Simon Willison’s Weblog

Markdown and Math Live Renderer. Another of my tiny Claude-assisted JavaScript tools. This one lets you enter Markdown with embedded mathematical expressions (like $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$) and live renders those on the page, with an HTML version using MathML that you can export through copy and paste.

Here's the Claude transcript. I started by asking:

Are there any client side JavaScript markdown libraries that can also handle inline math and render it?

Claude gave me several options including the combination of Marked and KaTeX, so I followed up by asking:

Build an artifact that demonstrates Marked plus KaTeX - it should include a text area I can enter markdown in (repopulated with a good example) and live update the rendered version below. No react.

Which gave me this artifact, instantly demonstrating that what I wanted to do was possible.

I iterated on it a tiny bit to get to the final version, mainly to add that HTML export and a Copy button. The final source code is here.

# 21st September 2024, 4:56 am / claude-3-5-sonnet, anthropic, claude, markdown, mathml, ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming, tools, generative-ai, claude-artifacts

Surfin’ Safari: Announcing... MathML! MathML is now supported by the WebKit nightlies. Worth checking out for the typographical discussion that’s broken out in the comments.

# 18th August 2010, 1:49 pm / mathml, safari, typography, webkit, recovered

Firefox 4: the HTML5 parser—inline SVG, speed and more. A complete replacement for the oldest part of Gecko (the HTML parser dates back to 1998) headed up by HTML5 validator author Henri Sivonen, using the parsing algorithm defined in the HTML5 specification. Improvements include parsing taking place off the main UI thread and the ability to embed SVG and MathML directly inline in HTML pages.

# 12th May 2010, 8:56 am / firefox4, gecko, henrisivonen, html5, mathml, parser, svg, recovered

XHTML—myths and reality. Useful overview of XHTML from Tina Holmboe of the W3C’s XHTML Working Group, which suggests considering HTML 4.01 strict unless you need mixed namespaces for things like MathML. I’ve been storing this blog’s content as XHTML but serving as HTML for several years now.

# 7th October 2008, 4:56 pm / mathml, xhtml, tinaholmboe, w3c, namespaces, html

SVG and text/html. Anne van Kesteren discusses the need for SVG and MathML to be embeddable in HTML 5, not just XHTML.

# 17th October 2007, 4:06 pm / html, html5, svg, annevankesteren, xhtml, mathml