Talk:MathML/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about MathML. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Shameless plug

There is currently a project underway to get MathML support into Wikipedia.

It's not as easy as it sounds, but then life wasn't meant to be easy.

Learn more at m:Blahtex.

Dmharvey Talk 21:03, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Removed advertising

The 20:24, 12 November 2005 edit by 80.119.198.135 added a link to a program called EditX, claiming it to be a MathML editor. It's been left alone by all other editors since. However, it is not of particular importance with regard to MathML; it's merely a generic XML editor, of which there are dozens of others which are not mentioned on this page. Also, if you look at the user's other contributions, every single one is just adding a link to EditX on some XML-related pages. Clearly this is just shameless advertising, so I've removed the link, and similar ones on those other contributed pages, since I believe that 80.119.198.135 was just self-promoting. Crispy 12:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

IE7?

Is there any information about whether MS has any plans to include MathML support by default in any upcoming version of IE, such as IE 7.x?--24.52.254.62 02:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC) --From the blog post, there seems to be no support yet in IE7 but possible for future versions --Jutiphan 05:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Anonyous Contribution of 9/1/2007

Unfotunately, I misinterpreted the cookies in my browser, so my contribution was anonymous. MichaelKohlhase 13:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

View in Mozilla

If you want to view how MathML works in Mozilla, you should add some XML syntax before the MathML code, and certainly you have to save it with the file extension ".xml".

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0//EN"
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/dtd/xhtml-math11-f.dtd"
 [ <!ENTITY mathml "http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> ] >
<body>
<math xmlns="&mathml;">
<mrow>
  <mi>x</mi>
  <mo>=</mo>
  <mfrac>
    <mrow>
      <mrow>
        <mo>-</mo>
        <mi>b</mi>
      </mrow>
      <mo>±</mo>
      <msqrt>
        <mrow>
          <msup>
            <mi>b</mi>
            <mn>2</mn>
          </msup>
          <mo>-</mo>
          <mrow>
            <mn>4</mn>
            <mo>⁢</mo>
            <mi>a</mi>
            <mo>⁢</mo>
            <mi>c</mi>
          </mrow>
        </mrow>
      </msqrt>
    </mrow>
    <mrow>
      <mn>2</mn>
      <mo>⁢</mo>
      <mi>a</mi>
    </mrow>
  </mfrac>
</mrow>
</math>
</body>

If I visit the page http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=rdoc:stats:quantile , mozilla firefox complains about missing MathML fonts. I would be happy if someone could include useful information on MathML fonts in this MathML page. --Gaborgulya 15:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

MathML to Java

Does anyone know if there's a suite out there that can read MathML into Java, so that one can use it to define equations that will be executed elsewhere? SMK —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.13.90.2 (talk) 03:12, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm working on one at the moment, which converts content mathml into the Jep package, which can then be evaluated in Java. Also see The W3C MathML software list. Email me if interested. --Salix alba (talk) 12:21, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

MathML and OpenMath

Hi Salix alba,
I think the example you provided for OpenMath is not quite up to date. Google tells me that it is from the "MathML Handbook", but in the meantime some things have changed. As far as I know, the official location of the Legendre polynomial is now .../cd/orthpoly1#legendreP, but actually I'd rather reuse an example from the MathML 2 specification, e.g. this one. Anyway, expect more changes soon. Content MathML and OpenMath will become fully compatible, just differing in syntax, with the upcoming versions 3. In any case, great that you help to strengthen the representation of OpenMath on Wikipedia! If you are interested in further details, feel free to subscribe to the OpenMath mailing lists:

http://openmath.org/mailman/listinfo/om (general)
http://openmath.org/mailman/listinfo/om3 (preparation of OpenMath 3)

BTW, what are you using OpenMath for? Cheers, Langec (talk) 01:16, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

OK fixed the link to point to orthpoly1#legendreP. I'm working on an Java equation parser Jep which now features MathML inport/export[1]. Allowing csymbol elements has come into that.--Salix (talk): 07:14, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

html 5

Html 5 allows inline mathml in non-xml (i.e., non-xhtml 5) documents. The article should be updated to describe this. Currently, the article describes mathml as a purely xml-based technology.--76.167.77.165 (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Bloated?

