Topic on Talk:Requests for comment/Reduce math rendering preferences 2

IMHO, the default setting should encourage authors to use the <math>-tags whenever they typeset math: <math>2^x</math> is a standardized way to typeset math (as opposed to HTML where you could write the same as 2<sup>x</sup> or using a styled <span> tag etc.) and thus easily machine-readable, i.e. can be automatically adapted to a new rendering method, if ever implemented. Even now, many authors avoid using the <math> tag even for simple formulas due to the previously stated $\text{ obvious problems with inline PNG rendering}\,$. Making PNG rendering the default setting would make things worse. I'd suggest you either resolve the baseline/size problems prior to making this change or boost a promising alternative such as mathJax.

This post was posted by He7d3r, but signed as Pberndt.

Making PNG rendering the default setting wouldn't make things worse as HTML formatted math would stay as such. A main problem with the "HTML if possible" options is that math tag HTML rendering is horribly broken.

The change would encourage authors to favor manual HTML-formatting over <math> tags for inline formulas. From a semantics point of view, that's worse.

Indeed.

From a semantic point of view, the current part-HTML-part-PNG solutions are all "worse". ;) In fact, the MOS for math articles on the English Wikipedia does encourage HTML for inline math because of the issues with PNG rendering. Nageh 19:02, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

IMO semantics at source code level is more important than semantics of the HTML code after rendering. It is easy to fix flawed rendering of TeX-Code by replacing the current renderer with a better one, once one is available. But it might turn out to be pretty hard to automatically recover the semantics (in mathematical means) from HTML code - which could become necessary if someone wants to port Wikipedia to a different platform (i.e. non-browser), improve the PDF renderer, etc.

I understand what you mean, and I agree. Obviously, there is a trade-off between nicer HTML rendering and future-proof TeX code. But note that we've got the {{math}} template, which can retain (at least) part of the semantics you desire. Of course, this would assume its consistent use... which is not the case. :/

2^x is not how you'd write it in html. You would write 2^''x'', with the x italicized. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MOSMATH. Michael Hardy 18:48, 24 July 2011 (UTC)