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User as in reader? That's definitely not true. It becomes integrated into the document (vs a rasterized image), can copy/paste, etc. User as in author? That's

User as in reader? That's definitely not true. It becomes integrated into the document (vs a rasterized image), can copy/paste, etc. User as in author? That's true, but latex -> mathml conversion already exists and is decent, and will get increased attention now that the major browsers all support it to a baseline level.

zamadatix 4y ago
FWIW a rasterized image isn't LaTeX any more than a rasterized image is MathML. Both are markups and both can (and are able to) be rendered into the document in a way they are selectable, sharply resizable, and so on.
owlbite 4y ago
Characterizing LaTeX as a rasterized image is really putting up a straw man - MathJax and similar have existed for a long time. As a reader of raw markup, LaTeX is much much more readable than MathML. As a human writing the stuff, MathML is basically unusable. If you're using some gui/whatever then the backend format is just a tooling issue - why opt for the one that is obtuse for humans to interact with? It's very similar to the reason why we've evolved from HTML to markdown and the like - XML is terrible to interact with if you're not a computer. And even if you are a computer, there's a seeming preference for json, yml and the like over XML as it's human readable/modifiable.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  There are path dependance issues here. Sadly, TeX is (today) wedded way too much to the PDF format, which not only has tons of baggage, but also is not really appropriate for digital documents. HTML is probably the best digital document format we have, and hopefully more people will try again to make it into a self-contained document format : https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-html-bundle-quagmire.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-... The TeXmacs editor - not to be confused with TeX or emacs, exports and imports to HTML, thanks to MathML : https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html#general-1 https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html#general-1 For instance : http://www.texmacs.org/joris/naw/naw.html http://www.texmacs.org/joris/naw/naw.html (EDIT : oops, at least it used to use MathML, I guess they might have made it optional considering the lack of support by Chrome ?) Also, LaTeX specifically has the issue that a LOT of its tooling has poor Unicode support, though Lua(La)TeX and Xe(La)Tex are trying to make that better.

zamadatix 4y ago

FWIW a rasterized image isn't LaTeX any more than a rasterized image is MathML. Both are markups and both can (and are able to) be rendered into the document in a way they are selectable, sharply resizable, and so on.

owlbite 4y ago

Characterizing LaTeX as a rasterized image is really putting up a straw man - MathJax and similar have existed for a long time. As a reader of raw markup, LaTeX is much much more readable than MathML. As a human writing the stuff, MathML is basically unusable. If you're using some gui/whatever then the backend format is just a tooling issue - why opt for the one that is obtuse for humans to interact with? It's very similar to the reason why we've evolved from HTML to markdown and the like - XML is terrible to interact with if you're not a computer. And even if you are a computer, there's a seeming preference for json, yml and the like over XML as it's human readable/modifiable.

BlueTemplar 4y ago
There are path dependance issues here. Sadly, TeX is (today) wedded way too much to the PDF format, which not only has tons of baggage, but also is not really appropriate for digital documents. HTML is probably the best digital document format we have, and hopefully more people will try again to make it into a self-contained document format : https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-html-bundle-quagmire.html https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-... The TeXmacs editor - not to be confused with TeX or emacs, exports and imports to HTML, thanks to MathML : https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html#general-1 https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/help/faq.en.html#general-1 For instance : http://www.texmacs.org/joris/naw/naw.html http://www.texmacs.org/joris/naw/naw.html (EDIT : oops, at least it used to use MathML, I guess they might have made it optional considering the lack of support by Chrome ?) Also, LaTeX specifically has the issue that a LOT of its tooling has poor Unicode support, though Lua(La)TeX and Xe(La)Tex are trying to make that better.