I don't think that it is fair that the only thing you tell in syntax is that it is bloated and start with LaTeX example. --Etu

Well no it isnt, however that is one of the things people talk about when they criticise/compliment the language, do add some other examples of how MathML is better than others or such. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 05:37, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)

I think it is totally fair. LaTeX and MathML are both trying to do the same, that is to convert standard mathematical notation into machine intepretable form. (La)TeX is pretty much the standard in this business, so when re-inventing the wheel all comparisons should be done against that. -- 212.213.204.99 22:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be mentioned that it is assumed an editor is used in creating a MathML document; unlike latex, it's not meant to be easy to code with just a text editor. (Although obviously, that's still possible, just a lot more work. ^_^ )--Starwed 20:12, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

That indeed was the assumption. However we can now say (in 2009) that it was a false assumption. Few editors exist. None exist that work well and are used by significant numbers of mathematicians. Conversion from LaTeX has turned out to be very difficult because of MATHML's limitations and the requirement that every symbol be assigned a type. The authors of MATHML failed to comprehend that it was vitally important for a mathematical scripting language to be humanly editable. Mathematicians, having become used to the speed and ease of typing mathematics directly in LaTeX, simply will not tolerate being required to pick and poke things out through a bunch of drop down menus in a clunky WYSIWYG. Using these kinds of editors for mathematics is extremely slow and very frustrating. The designers of MATHML made many false assumptions; that conversion from LaTeX would be easy; that editors would quickly become available; that XML was a good structure for the purpose; that human read-and-writability was unimportant; and that it was important to write a syntactic description (contentMATHML) rather than just a markup language. All these false assumptions have resulted in the horror that is MATHML today. Many mathematicians like myself have come to hate MATHML which we regard as a failed standard which destroyed our chance of having workable native mathematical markup on the web and which has poisoned discussion of mathematical markup ever since. My personal opinion is that we should scrap it and start over.Hawthorn (talk) 01:14, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

hmm if anyone gets this, i am interested in fixing up a very interesting idea whereby all steps to solving a mathematical problem are outputted in a format such as this mathml, with highlighting between steps to show changes/important points and explanations to go along with this. This unfortunately turns a one page question into 40, so I propose to allow for a method of being able to close specific steps like a tree structure.(this would also work to advantage if a problem could be solved two ways, let the user decide which way needs to be looked into). with the ability to close all of a specific operation in the solution, and the ability to allow it to come out again. it could also be paired with an open source problem generator, and solver. --MikeMike

I am sorry being so sceptic, but I think that idea is flawed by design. Some mathematical solving steps completely re-arrange (or should I say, rewrite) the MathML tree. Or perhaps I just misunderstood your intentions? -- 212.213.204.99 22:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Your idea is doable with existing technology, such as that available on WP. This talk page is probably not the ideal place to promote your idea, however, especially if you are looking for feedback on how to implement this. dr.ef.tymac 06:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Embedding MathML in XHTML files

I refer to the MathML code example presented in that section.

ax² + bx + c is not a "quadratic equation".

ax² + bx + c = 0 is. (Clue: equations generally contain an equal sign.)

88.109.215.62 (talk) 23:14, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Better math formatting support please!

Ok, how can we get this to the right people in the wikipedia/media foundation? The current MathML support is non-existent, and the random formatting changes in expressions like $a+b$ (upright, standard font), $a^{2}+b$ (italic), $a^{2}+b\equiv 0$ (missing spaces around congruence sign) and $a^{2}+b\not \equiv 0$ (font much larger than rest of text) are embarrassing. For a start, it would be nice if the math tags could at least produce the same font in all cases. People agree? Nageh (talk) 06:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Just figured that the first expression is rendered in upright, standard font only when you select MathML rendering in your preferences! Wow, we have great MathML rendering! Nageh (talk) 11:07, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) might be the best way to ask about specific formatting problems. There is a extension which can do latex to mathml conversion Blahtex, a few years back we did try quite hard to get this extension used on wikipedia, but not quite hard enough.--Salix (talk): 14:08, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

