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by nsajko 1775 days ago
> advantage of having unwritable and unreadable syntax

There's (in a way) a false dilemma at play here. MathML is unreadable because it's XML, but it is also possible to describe trees in more readable languages like S-expressions.

Either way, it would be absurd to add TeX into a Web browser ...
1 comments
MontyCarloHall 1775 days ago
> Either way, it would be absurd to add TeX into a Web browser ...

I agree. Nobody is seriously proposing adding a full LaTeX implementation to a browser, but rather a parseable subset of TeX strictly for math markup, à la MathJax, which incidentally has become the de facto standard for embedding math in webpages.

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ubavic 1774 days ago
But who will decide what commands will be part of that subset? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of commands that are used regularly in tex documents for displaying various forms of notation, and mathematicians still create new notation and packages for it. Most of the commands in MathJax aren't part of TeX, but LaTeX or even some popular package (amsmath, etc.). Some things are implemented in more then one packages, and those different implementation have differences (for example, in Russian books integral sign is different than one in American).

If we implement a subset of TeX in a browser, there are two options: 1. If we only include the most used commands, such technology will be useless for professional mathematicians and probably be obsolete in future (when some new useful notation appears). 2. On the other hand, if we keep adding new commands for every type of mathematical notation, then we will need longer names for commands (or maybe namespaces) and notation will not be readable anymore. Not to mention that browsers maintainers will need a lot of work to implement all that (How long will that take?)

Also, if we implement only a subset of TeX, users will not be able to easily (or anyhow) create new notation. On the other hand, MathML is very flexible in that regard and allows users to be creative.

And, contrary to some other comments in this discussion, I don't think that code for mathematical notation must be human readable before all. Whatever approach you take (tex, XML, S-expressions), you will quickly find some examples that are horrendous for coding (integral inequalties, steps in PDE solution, commutative diagram, proof tree...)

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