39 lines
2.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
39 lines
2.0 KiB
ReStructuredText
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What is MathJax?
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MathJax is an open-source JavaScript display engine for LaTeX, MathML,
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and AsciiMath notation that works in all modern browsers. It was
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designed with the goal of consolidating the recent advances in web
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technologies into a single, definitive, math-on-the-web platform
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supporting the major browsers and operating systems, including those
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on mobile devices. It requires no setup on the part of the user (no
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plugins to download or software to install), so the page author can
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write web documents that include mathematics and be confident that
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users will be able to view it naturally and easily. One simply
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includes MathJax and some mathematics in a web page, and MathJax does
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the rest.
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MathJax uses web-based fonts (in those browsers that support it) to
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produce high-quality typesetting that scales and prints at full
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resolution (unlike mathematics included as images). MathJax can be
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used with screen readers, providing accessibility for the visually
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impaired. With MathJax, mathematics is text-based rather than
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image-based, and so it is available for search engines, meaning that
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your equations can be searchable, just like the text of your pages.
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MathJax allows page authors to write formulas using TeX and LaTeX
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notation, `MathML <http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3>`_, a World Wide Web
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Consortium standard for representing mathematics in XML format, or
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`AsciiMath <http://www1.chapman.edu/~jipsen/mathml/asciimath.html>`_
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notation. MathJax will even convert TeX notation into MathML, so that
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it can be rendered more quickly by those browsers that support MathML
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natively, or so that you can copy and paste it into other programs.
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MathJax is modular, so it loads components only when necessary, and
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can be extended to include new capabilities as needed. MathJax is
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highly configurable, allowing authors to customize it for the special
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requirements of their web sites. Finally, MathJax has a rich
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application programming interface (API) that can be used to make the
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mathematics on your web pages interactive and dynamic.
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