As of 2011-04-15 Chrome does NOT have MathML support enabled

Chrome doesn't support MathML, not even in the dev version. I don't know about Safari. So why does this article repeatedly claim the contrary? The only two browsers currently usable for MathML in practice are Firefox and IE (+ MathPlayer). Opera has some broken support that's not suitable for practical use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.206.247.54 (talk) 09:40, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Reception

I am surprised that there are no comments about its reception, and why after 12 years it is still rarely used.--Rumping (talk) 00:32, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that the editors of this page are MathML fanboys who just cannot get through their heads that MathML is an unwieldy, utterly unreadable language whose purpose is much better served by LaTeX. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.165.206.246 (talk) 00:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

IE7 seems to support MathML

I've just checked in IE7 and it seems to support MathML without any special plugins. Can anyone else verify this? I was looking at www.opengl.org/sdk/docs/man/xhtml/glRotate.xml

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.90.76.130 (talk) 14:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Support by browser

Now (January 2013), the support is as follow: Mozilla the best and IE the worst. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Palacesblowlittle (talk • contribs) 23:00, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

The recent addition regarding MathML verbosity

I'm still pretty new to Wikipedia editing, so I was wondering what other people thought about the addition introduced in [2].

Quote (addition in bold):

Indented line MathML is not intended to be written or edited directly by humans and the above examples show that it is so long-winded that it is not realistic, in practice, to use it for composition — unlike any of the other forms presented here.

To me, this addition seems redundant ("not intended to be written or edited directly" vs "not realistic, in practice, to use it for composition"), misleading (many XML standards are very verbose, e.g., SVG) and subjective ("unlike other formats" might be true for the quadratic equation, but is debatable for complex content).

I would propose to remove it but I don't want to start an edit war. Perhaps a "criticism" or "comparison" section would be a suitable place to have such an addition. Any thoughts?

Pkra (talk) 21:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes I agree. That addition is unsourced and it is more an opinion than WP:NPOV.--Salix (talk): 22:04, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Salix, if there are no objections, I'll edit it over the weekend.Pkra (talk) 16:48, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Separating browser support into a separate heading

Currently, browsers are listed in the middle of other software. I would like to turn them into their own heading. In the process, I would like to move MathJax and jqmath information into that section as part of a subsection on polyfills. Any objections? (Disclaimer: I work for MathJax) Pkra (talk) 22:58, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

How about just putting it first? I'm not sure we need another second level header.--Salix (talk): 23:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

meh, you're right, makes more sense. I would also love to re-write the introduction. MathML in HTML5 isn't really XML... Pkra (talk)

Yes go ahead. Article needs a lot of work. WP:BOLD--Salix (talk): 23:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Merge MathPlayer

2005 exuberance over this piece of software notwithstanding, it doesn't seem to be particularly WP:Notable, so I think the article should be WP:SMERGEd here. JMP EAX (talk) 07:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Done. I agree. The MathPlayer article was short and much of it was not about MathPlayer, so there wasn't much to merge. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:51, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

MathML as of 2015

If you want to do something common like this:
f(x) = (1+x)²
= 1+2x+x²
you can't with Firefox (version 36.0.4) My guess is that MathML has 'failed to thrive' and is basically dead except as being a basis for some of the more advanced solutions (like MathJax). Firefox, IE, Chrome all do not implement it, I'd guess that Opera doesn't either. This article needs to be rewritten describing its current status. As now written, the article is a patchwork. The article also fails to distinguish between semantics (content) and display (Presentation). It goes on to use examples some which are NOT mark up, and others which mix Presentation with Content. The article makes a point of discussing the invisible multiply but in reality that is NOT necessary for Presentation. The article goes on and on about fonts, but version 3 specifies several fonts from Unicode, so that has become (basically) a non-issue.Abitslow (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

