I'm in for MathML, but could it be just a loadable JavaScript component instead? Considering the usage frequency of MathML, a built-in browser implementation looks kind of wasteful.
However if you read here https://mathml.igalia.com/ There are obvious benefits to have it in the core
- Native implementation for efficient layout and automatic reflow.
- No external resources required except for purely stylistic information.
- Cross-compatible and high-quality rendering possible using TeX and OpenType MATH rules.
- Visual rendering fully controlled by font and CSS styling.
- Compatible with the other HTML5 technologies for best user and developer experience.
- Formula content works well with browser UI: zooming, select, copy & paste, find text, etc.
- Information properly exposed to assistive technologies
Is it wasteful? Maybe. Is it better? Sure. Also there is the question because MathML is a niche other browsers need to have fallbacks / polyfills.
This alone, to me, is good enough reason to be excited for the return of native MathML rendering to Chrome.
Now let's just hope this work gets propagated to Edge as well. Firefox, Chrome and Safari will now all have at least decent MathML support and since Edge is based on the same underlying engine as Chrome, there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why MS wouldn't enable such support as well. fingers crossed
ax^2 + bx + c turns into: � � 2 + � � + �
HTML has those bad unicode characters too.
If no one uses it, it will eventually get phased out.
I have just about a billion <math> elements in the arXiv preview site I develop: https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/
And that is just one site. PubMed will likely have more than that at some point: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/