Dear Wikipedians,
We'd like to announce a major update of the Math (rendering) extension.
For registered Wikipedia users, we have introduced a new math rendering mode using MathML, a markup language for mathematical formulae. Since MathML is not supported in all browsers [1], we have also added a fall-back mode using scalable vector graphics (SVG).
Both modes offer crisp rendering at any resolution, which is a major advantage over the current image-based default. We'll also be able to make our math more accessible by improving screenreader and magnification support.
We encourage you to enable the MathML mode in your Appearance preferences. As an example, the URL for this section on the English Wikipedia is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering
For editors, there are also two new optional features:
1) You can set the "id" attribute to create math tags that can be referenced. For example, the following math tag
<math id="MassEnergyEquivalence"> E=mc^2 </math>
can be referenced by the wikitext
[[#MassEnergyEquivalence|mass energy equivalence]]
This is true regardless of the rendering mode used.
2) In addition, there is the attribute "display" with the possible values "block" or "inline". This attribute can be used to control the layout of the math tag with regard to centering and size of the operators. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math/Displaystyle for a full description, of this feature.
Your feedback is very welcome. Please report bugs in Bugzilla against the Math extension, or post on the talk page here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Math
All this is brought to you by Moritz Schubotz and Frédéric Wang (both volunteers) in collaboration with Gabriel Wicke, C. Scott Ananian, Alexandros Kosiaris and Roan Kattouw from the Wikimedia Foundation. We also owe a big thanks to Peter Krautzberger and Davide P. Cervone of MathJax for the server-side math rendering backend.
Best,
Gabriel Wicke (GWicke) and Moritz Schubotz (Physikerwelt)
[1]: Currently MathML is supported by Firefox & other Gecko-based browsers, and accessibility tools like Apple's VoiceOver. There is also partial support in WebKit.
On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwicke@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear Wikipedians,
We'd like to announce a major update of the Math (rendering) extension.
For registered Wikipedia users, we have introduced a new math rendering mode using MathML, a markup language for mathematical formulae. Since MathML is not supported in all browsers [1], we have also added a fall-back mode using scalable vector graphics (SVG).
Both modes offer crisp rendering at any resolution, which is a major advantage over the current image-based default. We'll also be able to make our math more accessible by improving screenreader and magnification support.
We encourage you to enable the MathML mode in your Appearance preferences. As an example, the URL for this section on the English Wikipedia is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering
For editors, there are also two new optional features:
- You can set the "id" attribute to create math tags that can be
referenced. For example, the following math tag
<math id="MassEnergyEquivalence"> E=mc^2 </math>
can be referenced by the wikitext
[[#MassEnergyEquivalence|mass energy equivalence]]
This is true regardless of the rendering mode used.
- In addition, there is the attribute "display" with the possible values
"block" or "inline". This attribute can be used to control the layout of the math tag with regard to centering and size of the operators. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math/Displaystyle for a full description, of this feature.
Your feedback is very welcome. Please report bugs in Bugzilla against the Math extension, or post on the talk page here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Math
All this is brought to you by Moritz Schubotz and Frédéric Wang (both volunteers) in collaboration with Gabriel Wicke, C. Scott Ananian, Alexandros Kosiaris and Roan Kattouw from the Wikimedia Foundation. We also owe a big thanks to Peter Krautzberger and Davide P. Cervone of MathJax for the server-side math rendering backend.
Best,
Gabriel Wicke (GWicke) and Moritz Schubotz (Physikerwelt)
[1]: Currently MathML is supported by Firefox & other Gecko-based browsers, and accessibility tools like Apple's VoiceOver. There is also partial support in WebKit.
Cool stuff. I'd like to personally thank Physikerwelt for caring so much about math in MediaWiki and the Wikipedia projects. He's done a lot of work to maintain the prior rendering pipeline and to bring this new system to production.
Bryan
On 10/23/2014 11:21 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Gabriel Wicke, 23/10/2014 22:11:
Both modes offer crisp rendering at any resolution
I've heard this before but couldn't figure out: does "crisp rendering" here have some specific technical meaning, or does it just mean "good"?
I meant it primarily as in 'sharp', 'not blurry', with a bit of 'pleasing' mixed in. PNG images get blurry when scaled up, while the new mode remains sharp. Additionally, MathML rendering can at least in principle use sub-pixel rendering to further improve sharpness. Not sure if Firefox already does this.
The ability to scale well also allows us to match the (possibly user-selected) text size via CSS, which improves accessibility and overall visual consistency.
Gabriel
On Fri, 24 Oct 2014 08:21:35 +0200, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
I've heard this before but couldn't figure out: does "crisp rendering" here have some specific technical meaning, or does it just mean "good"?
From a (slightly) more technical side, math used to be rendered as PNG images, and now it's going to be rendered as regular text (fonts) or SVG images, both of which can be scaled losslessly.
Really happy to see this going live!
On my part, many thanks to Moritz for pushing this forward and being such a cool person to work with, and of course the rest of the team for helping push out such a cool service :-)
On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 11:11 PM, Gabriel Wicke gwicke@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear Wikipedians,
We'd like to announce a major update of the Math (rendering) extension.
For registered Wikipedia users, we have introduced a new math rendering mode using MathML, a markup language for mathematical formulae. Since MathML is not supported in all browsers [1], we have also added a fall-back mode using scalable vector graphics (SVG).
Both modes offer crisp rendering at any resolution, which is a major advantage over the current image-based default. We'll also be able to make our math more accessible by improving screenreader and magnification support.
We encourage you to enable the MathML mode in your Appearance preferences. As an example, the URL for this section on the English Wikipedia is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering
For editors, there are also two new optional features:
- You can set the "id" attribute to create math tags that can be
referenced. For example, the following math tag
<math id="MassEnergyEquivalence"> E=mc^2 </math>
can be referenced by the wikitext
[[#MassEnergyEquivalence|mass energy equivalence]]
This is true regardless of the rendering mode used.
- In addition, there is the attribute "display" with the possible values
"block" or "inline". This attribute can be used to control the layout of the math tag with regard to centering and size of the operators. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math/Displaystyle for a full description, of this feature.
Your feedback is very welcome. Please report bugs in Bugzilla against the Math extension, or post on the talk page here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Math
All this is brought to you by Moritz Schubotz and Frédéric Wang (both volunteers) in collaboration with Gabriel Wicke, C. Scott Ananian, Alexandros Kosiaris and Roan Kattouw from the Wikimedia Foundation. We also owe a big thanks to Peter Krautzberger and Davide P. Cervone of MathJax for the server-side math rendering backend.
Best,
Gabriel Wicke (GWicke) and Moritz Schubotz (Physikerwelt)
[1]: Currently MathML is supported by Firefox & other Gecko-based browsers, and accessibility tools like Apple's VoiceOver. There is also partial support in WebKit.
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org