Mathup: Easy MathML authoring tool with a quick to write syntax

If there had been something like this standardized in Markdown from the start, it might have had a chance for wide adoption. Right now, learning to see and use LaTeX math as easily as more ASCII-like notation is just more convenient since it is widely adopted (in GitHub, in VS Code, etc.). It&#x27;s harder, but it also provides the added benefit of maintaining your LaTeX skills.<p>I think Google&#x27;s Chrome team&#x27;s choices of priorities bear a significant portion of the blame for this. They refused to implement MathML for the longest time, and even when it was implemented, it was partly done and financed by a third party. Without MathML, LaTeX-to-HTML JavaScript hacks became the norm, solidifying LaTeX as the standard even for non-typesetting use cases. Had MathML been implemented by Chrome early on, a more direct and easier translation from something ASCII-like to MathML would likely have been adopted.

This is pretty much how I always wanted formulas in my notes to look like (but was too lazy to implement it myself, I guess). It&#x27;s not even so much about fast input, it&#x27;s about that it needs to be at least somewhat readable in plain text (not rendered), which LaTeX certainly isn&#x27;t. Typing greek letters and stuff is not really a problem with XCompose, but TeX-based tools are too dumb to render &quot;naïve&quot; expressions pretty. I am not sure why: it seems not a huge computational task to figure out that ] is a `\right]`, and it&#x27;s not like I often need to use `\left]` anyway. And while rendering `(a+b)&#x2F;a` as a `\frac` is opinionated, honestly, the only reason why this occurs in my notes is when I was too lazy to type `\frac{}{}`.<p>I want this to be the default (or at least an option) in all markdown text editors (obsidian, github, etc.) I mean, as an intermediate: in the end MathJax rendering is much prettier than plain MathML.

At first glance it seems that it not only has functional whitespace, but has overloaded it (used for grouping numerator and denominator or for pre- and suffixes). Also, it seems inconsistent in how it handles commands, some seem to be reserved words while others seem to require \`X`. It might be the right choice for its intended use case of quick and easy math, but it seems like it might come with a few footguns if you use it for anything more than that. Any experiences?

I like this. It addresses a need for quickly writing math expressions with an intuitive syntax. I don’t have to write math expressions often enough to remember the more complex formatting from more powerful packages; and when I do use mathematical expressions, they are usually fairly simple. This will fill that niche.

I love that this publishes the &lt;math-up&gt; web component.<p>It&#x27;s a great way to take content that&#x27;s actually pretty humanly readable in the HTML, and translate it to an even better rendered format in the UI. It&#x27;s good for progressive enhancement and framework support at the same time.

you know what we need even less than another json alternative? another math-language alternative. more so than any other formal(ish) language, a representation (for math) benefits from network effects (because math is both older and broader than any&#x2F;every other such language).

I absolutely love this project - for years I&#x27;d been using a homegrown s-exp to MathML translator, but your project is both more intuitive and capable.<p>mathup&#x27;s tiny, clean API makes it easy to integrate the project in all sorts of processing workflows, both in-browser and scripting.

Could pick a better homepage example. The demo code doesn&#x27;t render very well in MathML. Kerning on the exponents is off. In &quot;beta^alpha&quot; the alpha character touches the beta. Looks better switching to MathJax.

I think all DSLs should be turned into function calls. Of course, function calls can be simpler, such as some infix and dictionary parameters.

Sounds cool! How is this different than <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciimath.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;asciimath.org</a>?

The example on first hit made no sense for me, the markup and the result were completely unrelated.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s a server load issue.

Hmm... The mobile experience of that page is not very convincing on first contact