Am 03.02.2016 um 14:31 schrieb Markus Krötzsch:
Hi Moritz,
I must say that this is not very reassuring. So basically what we have in this datatype now is a "LaTeX-like" markup language that is only supported by one implementation that was created for MediaWiki, and partially by a LaTeX package that you created.
Markus, this TeX dialoect is not a new invention by Moritz. It's what the Math extension for MediaWiki has been using for over a decade now, and it's used on hundreds of thousands of pages on Wikipedia. All that we are doing now is making this same exact syntax available for property values on wikibase, using the same exact code for rendering it.
I think having consistent handling for math formulas between wikitext and wikibase is the right thing to do. Of course it would have been nice for MediaWiki to not invent it's own TeX dialect for this, but it's 10 years to late for that complaint now.
Moritz, I seem to recall that the new Math extension uses a standalone service for rendering TeX to PNG, SVG, or MathML. Can that service easily be used outside the context of MediaWiki?