Extension:Math/Wikibooks-20160516

With the old PNG based rendering which was default until recently, the article on de Broglie wavelength looked like this screenshot. The formulae looked ok on small screens. However, on high resolution displays and poster-sized printouts, those images looked pixelated. Moreover, as demonstrated at the bottom of the screenshot, page search did not work for formulae (indicated by the failed search for the greek letter lambda).

This changed with the new SVG based rendering. The images are vector graphics now. This gives a clear picture at all scales. However, page search still does not work for formulae. Consequently, more work is needed for best results with rendering and text integration.

Since many people experienced problems with native MathML rendering, due to insufficient font support for MathML, special browser configuration is needed. To simplify this process, Frédéric Wang developed several add-ons. They are all available at Mozilla's official add-on page.

At the very minimum, the native MathML add-on is needed. It hides the SVG images and shows the MathML.

With that add-on, our de Broglie wavelength articles look as shown in the above screenshot. In addition, in-page search works for formulae. However, the fonts and sizes might be considered as sub optimal.

Using the other add-ons to install custom fonts, produces this ...

... or like this.

... coming back to functionality. With the new rendering it's also possible to use the formulae with other applications such as computer algebra systems. To simplify copy and paste, the MathML copy add-on is recommended.

Finally, we can copy from the German version of Wikibooks (left) to Wolfram Mathematica (right). All equations were copied using the Firefox MathML copy add-on. Note that I had to add an additional equals sign to In[8] to transport the semantics correctly. As you can see, the de Broglie wavelength was correctly derived from the photon energy and the classical relativistic impulse.