Safer implementation of \require that only allows loading from extensions directory.
- Allow \newcomand to provide a default parameter.
- Allow \\ to take an optional argument that specifies additional space between lines.
- Allow \\ to be used anywhere (to force a line break), not just in arrays.
- Allow optional alignment parameter for array, aligned, and gathered environments.
Font enhancements:
- Work around for the OS X Lion STIX font problem.
- Support for STIX-1.1 fonts (detection of which version you have, and use data appropriate for that).
- New WOFF versions of the web fonts (smaller, so faster to download).
- Data for more stretchy characters in HTML-CSS output.
- Add support for Unicode planes 1 through 10 (not just the Math Alphabet block) in HTML-CSS output.
- Increased timeout for web fonts (since it was switching to image fonts too often, especially for mobile devices).
- Only switch to image fonts if the first web font fails to load (if we can access one, assume we can access them all).
- Allow elements to use the page font rather than MathJax fonts (optionally).
- Provide better control over the font used for characters that are not in the MathJax fonts.
Interface improvements:
- The MathJax contextual menu has been reorganized to make it easier to get the source view, and to control the parameters for MathPlayer in IE.
- The MathJax contextual menu is available in mobile devices (see description above).
- Warning messages are issued if you switch renderers to one that is inappropriate for your browser.
- MathJax now starts processing the page on the DOMContentLoaded event rather than the onload event (this allows the mathematics to appear sooner).
- Native MathML output is now scaled to better match the surrounding font (like it is for HTML-CSS output).
- Better CSS styling for NativeMML output in Firefox in order to handle \cal and other fonts.
- MathML output now (optionally) includes class names to help mark special situations generated by the TeX input jax. (This lets the MathML from the Show Source menu item better reproduce the original TeX output.)
Important changes from previous versions:
- The default renderer for Firefox has been changed from NativeMML to HTML-CSS (in those configurations that choose between the two). The only browser that defaults to NativeMML is now IE with MathPlayer installed.
- NativeMML will now be selected in IE9 when MathPlayer is present (since IE9 was released the same day as MathJax v1.1a, and there had been problems with IE9 beta releases, we weren’t sure if MathPlayer would work with the official release, and so did not select NativeMML by default.)
- The performance improvements in IE8 and IE9 now make it unnecessary to use a tag to force IE7 emulation mode. In fact IE9 in IE9 standards mode now runs faster than IE9 in IE7 standards mode, and IE8 in IE8 standards mode is comparable to IE8 in IE7 standards mode. We now recommend that you use
  to obtain the highest emulation mode available in IE, which will be the fastest one for MathJax 2.0.
- The tex2jax preprocessor now balances braces when looking for the closing math delimiter. That allows expressions like $y = x^2 \hbox{ when $x > 2$}$ to be properly parsed as a single math expression rather than two separate ones with unbalanced braces. The old behavior can be obtained by setting balanceBraces to false in the tex2jax block of your configuration.
- The \cases macro now properly places the second column in text mode not math mode. In the past, one needed to use \text in the second column to achieve the proper results; pages that did this will still work properly in v2.0. Pages that took advantage of the math mode in the second column will need to be adjusted.
- The \dots macro now produces \ldots or \cdots depending on the context (in the past, \dots always produced \ldots).
- A one pixel padding has been added above and below HTML-CSS output so that math on successive lines of a paragraph won’t bump into each other.
- There is a new MathPlayer submenu of the Math Settings menu in the MathJax contextual menu that allows the user to control what events are passed on to MathPlayer. This allows better control for those using assistive devices like screen readers. When menu events are being passed on to MathPlayer, the MathJax menu can be obtained by ALT-clicking on a typeset expression (so the user can still access MathJax’s other features).
- In order to improve stability with IE when MathPlayer is installed, MathJax now adds the namespace and object bindings that are needed for MathPlayer at the time that Mathjax is first loaded, rather than waiting for the NativeMML output jax to be loaded. Since this is before the configuration information has been loaded, this will happen regardless of whether the NativeMML output jax is requested. This means that IE may ask the user to allow MathPlayer to be used, and may show the MathPlayer splash dialog even when MathPlayer is not in the end used by MathJax. Note that this setup can only be performed if MathJax is loaded explicitly as part of the initial web page; if it is injected into the page later by adding a