GNU bug report logs - #73641
30.0.90; Math in EWW/shr

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From: Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel <at> gmail.com>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 73641 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#73641: 30.0.90; Math in EWW/shr
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2024 08:41:32 +0200

On Sat,  5 Oct 2024 at 18:24, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> From: Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel <at> gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2024 16:01:36 +0200
>> 
>> It is possible for the <math> element to include a SVG rendition of the
>> formula.  We could consider displaying that if available (not sure how
>> common it is, though).  Also, we might consider including infrastructure
>> to render MathML, but this would require external programs (there is no
>> reason to reinvent MathJax).  I've done that in one of my packages, see
>> this commit for the relevant code:
>> 
>> https://github.com/astoff/devdocs.el/commit/04a8793072f1fc7c23f115e2c7ee83ce669b6fa4
>> 
>> (Actually, I added a version of the above to two of my packages already,
>> so I think it's pretty clear Emacs should have some general
>> math-rendering infrastructure.)
>
> I agree that it would be good for Emacs to support math rendering, but
> we need to find the best way of doing that, and then look for a
> library or a program that implements that.  Maybe the first step would
> be to conduct a survey of available methods and tools.

Sure, but my suggestion above for a "baseline" implementation of the
math tag in shr makes sense anyway IMO.  Should I prepare a patch?

Now, about your question, I think there aren't too many options:

- Good old TeX: widely available among (and only among) scientific
  people, gigantic and bloated and slow, no MathML support, excellent at
  rendering TeX, has "shell escape" to worry about.

- LuaTeX: like TeX, but probably can do MathML as well.

- MathJax: needs JavaScript, otherwise can be bundled with Emacs (takes
  just 2MB), supports MathML, supports TeX notation but not arbitrary
  TeX packages, safe by default.

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