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Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand - doesn't Google want the web to be a first-class platform for scientific research? Chrome is supposed to be the standards-compliant browser! Not to mention, if scientists have an easy way of creating markup versions of their LaTeX files you'll see a huge influx of scientific work on the web!

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I think if you look at the MathML standard or some example markup you'll understand. MathML is prohibitively verbose. It comes in two flavors, display and structural, and neither one is amenable to busting out equations. Even when MathML is universally supported by browsers it will still be treated as fundamentally an interchange format seldom seen by human eyes, mostly generated by systems like MathJax from human-friendly TeX.

As long as you're converting TeX math to something else, MathML is preferable only because it may look nicer rendered than an image raster from TeX.

MathML is a valid compile target for TeX equations, it doesn't matter how easy it is to write by hand nor does it matter how verbose it is. It is intended to be an interchange format seldom seen by human eyes or written by human authors.

svg with a alt tag of the TeX source...

When the OP says "if scientists have an easy way of creating markup versions of their LaTeX files" it sounds like they'll be writing it by hand, don't you think? Alternatively, a toolchain involving compilation to HTML+MathML doesn't sound to me like a problem for browser vendors.

And we write markdown not HTML. So what? Images are a terrible non solution.

HTML is not user-hostile and MathML is. I'm saying this has something to do with lack of uptake for the latter.

Why not target SVG?

I disagree and think that this is best done in userland. Adding native support for features that aren't critical can retard future development significantly.

I think being able to easily render mathematical expressions is critical, almost as critical as rendering linguistic expressions, if the web wants to be taken seriously as a place to publish scientific work and not just upload science as a different mime-type attachment. Many scientists are highly technical with regard to their field, but when it comes to web development, they have no idea how to write HTML, let alone how to include a javascript file in their HTML documents.

"We believe the needs of MathML can be sufficiently met by libraries like MathJax and doesn't need to be more directly supported by the platform. In areas where libraries like MathJax are not good enough, we'd love to hear feedback about what APIs we would need to expose so that MathJax, et al, can create an awesome MathML implementation."

This, coupled with the fact that WebKit MathML wasn't up to snuff, is a pretty good rationale IMO.

Standards-compliance is a means to an end (interoperability), doesn't mean browsers should implement every niche spec that someone comes up with. I want my VRML first, at least ;)

So maybe they should support LaTeX directly?

(not speaking on behalf of anyone than me)

That would be a Chrome-specific non-standard feature. If JavaScript implementation of TeX is too slow, a Chrome-specific solution would be NaCl/PNaCl.

But I really recommend to evaluate how to generate high-performance javascript code (like with Emscripten) and have it working fast enough.

Thanks. My comment might not seem on the level but I honestly wonder whether LaTeX support would have more broad impact than a subset like MathML.

That would be ideal but TeX source is supposedly very big and complicated.

MathML is a joke compared to LaTeX. HTML + canvas, SVG, or PNG is preferable.

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