Chrome 25 supports MathML but is still rendered as HTML/CSS with MathJax

[phi...@gmail.com]

Chrome 25 (Canary) now supports MathML (I'm not sure to what extent):

http://blog.chromium.org/2012/11/a-web-developers-guide-to-latest-chrome.html

The MathML Samples page:

http://www.mathjax.org/demos/mathml-samples/

Still renders HTML/CSS and warns canary users that the browser may not be compatible with MathML. However the renderings with MathML look good. Is this on purpose? Do you know why this happens?

Also, is their support for MathML a superset of what can be rendered with MathJax?

Thanks,

[Frédéric WANG]

Hi,

MathJax 2.1 has been released a couple of weeks ago and MathML is only
enabled since Chrome 24 which is not released yet. Certainly, this
message should be updated to reflect the new state of MathML support in
Chrome 24, when this one is released.

To say that a browser has a good MathML support really depends on which
requirements you're putting on the quality of the mathematical
expressions and on which advanced MathML features you're using. I think
that for basic mathematics (elementary arithmetic: additions, sums,
fractions etc) Webkit's rendering is perfectly fine. For most people,
the quality is not good when you have to draw operators for more
advanced mathematics (stretchy braces, summation symbols, integrals etc)
but still readable. More advanced features like equation labeling are
still absent and won't work at all. For your information, here is a
non-exhaustive list of issues that prevents Webkit to render all the
MathML code that might be generated by MathJax:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84019

Currently, the decision of the default output mode is only based on the
browser. Personally, I think in the future this should be adapted to
take into account the MathML output generated, LaTeX extensions/macros
used by the authors etc so that for example MathJax will choose the
native MathML support for elementary mathematics and the HTML-CSS/SVG
output when the author needs more advanced features. But for the moment
to change the default behavior, either the author of the page should use
a configuration option or the visitors should use the MathJax context menu.

--
Frédéric Wang
maths-informatique-jeux.com/blog/frederic

[Peter Krautzberger]

"Chrome now supports MathML" simply means that Chrome now compiles with the flag to include the webkit code for MathML rendering.

Webkit's MathML support is neither complete nor on the level of MathJax's MathML support. 

Just to be clear: Dave Barton has done an amazing job at re-writing WebKit's MathML code and getting it through Google's security tests -- it's a big step forward and the community owes him immensely!

To be fair, MathJax also defaults to HTML-CSS output on Firefox (since MathJax v2.0) because we added MathML features that are currently outside of gecko's implementation.

Peter.

[Peter Krautzberger]

Dang, Fred beat me to it ;)

Hope together this makes sense.

[Peter Krautzberger]

As discussed elsewhere, Google has decided to drop MathML support again in Chrome 25.

[William F Hammond]

It's been suggested by Neil Soiffer in the www-math list (at w3) that one can register dismay by going to the url http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152430 and clicking (once) on the star near the upper left corner of the page next to the bug id number.

I think every "vote" will help!

                                                 -- Bill

--
William F Hammond
http://www.albany.edu/~hammond/
Email: gel...@gmail.com

[there...@gmail.com]

I made a quick comparison. MathML support in Chrome 25+ is not perfect.

http://therealmarv.blogspot.com/2013/01/comparing-mathml-support-in-html5.html

I would not rely in MathML rendering from Chrome currently.

Marvin

[Peter Krautzberger]

Hi Marvin,

I saw your test back then. But that was for a version that had MathML enabled. It's now been disabled again by Google -- so we're back on the level of Chrome <24 which means essentially no support.

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