EDIT: Please also mention the reading context (eg. desktop, laptop, smartphone, ereader device, etc.) for your prefered format.
I have some experience with this subject on my math website (http://regressionbuddy.com, look at the appendixes). Having it be adjustable to the screen size while at the same time presenting the content in an easy to follow way is challenging. But once you get it right there's no way to beat it.
The downside is that displaying formatted equations on the web is still so janky. Images suck balls, Mathjax can be slow and dodgy and adds weight to the page, while browser support for MathML is still not ubiquitous, particularly since some dumbshit at Google decided to nix MathML support[2] in Chrome.
Seems like there is some effort underway[3] to try and get MathML into Chromium which would hopefully result in it winding up in Chrome, but there don't appear to be any guarantees. :-(
[1]: http://worrydream.com/Tangle/
[2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-subtracts-mathml-from-chrom...
There is the possibility of pre-endering Mathjax but that seems like it would be a lot of work.
Yeah, absolutely. There's still a lot of untapped potential in this area.
What’s wrong with just inserting a URL with parms that generates the image on the fly and changes at needed?
For example, analogous to image processing services like. http://www.picresize.com
Don't get me wrong... using images for equations is better than not having equations at all. But personally I consider that approach quite inferior to native MathML rendering.
Yeah, that situation is the one that indirectly prompted this post. I don't really understand why the EPUB format (or .mobi, or .azw3) hasn't made significant inroads into technical books.
Print-formatted PDFs are just awful to read on anything but a medium-to-large monitor.
And this lies more on a feel thing: I feel that when you are looking at images of the printed page (effectively), you are looking at something relatively legitimate, I know it's an exact copy of the actual book, and that conveys with it a much more solid sense to me than looking at what might as well be a text file someone sent you.
That being said, features like table of contents links, search, being able to copy/paste from the material are huge. I probably wouldn't mind if they figured out a way to let me look at a page as a PDF and then "zoom in" on reflowable text on my phone or something. But to me, the material being presented as intended for print is pretty key, otherwise you might as well just be on someone's website.