Wikipedia talk:Rendering math

templates braket, vec and intmath

I recently created these templates for use with {{math}}, so faults are my responsibility. Are they discouraged by WP:MOSMATH? Thanks in advance for feedback. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 17:24, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Personal styles

I do not agree with [1]. The purpose of these styles is not to make personal appearance unlike one of ordinary people. They reflect shortcomings of buggy and underdeveloped “standard Wikipedia presentation”. They can be reused in future development and this page can be a directory from which they are linked. Let's not over-simplify things with personal “it is not a right thing” judgements. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 05:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Or to put it another way, this page is aimed at people who want to edit Wikipedia formulas that other people will read in articles, not at people who want to tweak the way Wikipedia shows formulas to themselves. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Your proposals? As I supposed, the traditional “let things remain in the present state” of WikiProject Mathematics. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:02, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I think we should push harder to make MathJax into the default renderer. As for MediaWiki, I know little about its workings; most of my edits are on en.wp and commons. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

How will your “default MathJax renderer” solve the problem of class="texhtml"? The second David’s statement I will not comment to avoid personal attacks. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:39, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Then create a separate page with all the user styles you can find. As I understand it, this page deals with the math render options that are available in your preferences, without having to resort to custom scripts and styles. The only notable exception being Nageh's MathJax, as it basically serves as testcode for MediaWiki's MathJax code (for example. the next deploy will enable locally installed STIX fonts).

MathJax will one day be the default renderer for all, and hopefully using the STIX webfonts currently in development. That should hopefully put an end to all the font-mongering; The main STIX fonts are Times-based, which is curretly the preferred font for {{math}} as well. — Edokter (talk) — 14:33, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

BTW, user talk: Cmprince #Put sqrt in .7B.7Bmath.7D.7D is a recent question apparently related to (my) personal styles, as well as (tangentially) to WP:Village pump (technical)/Archive 111 #Template: Conjugate. Your observations about CSS-made overline/vinculum? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:44, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

New templates for over/under-setting and delimiters

I know people will mark them down as unaesthetic, time-wasting, pointless, needless, useless, etc.

Perhaps hypocritically/ironically, I actually prefer to use HTML only for simple inline calculus/algebra and LaTeX displayed...

Nevertheless the new templates were created to see how well they would work, and offer alternative formatting for others to consider. They will probably never be used, and if the delimiter templates must be deleted by concrete consensus I don't mind, but please keep the over/under-setting ones for now, unless the spacing problems cannot ever be fixed then they can be nuked... M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 00:02, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

To my mind, {{ldelim}} and {{rdelim}} deserve extermination not because of their typesetting, but because of their syntax. There are two cases with various ⎡⎢⎣…⎛⎝…⎞⎠…⎤⎥⎦: their use as brackets (i.e. pairwise) and the use of unmatched left symbols (less frequently). Then, the obvious syntactically reasonable (and intuitively appealing) solution would be something like {{square brackets|expression}} for a pair of brackets and {{square brackets|expression|right=no}} for an unmatched left bracket. Not two distinct templates for left and right with switches, which make a wiki code littered with {{…}} and | unrelated to a formula’s structure. Projecting a LaTeX syntax onto wiki is not always a right thing. Also I noticed that HTML code with results from Maschen’s examples is stuffed with unnecessary <span>s nested in numerous levels. I advice Maschen to make a code more tidily and not to reuse existing templates indiscriminately. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:03, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

{{ldelim}} and {{rdelim}} are not really intended for use alone, although if they are, the flexibility of matched or unmatched cases are the whole point. Really they should/could be fed into other templates. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 08:43, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Also all of the < span >s are now in one place: {{delimiter-es}}, so the code can be tidied there. What is the problem of having {{ldelim}} and {{rdelim}} containing switch functions of {{delimiter-es}}? The byte sizes are cut down to less than 0.5 kB. M∧Ŝc²ħεИ_τlk 08:48, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

WT:WikiProject Mathematics/Typography#A WikiProject for advanced wiki typesetting?

