36 lines
1.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
36 lines
1.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
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What is MathJax?
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MathJax is an open-source JavaScript display engine for LaTeX and
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MathML that works in all modern browsers. It was designed with the
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goal of consolidating the recent advances in web technologies into a
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single, definitive, math-on-the-web platform supporting the major
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browsers and operating systems. It requires no setup on the part of
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the user (no plugins to downlaod or software to install), so the page
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author can write web documents that include mathematics and be
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confident that users will be able to view it naturally and easily.
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One simply includes MathJax and some mathematics in a web page, and
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MathJax does 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, or `MathML <http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3>`_, a World Wide
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Web Constortium standard for representing mathematics in XML format.
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MathJax will even convert TeX notation into MathML, so that it can be
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rendered more quickly by those browsers that support MathML natively,
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or so that you can copy and past 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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