Hi everyone, There have been a couple of conversations recently and I am hoping to combine them into a discussion towards a long term strategy for math on Wikipedia. To get things rolling, I've added a few topics below which a strategy could address. Perhaps a disclaimer: I manage the MathJax project. Also, I've tried to be brief but I may have compressed too much. Peter. (1) math output Currently, low resolution PNGs are the default and registered users have an option for MathJax (except on mobile). MathML3 is the web standard for math and part of HTML5 and epub3. Does Wikipedia want to adopt MathML output in the long term? MathML is still facing a chicken-and-egg problem: little browser support means little content means little browser support etc. While it's been in use for over a decade, most MathML is hidden on intranets (technical documentation) and behind paywalls (publishing). But there's clearly demand -- e.g. MathJax CDN gets 65 million unique visitors per month. Wikipedia's long term adoption of MathML would help this crucial web standard for education and research since browser vendors will see the content on the open web. But a web standard is not a value in itself -- luckily MathML has real advantages. * accessibility The few existing math accessibility tools (MathPlayer, ChromeVox, FireVox) only work with MathML. Modern accessibility features like synchronized highlighting (for learning disabled readers) is basically impossible with image rendering. * rendering quality Image renderings are not only inaccessible, they lack quality and flexibility. Reflow, CSS, alignments are the classic problems. Static images could be improved via SVG but even these would not be accessible or participate in line breaking. MathML integrates naturally into HTML. * dynamic content Math and science are becoming native on the web -- data and markup is not forced into image renderings anymore, instead dynamic and interactive content is finally showing up. These don't fit into the current authoring and rendering solution on Wikipedia. MathML would be a critical first step towards richer scientific content. * editing Editing math is an obstacle for Wikipedia users. The GSoC project for math in VE has a lot of potential to lower the barrier. But a live preview is not very feasible with server side image generation. (2) math input wikitext is human readable and serialized so MathML does not seem to fit. But TeX-syntax is robust and powerful to create any MathML construct. Texvc has limitations (unicode support, graphical and dynamic content), but the syntax could be extended to overcome these and to produce dynamic content (mathapedia is a nice example). An extended TeX-like syntax might serve as a safe abstraction for tools like d3.js, processing.js, ensuring that Wikipedia content is not dependent on specific rendering solutions. The same holds for physical, chemical and biological markup. Such TeX extensions do make backwards compatibility to real TeX/LaTeX more difficult. (3) First steps towards a transition. Client-side, only Firefox has decent support, so a polyfill like MathJax would be needed for a while. Performance, especially on mobile, would need a thorough investigation. Server side, there are a number of tools for converting TeX to MathML, in particular the recent work by Martin Schubotz towards integrating LaTeXML (a fully featured LaTeX to XML converter); there's also BlahTeX and MathJax via js-runners. The question regarding new forms of content and wikitext might be important for both client and server side solutions. To pull in the entire community, something like bug 48036 (easier MathJax opt-in) would be great. It would allow people to vote with their feet and tell us continually if the benefits of MathML are worth the cost.