Hi,
Here's an idea somebody suggested to me.
I would like to propose a way for any visitor to opt-in to MathJax on the fly. (Oh, maybe I should add a disclaimer: I work for MathJax.)
This would be simply a button on pages with math that would switch MathJax on (and possibly off via a cookie).
I believe this has some advantages.
* All users can get better math rendering but are not forced to have it * Wikipedia would become accessible to all math-capable screen readers (I've heard complaints that user registration is not not very accessible). * Users get to vote with their feet -- usage data could indicate if MathJax rendering quality is worth it.
I think this idea would be relatively simple to implement. Since the math images already contain their own TeX code as alt-text, MathJax can replace the images on the fly.
Excuse my poor javascript skill, but something like the following
$('img.tex').wrap('<span class="MathJax_Preview" />'); // this will allow MathJax to replace the images with its rendering on the fly $('.MathJax_Preview').after(function() { tex = $(this).find('img').attr("alt"); //grab the TeX code return " <script type='math/tex'>" + tex + "</script>" ; //add the script behind the MathJax_preview TODO handle display style }); $.getScript(' https://c328740.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/mathjax/2.1-latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX...'); //run MathJax
should be an approximation.
Of course, this should really use Wikipedia's MathJax configuration file. A real solution also should handle displaystyle math -- I couldn't figure out how Wikipedia handles this in the images but the MathJax side would simply need <script type="math/tex; mode=display">.
I'd be very interested to hear what people think.
Best regards, Peter.