Typesetting experts, please comment this proposal for a new WikiProject. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

{{mvar}}

"...uses <var>". This is stated as a disadvantage. Is the <var> being abused? Would it be better to just use italics? — Edokter (talk) — 17:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I only seconded the remark of user:CBM at Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2013/Jan #Destruction of .7B.7Bmath.7D.7D and similar templates. This link can be found at the bottom of essay, by the way. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:44, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 23:28, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:«math» → Wikipedia:Rendering math – Every time I want to go to this page, I have to find a page which links to it, because "«math»" is untypable. There is not even a typable redirect. This is bad for accesability (and it annoys me). — Edokter (talk) — 10:59, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the rationale behind the move, but am unsure the proposed name is the right one. For one thing, why are we abbreviating mathematics? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:56, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Not set on that title, I'm open to suggestions. — Edokter (talk) — 19:07, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

It's really about rendering mathematics expressions. Maybe Rendering mathematics expressions? Rendering mathematics is an implicit abbreviation (with an elision). —Quondum 02:51, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support as proposed. I'm going to make a redirect now. Red Slash 23:43, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Latent Dirichlet allocation needs help from someone familiar with math rendering

Most of the math in Latent Dirichlet allocation is no longer rendering. I cannot figure out when it broke or why. Can someone fix it? --Ronz (talk) 21:06, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

It's a new bug in the rendering engine of Wikipedia. See WT:WPM for a more detailed discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Using a template instead of <math> directly

The <math></math> is quite limiting when it comes to certain things.

1. It's difficult to change the style of it globally, each equation has to be changed individually. Probably more relevant to other wiki sites.
2. Templates can't be used inside it, <math>{{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}} + 1}}</math> yields Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle {{#expr:{{CURRENTYEAR}} + 1}}} , it should of course show 2025. And if you use Semantic mediawiki properties you can easily use these properties to make precise calculations, that will stay up to date even if the values of the variables changes often.
3. Creating numbered equations is time consuming, difficult to read for other editors and wont be consistent on all pages since it must be done on a per equation basis.

{{Tmath}} is similar to what I want but it's lacking some functionality and the documentation is downplaying its potential a bit. Code suggestion can be found here: math template. --Illviljan (talk) 20:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

{{math}} and citation templates

Perhaps David Eppstein can show how can <math>—for all reasonable user preferences—behave “within most citation templates” better than {{math}}? <math> has al least three rendering options: PNG, SVG, and MathML; or even four if to count the obsolete MathJax. Were such tests conducted ever? I am curious. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:51, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Html-rendered math in a citation title looks like a² + b² = c² while outside of the template the same formula looks like a² + b² = c²

Template math in a citation title looks like a² + b² = c² while outside of the template the same formula looks like a² + b² = c²

Wikimedia-rendered math in a citation title looks like $a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2}$ while outside of the template the same formula looks like $a^{2}+b^{2}=c^{2}$

You might notice that in both the html and template cases the italicization is reversed. The only way I know to type a formula the same way in plain text and in a citation title and to get it to render the same in both cases is to use <math>.

—David Eppstein (talk) 15:45, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, looks like a problem in citation templates which use dumb «''» (wiki-code) italic for work titles instead of style="font-style:italic" or any other form of style specification. I cannot fix it myself – the local administration doesn’t trust me with template editing. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:58, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

AsciiMath (again)

I would like to edit formulas using AsciiMath (http://asciimath.org/). As evident from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ASCIIMath4Wiki, this idea is more than ten years old, but it may deserve fresh attention. LaTeX is close to AsciiMath, but not close enough for my taste. LaTeX is simply overkill for simple stuff. I consider it harder to maintain than AsciiMath, because I tend to forget the non-obvious parts of LaTeX syntax after months or years of abstinence. Yes, when I get a not-trivial LaTeX expression to work as intended, I am a bit proud of that. But I think that this sort of pride is not well-placed. LaTeX creates an entrance barrier that we do not need, in my view. What do you think? --RainerBlome (talk) 11:27, 18 December 2019 (UTC)