More LaTeX functionality in MathJax?

[Tore Fredriksson]

Love this, was looking into making math pages and until I found you MathML was the only real option but since I'm used to LaTeX that was a real burden to get the hang of!

Some questions though, are you planning on implementing stuff like;

\chapter{}

\section{}

\subsection{}

\include{}

or

\begin{figure}

  \includegraphics[width= ]{ }\\

  \caption{ }\label{ }

\end{figure}

and 

\begin{itemize}
  \item ...
\end{itemize} 

and so on? 

Also will $ $, be usable instead of \( \)?

Been looking around, so I hope I don't ask answerd questions!

[Simon Lenz]

Why should MathJax support those none mathematic features of latex?

for the second question see:

http://www.mathjax.org/docs/2.0/configuration.html#using-in-line-configuration-options

regards

[Thomas Leathrum]

There is no reason for MathJax to provide document-structure macros like those you suggest, because the HTML document-structure tags already provide the same functionality, and in some cases HTML actually does a better job (notably HTML <table> tags are much more flexible and configurable than LaTeX tabular environments).  What is missing from HTML is good support for math notation and expressions, which MathML was supposed to provide, but browser support for MathML is still somewhat spotty.  Hence MathJax.

[Peter Krautzberger]

As Tom writes, there are no plans to implement text macros. That doesn't mean you won't find some, usually connected to math-macros, but it's not our goal.

However, I'm curious where your question comes from. If you're really looking to write LaTeX in your html, then you could look into LaTeXMathML http://math.etsu.edu/LaTeXMathML or you work something out from http://code.google.com/p/jaxedit/

But it might be that you're merely looking for a LaTeX2html workflow, in which case I always suggest pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/. tex4ht http://www.tug.org/tex4ht/ is ok, too, since it can leave the math alone (they are a bit outdated, so look for the jsmath option).

If you're just looking for a better workflow in general, then look at light-weight markup languages. Personally, I'm a huge fan of markdown and most markdown flavors deal with MathJax well (pandoc in particular).

Peter. 

[Tore Fredriksson]

The reason for my question is, more or less, lazyness! I would like to upload my .tex files and have a perfect looking webpage, and also edit the .tex files on the server and still be able to use them to make .pdf files!

But as it is now I will make the minor changes needed in HTML!

[Peter Krautzberger]

I understand the feeling, but imho it just won't work. TeX is too much about typesetting to fixed page sizes. Typesetting for the web just works differently and in my experience converting from one to the other just doesn't work. 

Personally, I prefer writing in "markdown+mathjax". That way, I have human readable source and can convert to LaTeX and html easily. In particular, there are javascript implementations of markdown, so your hope of "just uploading" actually sort of works.

my 2 cents anyway.

[pulsar...@gmail.com]

You might want to have a look at http://code.google.com/p/jaxedit/wiki/UseTypeJaxAsLaTeXTypesetter.
It's from a project which implements an online LaTeX editor. I've not had a chance (or really a reason) to use it yet, but it looks like something that would do what you're looking for.

Daniel