On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Sounds like someone should propose MathJax as a
gadget:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals
That solves some of the problems, but making it a gadget isn't
technically very different from just putting it in user javascript.
Not all the MathJax files are javascript: there are also web fonts and
fallback image fonts. Ideally these would be served from Wikimedia
servers. The system they are using right now loads them from off-site
somewhere, and that would not be fixable by the gadget system. Users
can also install the fonts locally but that is not a good solution for
a widespread roll-out.
The ideal implementation would be a system that detects whether the
user has javascript enabled and a decent browser, and if so rolls them
over to MathJax automatically. Users who fail that test or who
intentionally opt out would receive images only. This would
completely replace the current system (but re-use texvc to make the
images).
This system would not be hard to implement, but there is little
incentive for anyone to spend time on it without some pre-commitment
from the site admins to make it live. If we just want something that
users can opt in to get, we already have that.
- Carl