I would also recommend considering ways to create a more 'native' in-browser equation editor interface, perhaps piggybacking on native MathML when available. TeX is usually pretty nicely symbolic but folks who aren't familiar with it still have a learning curve, whereas MathML is very cumbersome to write manually even if you know all the goodies.
At a minimum some help/examples and a live preview would be hugely helpful; at best a wysiwyg-like editor that lets you type and has a nice symbol library at hand could be very spiff. If looking narrowly at the question of better output for existing TeX bits, use of something like mathjax as a TeX->mathml/html converter could be very handy. -- brion On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Lee Worden <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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 > _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
