AsciiMath is a client-side

mathematical markup language Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is a mathematical markup language, an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web ...

for displaying mathematical expressions in

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s.. Using the

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

script ASCIIMathML.js, AsciiMath notation is converted to

MathML Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is a mathematical markup language, an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. It aims at integrating mathematical formulae into World Wide Web ...

at the time the page is loaded by the browser, natively in

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

, and via a plug-in in IE7. The simplified markup language supports a subset of the

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

language instructions, as well as a less verbose syntax (which, for example, replaces "\times" with "xx" or "times" to produce the "×" symbol). The resulting MathML mathematics can be styled by applying

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

to class "mstyle". The script ASCIIMathML.js is freely available under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

. The latest version also includes support for SVG graphics, natively in

and via a plug-in in IE7. Per May 2009 there is a new version available. This new version still contains the original ASCIIMathML and LaTeXMathML as developed by Peter Jipsen, but the ASCIIsvg part has been extended with linear-logarithmic, logarithmic-linear, logarithmic-logarithmic, polar graphs and pie charts, normal and stacked bar charts, different functions like integration and differentiation and a series of event trapping functions, buttons and sliders, in order to create interactive lecture material and exams online in web pages. ASCIIMathML.js has been integrated into

MathJax MathJax is a cross-browser JavaScript library that displays mathematical notation in web browsers, using MathML, LaTeX and ASCIIMathML markup. MathJax is released as open-source software under the Apache License. The MathJax project started in ...

, starting with MathJax v2.0..

Example

The well-known

quadratic formula In elementary algebra, the quadratic formula is a formula that provides the solution(s) to a quadratic equation. There are other ways of solving a quadratic equation instead of using the quadratic formula, such as factoring (direct factoring, gr ...

x=\frac

looks like this in AsciiMath: x=(-b +- sqrt(b^2 – 4ac))/(2a)

References

External links

* * * Lightweight markup languages Mathematical markup languages {{compsci-stub