Charles,

There is also MathML to consider. Work is underway at the W3C with respect to a new version of MathML, MathML4 [1][2]. Work is underway with respect to adding MathML support to Chromium [3][4].

Instead of LaTeX, MathML could be the way to go.

Best regards,

Adam

[1] https://www.w3.org/community/mathml4/

[2] https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml/

[3] https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5240822173794304

[4] https://mathml.igalia.com/

From: Charles Matthews via Abstract-Wikipedia
Sent: Monday, August 3, 2020 1:53 PM
To: General public mailing list for the discussion of Abstract Wikipedia (aka Wikilambda)
Subject: Re: [Abstract-wikipedia] Natural Language and Mathematics Generation

On 03 August 2020 at 16:50 Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com> wrote:

By utilizing <math>LaTeX</math> elements in an XML-based intermediate output format, one could simply copy that mathematical content to the resultant output wikitext [3]. Wikitext utilizes this same convention for mathematical expressions [3].

Whether or not to include mathematics in Abstract Wikipedia is an important decision to make at a future point. Choosing to include mathematics would entail discussions about representing mathematical knowledge on Wikidata. It would entail discussions about how specific senses of certain words have mathematical meaning. It would entail discussions about how algorithms should determine when to use mathematical and scientific notations and when they should, instead, use paraphrases with the semantic content expressed using natural language. These are just some of the discussion topics which would arise should we desire to include mathematical and scientific notations in Abstract Wikipedia articles.

I'm disagreeing with much of this.

On LaTeX: while it is "industry standard", I'd like to draw attention to a point made in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula#Rendering: "Latex does not have full support for Unicode characters, and not all characters render."

It goes on to suggest that Vietnamese, for example, would not be well catered for, in terms of its diacritics.

I appreciate that we are only talking currently about scoping, and high-level initial planning. But given AW's objectives, this is not a good sign, and I don't think we should just assume that LaTeX as an incumbent gets waved through. It is pre-Web, and something closer to HTML would be preferable, in my view.

My background is in mathematics, and began my Wikipedia career writing mathematics articles. There are certainly issues, such as prose/notation balance. Mathematical language is heavily overloaded, from the disambiguation aspect. But I'm not really recognising  the landscape of issues set out there.

Charles