Common MathJax Markdown Formulas
I'm working on a few posts that need to use math symbols to more effectively display an mathematical formulas. In the past I would have put the formula into Word and taken a screenshot of the formatted text. That method is a pain to manage and get consistent output, so I finally got a plugin working for Pelican to use render specially formatted text into HTML.
This article is more of a post-it note to myself on some of the less common text formatting used in Markdown to render math symbol.
Basic MathJax symbols in Pelican
This is a list of common math symbols and the MathJax text formatting to get the HTML output.
| Symbol | MathJax | HTML Output |
|---|---|---|
| Degree1 | \unicode{xb0} | \(\unicode{xb0}\) |
| Multiplication dot | \cdot | \(\cdot\) |
| New line | \newline | |
| Fraction | frac{1}/{2} | \(\frac{1}{2}\) |
| Char space | \space | \(x\space y\) |
| Square root | \sqrt{x} | \(\sqrt{x}\) |
| Exponent groups | 2^{x+1} | \(2^{x+1}\) |
There are some notations that need to be used in conjunction with each other. The best example is getting left/right parentheses around a fraction. For example, placing a pair of parentheses ( ) around a fraction. Placing the parantheses around a fraction will render a single character high parentheses bracket around the fraction - (\frac{1}{2}) will render like this:
What we want is the parentheses to be wrapped around the entire fraction. To do this you need to use the \left and \right formatting pair to get the parentheses around the entire fraction. So now \left(\frac{1}{2}\right) will render like this:
MathJax has a page that allows you to test MathJax text formulas for proper formatting before posting.
MathJax Preview Page: https://www.mathjax.org/#demo
This page will likely be updated, but not reposted, over the next couple of months as I find new MathJax text formulas to keep track of going forward.
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This code works with the Pelican MathJax plugin, but not a markdown preview app like Marked that has MathJax enabled. ↩