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I hadn't heard of LaTeXML before today. I've always simply used MathJax for my web-math needs. So I set LaTeXML up and tried using it. I found it to be pretty

I hadn't heard of LaTeXML before today. I've always simply used MathJax for my web-math needs. So I set LaTeXML up and tried using it. I found it to be pretty easy to use, although I had to update a few things and install some perl modules. It turns out it is rather easy to convert directly from a .tex document to a MathML document. [This is using LaTeXML directly --- not through this ruby] Something I noticed about using LaTeXML out of the box is that the resulting MathML has the original LaTeX as alt-text. So it is encoded in the page, and therefore (potentially) searchable. This is in start contrast to most MathML equations, which (can) look nice but which are neither text-searchable or easily copy-able. Now I am a bit less-certain about my preference for MathJax instead of MathML. I wonder if anyone else has a strong preference and wouldn't mind sharing why you have that preference?

dginev 10y ago
Disclaimer: I'm the author of the wrapper, and a LaTeXML and Authorea developer. Indeed, LaTeXML has been producing great presentation MathML, since before MathJaX was created. But it's also a very different tool and the two projects are largely complementary, rather than competing. I'm happy to hear your first experiment went well, and as a note - most components, including and especially the math output, are highly configurable. I recently counted [1] а 95% success rate by LaTeXML's math parsing on 350 million LaTeX formulas from arXiv.org. That number should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is a self-claimed parsing success, which may not necessarily mean correct+ideal MathML. But it quite often gets the job done great visually, and there is ongoing work to keep improving the coverage. That said, MathJax has historically (and until very recently) fully embraced MathML itself, as MathML was used for its internal representation. The main problem that had/has to be solved on the web was the lack of displaying MathML support in browsers [2], and MathJax addressed that extremely well, as you know. But if, for example, you create an HTML5+MathML document with LaTeXML, and enable MathJax on it, you will get as good a result as using MathJax on HTM5L+TeX documents. At Authorea we use both of LaTeXML and MathJax for our formula support, as well as some alternative renderers such as KaTeX and MathQuill. It's sometimes a bit too big of a hassle to do something advanced however (see [3]), so there is still some way to go. There are certain trade-offs to be considered, but I personally see MathML as an instrumental part of making math accessible, actionable (as a native part of the DOM) and interoperable, and am happy that both LaTeXML and MathJax have embraced it historically. The MathJax team is now officially out of patience with the browser stalemate in displaying MathML, so they're looking for alternatives to move forward. Time will show how that goes I suppose... [1] http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30 http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30 [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml [3] http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please

dginev 10y ago

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the wrapper, and a LaTeXML and Authorea developer. Indeed, LaTeXML has been producing great presentation MathML, since before MathJaX was created. But it's also a very different tool and the two projects are largely complementary, rather than competing. I'm happy to hear your first experiment went well, and as a note - most components, including and especially the math output, are highly configurable. I recently counted [1] а 95% success rate by LaTeXML's math parsing on 350 million LaTeX formulas from arXiv.org. That number should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is a self-claimed parsing success, which may not necessarily mean correct+ideal MathML. But it quite often gets the job done great visually, and there is ongoing work to keep improving the coverage. That said, MathJax has historically (and until very recently) fully embraced MathML itself, as MathML was used for its internal representation. The main problem that had/has to be solved on the web was the lack of displaying MathML support in browsers [2], and MathJax addressed that extremely well, as you know. But if, for example, you create an HTML5+MathML document with LaTeXML, and enable MathJax on it, you will get as good a result as using MathJax on HTM5L+TeX documents. At Authorea we use both of LaTeXML and MathJax for our formula support, as well as some alternative renderers such as KaTeX and MathQuill. It's sometimes a bit too big of a hassle to do something advanced however (see [3]), so there is still some way to go. There are certain trade-offs to be considered, but I personally see MathML as an instrumental part of making math accessible, actionable (as a native part of the DOM) and interoperable, and am happy that both LaTeXML and MathJax have embraced it historically. The MathJax team is now officially out of patience with the browser stalemate in displaying MathML, so they're looking for alternatives to move forward. Time will show how that goes I suppose... [1] http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30 http://prodg.org/talks/mnlp_billion_token_corpora#30 [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml http://caniuse.com/#feat=mathml [3] http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please http://prodg.org/blog/mathml_please