MathML in Wikipedia

What is the state of MathML in Wikipedia? Setting Preferences/Math to MathML seems to change nothing, the formulas are still displayed as images. --Hhielscher 18:51, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

agreed. Update anyone? Widefox 13:49, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

example at [3] Widefox 13:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Last I heard, there was no support for MathML in WP, the reason presumably being that the majority of users don't have a browser that supports it. Someone produced a plugin that would have supported it, but nobody working on Mediawiki was interested in accepting the plugin.--76.167.77.165 (talk) 13:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The other reason of course is that MATHML is not humanly editable. For a wiki it is vitally important that humans be able to easily edit the content. Hawthorn (talk) 01:19, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That is irrelevant. What is being discussed here is the rendering of the standard <math> tags in MathML, see the math section in the "Appearance" tab in Special:Preferences. — Emil J. 12:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

@Hhielscher:@Widefox:@Hawthorn: MathML support is now enabled in Wikipedia ;-) --Physikerwelt (talk) 17:33, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Physikerwelt: that's a 10 year old discussion. Since then MathML support has been added to browsers and removed. [4] [5] [6]. Widefox; talk 19:11, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

@Widefox: I think it's somehow strage that it took 10 years to finally enable MathML. Try curl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform | grep '</math>' | wc -l. Thanks for the links.--Physikerwelt (talk) 09:20, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

@Physikerwelt: Just to avoid confusion, there's server and client side support needed. My point is "By default SVG images with non-visible MathML are generated....Client side MathJax is no longer supported." WP:MATH so there's no easy, mainstream support as MathML support has been added to Chrome and Firefox in the last 10 years, then removed. MathJax support has been removed from Wikipedia. Saying that, it is still possible to use MathJax by selecting "LaTeX source (for text browsers)" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering and using a MathJax script in User:(username)/common.js. This currently works. Widefox; talk 07:33, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

@Widefox: What the browser gets is MathML + Fallback images. Look into the page source and you'll see that there is MathML. If you enable the native mathml plugin in firefox mw:Extension:Math FF will display it. Similar tricks exist for chrome and ie. The main blocker why mathml is not displayed by default for FF users is that some system don't have the required fonts which leads to very bad rendering results. Client side MathJax is a different approach. There the server sends the latex code to the users browser. The user has to render the tex code on the client side. But not the whole document is a tex document, only the math is tex and the rest is html. I think this is conceptually a bad approach. One should decide for one format either tex or html.--Physikerwelt (talk) 13:51, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Physikerwelt: sure. Installing an extension isn't an easy, cross-browser answer. I use some mathjax code in my WP setup which I believe works cross browser. Widefox; talk 20:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Some of this discussion might be better at Help talk:Formula, where the options available for users are documented. There is scope for mentioning a client-side mathjax solution, but User:Nageh/mathJax is not the answer. This is 4 years old and Nageh is no longer active on the project, giving an out of date unsupported. A better way is the use the MathJax CDN giving an uptodate supported method. An example script is at User:Salix_alba/MathJax.js but I have not tested it in a year so it might need some tweaks.--Salix alba (talk): 23:16, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Excuses are gone: Webkit supports MathML already

The above reasoning about MathML not being supported by Google Chrome and Safari is obsolete. I just verified testing with both browsers. In fact Safari treats MathML better than images. If you zoom text, the MathML zooms with the text, while the images remain the same size.

Adding MathML presentation would make rendering of equations scalable (same reasoning as SVG support), transfer fewer files, and less data. It would also make it possible to copy formulae from the browser to be imported into word processors where they can be edited and exported back, etc. That's a definite improvement over delivering raster graphics as separate files!

Equations in LaTEX math codes in the wiki should expand to MathML presentation instead of rasterized images (and the generated images aren't even vector graphics! how crude!). 72.234.110.47 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:56, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia now has an option to use MathJax which uses CSS to do it rendering. Its still experimental but you can set a rendering option in your preferences or you can use User:Nageh/mathJax. The latter would let you use MathML output. You do need to be logged in to use these.

Looking at [7] in Chrome and Safari on Mac the rendering is still sub standard, chrome is not attempting any positioning and Safari still has a few problems.--Salix (talk): 13:06, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

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Accessibility

Please can someone add something about how - and how well - MathML works for people using non-visual browsers (such as a blind people using a screen reader)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:55, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Edge does not support MathML

Please correct.--Reciprocist (talk) 10:45, 14 June 2021 (UTC)