> From: John Dorian<[email protected]> > Subject: [Mediawiki-l] future planning for math/equations in mediawiki > > I'm hoping to get some advice or perspectives so I don't overlook something. > I'm looking to future-plan for math/equations in a mediawiki environment. > [...] > In general: > - MathML is supported natively by Firefox, and probably WebKit (Safari) > eventually > - TeX is not likely to be native supported, and will require some sort of > conversion for (X)HTML environments > > which looks like a win for MathML > > However,_right_ now, TeX has better support in MediaWiki > (for what I find odd reasons) > The methods that work now are: > > 1. texvc - works, but generating bitmapped PNGs is suboptimal and not what I > have in mind for the future in terms of scalable typesetting > > 2. MathJax (two sub-methods): [...] > Am I the only one who finds this odd - that I can't write MathML input, but > yet > mediawiki and MathJax are moving with browsers to having MathML as the > rendered > output? > > This seems like a waste - I have to worry writing nice TeX, then worry about > how > it is converted by MathJax to MathML, and any possible bugs in that conversion > process - when I could just write MathML and have only to worry about how > Firefox renders it. > > What advice do people have about a "good way" (simple, future compatible, > least > likely to break with converters) to deal with math/equations in mediawiki? > > Thank you in advance for your thoughts and insight.
MathML is generally considered too cumbersome for writing by hand, and in fact it wasn't designed to be written by hand [1]. TeX seems to be the most popular format for authoring math to be translated to MathML, though there are other ways [2]. Along with the two MediaWiki extensions you mention, WorkingWiki [3] also provides TeX-to-MathML translation [4] similar to what texvc provides. It uses LaTeXML [5] to do the translation, a third-party tool that was developed to create the online version of the standard Handbook of Mathematical Functions [6]. WorkingWiki does substantially more than translate math expressions, but it should be possible to create an inline-math-only option if there was demand. Lee Worden McMaster University / UC Berkeley http://leeworden.net [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathml#cite_note-1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathml#Software_support [3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WorkingWiki [4] http://lalashan.mcmaster.ca/theobio/projects/index.php/WorkingWiki/Tutorial#Inline_LaTeX_commands [5] http://dlmf.nist.gov/LaTeXML/ [6] http://dlmf.nist.gov/ _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
