In the past, administrators of MediaWiki installations faced a challenging installation procedure when they tried to enable rendering of mathematical formulae. As of February 22, no configuration or custom installation is required with the latest versions of MediaWiki core and the Math extension, if your wiki is connected to the internet.
This is how it’s done: For wikis connected to the internet: Simply download the latest versions for both of Mediawiki core [1] and the Math extension [2] and that's it. The latest version can be obtained by selecting “master” in the extension distributor.
For wikis not connected to the internet: Download the latest version of Mediawiki core [1] and the Math extension [2]. Install the node module mathoid [4]. We recommend using Node version 8 LTS [5], if node.js is not installed on the server. Mathoid can be installed to any location of your server that is accessible to the web server. For instance, in the location of the Math extension. After having installed and tested (e.g., by running npm test) the mathoid installation, point your MediaWiki to this location by adding the following config to your LocalSettings.php file:
$wgMathoidCli = ['/srv/mathoid/cli.js', '-c', '/srv/mathoid/config.dev.yaml'];
Replace /srv/mathoid with the location of your mathoid installation and run update.php [6].
If you have any issues with the installation, please file a phabricator ticket using the following link https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/task/create/?projects=MediaWiki-...
Links and further reading: [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_Git [2] Documentation of the Math extension https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math** [3] Extension distributor https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/Math [4] Mathoid node package https://www.npmjs.com/package/mathoid [5] Node homepage https://nodejs.org/en/ [6] How to run the database update https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Update.php
Scientific Paper: Moritz Schubotz, Gabriel Wicke: Mathoid: Robust, Scalable, Fast and Accessible Math Rendering for Wikipedia. CICM 2014: 224-235 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.6179.pdf
Required versions: * For offline Math rendering MediaWiki core must include patch https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/399768/ ** The math extension must include patch https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/372100/
-- Moritz Schubotz Researcher
isg.uni-konstanz.de/people/moritz-schubotz +49 1578 047 1397