FAQ

MathML is the web standard for markup about mathematical content. Just as HTML’s <table> element provides a standard for expressing and working with text containing tabular relationships, the <math> element does this for text containing mathematical expressions.

Rendering, styling, and managing the display of either of these textual elements is natively handled by the browser implementation, efficiently and seamlessly, allowing authors to create markup which will produce the appearance and layout they expect without the need to know the many complex things necessary to achieve the same result without these standards.

Because MathML is a standard, it lends itself to machine processing. Tools exist to create, share, understand, and transform content between MathML and other popular formats like LaTeX and ASCII Math.

You can read more about why we think a native implementation is important.

All Gecko-based browsers like Firefox, and all Webkit-based browsers like Safari and Epiphany, render MathML natively. In addition, MathML also has a vibrant ecosystem of tools that help create and consume it in interesting ways.

At the present time, Chromium-based browsers (such as Chrome and Edge) do not support MathML rendering. Igalia is actively working on the development of this support. Successful completion of this work means landing support in all remaining browsers and browser-based renderers.

With an implementation, all of the tools and integrations fit together nicely and allow the creation, sharing, and consumption of mathematical text.

However, lacking a single browser implementation for rendering leaves a large number of difficult problems and complexity. The fact that the one browser which fails to support MathML happens to be Chromium (Chrome alone had the most market share as of late 2021) further complicates things.

As an end user, you might need to switch browsers whenever you want to view a document containing mathemtical text. As an organization producing documents with mathematical content, or working with mathemtical content, you would be forced to understand and make a selection from a potentially complex series of tradeoffs. Whichever specific tradeoffs you choose, there are costs. The closer you try to approximate what native solutions provide, the higher the costs. Each of those choices guarantees that you will spend more time troubleshooting and will encounter problems with interoperability, performance, and maintenance.