Extension talk:Math

"Mathoid as a service" is the recommended approach for the Math extension, and the default one.

Inasmuch as "Mediawiki" is offered as free/open source software (FOSS) presumably for open use, I would strongly prefer to avoid any gratuitous dependencies on third party services to display my content.

IF mediawiki is the same software that Wikipedia, Wiktionary and related projects use, that is fine, but the spirit of open source is violated if the display of math equations or other critical content is "going proprietary."

Any users of the software outside the Wikimedia Foundation itself are obviously going to use it for original research and other commercial and personal interest content on private or semi-private wiki installations.

People who are interested in anyone-can-edit general purpose wiki content are obviously going to be contributing that content directly in accordance with that philosphy to the sites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the most part.

Basic settings to lock things down and avoid dependencies on extraneous services are absolutely critical for corporate, business, private and other non-profit or third-party users of free and open source software.

IF the software is being taken "in house" and no longer updated and made available on a free and open source basis, then obviously I will have to look for alternatives. Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 12:54, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

• As it notes in a conspicuous red box just a little above that old section: "Warning: Mathoid is no longer actively developed in favor of Native MathML mode. It will eventually be discontinued." --Clump (talk) 13:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

  IF "Native MathML mode" works universally, then there is no need for SaaS or software as a service in the future, long term. Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 13:24, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

  $wgDefaultUserOptions['math'] = 'mathml'; gives me "native mathml only" and $wgDefaultUserOptions['math'] = 'native'; gives me "no rendering" Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 14:04, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

  It looks like a big fragile cumbersome and ultimately broken system to me, which started with an unrealistic goal of displaying any all \LaTeX math equations without actually running \LaTeX. My website is broken because it has to connect to "restbase". I don't want or need spoken versions of math equations online. That's what the text I write with the equations is supposed to be. Plain text or written explanations in plain language, which is convertible to speech at blind people's own convenience and choice just like all other content on the internet. I'm just looking at Mathjax docs for reference, and I don't see anything better than that there either. There's a gang of math bosses and government and university jerks who want universal proprietary software enforced for all mathematical equations. It's an intellectual property thing at a really dumb textbook-thieving locker-room-jock level. People who use math equations are considered intelligent or intellectual and the government has to keep intellectuals under surveillance and control at all times with forced dependencies on third party services among other matters. ∫_-∞^∞ e^-x2/2dx=√π Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 19:05, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

@Justina Colmena ~biz: All the relevant software is of course open source. Given that your browser doesn't apparently support native MathML, use of some software (locally installed as a service or used over the Internet) seems required? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Native MathML it works with a browser extension in Chrome but it is missing support for \mathfrak and \mathbb among other goodies. I would install it locally if practical. Nodejs with its own subdomain.

https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/mediawiki/services/mathoid

Not that it doesn't work. Just that I'm just a little uncomfortable hot-linking all the math equations on my website to the MediaWiki server. Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 14:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

@Justina Colmena ~biz: Understood, but many others found running a local service beyond their capacity, especially in limited hosting environments. Certainly we hope that browser vendors upgrade their code so that the need for this goes away entirely. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Browser vendors are not mathematicians. Do not expect textbook quality math equations from browser vendors updating their code anytime soon. Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 14:43, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I want math equations to look like this

x =

– b ± √

b² – 4ac

---

2a

---

ζ(s) =

∞
Σ
n = 1

1

---

n^s

---

∞
∫
–∞

e^–x2 dx = √

π

Plain old HTML only with UTF-8 math characters. No Mathjax. No MathML. No Mathoid. No RESTBase. No third-party equation-runners. No funny business or back-end API services.

So it's a slight overhead and inconvenience to code straight HTML for math equations, but it is a highly portable and permanent, self-contained solution that runs with the text, it's easy to copy and paste and modify or rework, and Mediawiki software is very nice to allow just that without any funky math extensions or browser add-ons installed at all!

For a private installation or any webpage not even on a wiki.

If someome is looking at my equations and wants to copy/paste/republish, that is fine, but I really don't want all my equations being run out the backdoor wholesale off my website to a closed-source proprietary back-end commercial SaaS equation-runner API processing service.

Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Security versus cross-site scripting and 3rd-party server-to-server API SaaS connections

FBI Deletes PlugX Malware from Thousands of Computers

To retrieve information from and send commands to the hacked machines, the malware connects to a command-and-control server that is operated by the hacking group.

It is precisely this sort of group I am concerned about here, in the case of MediaWiki catering to a number of predatory and highly litigious academic publishers, paper mills, "bookjackers", exam cheaters and sleazy websites offering GED-level remedial math lessons with loud advertising, and so on and so forth. Just witness the extreme measures taken by the math bosses to maintain command and control of virtually all general display of math equations on the web.

https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/master/SECURITY

MediaWiki takes security very seriously. If you believe you have found a
security issue, see <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reporting_security_bugs>
for information on how to responsibly report it.

MediaWiki is open source, freely available software. Presumably anyone who uses the software would use it a "content management system" for a website as they see the same software used on wikipedia.org and associated sites and people naturally assume it is available for anyone to copy, use and modify, if not necessarily to sell proprietary versions of it as prepackaged commercial software. That's a lot of content contributed by people who collaborate with varying degrees of identity or anonymity and a very sophisticated system for managing it all.

The alternative Mathjax, the next thing to be immediately suggested, https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/web/hosting.html documents on its own web page (and in the standard industry biz-speak) the usual spyware and cross-site scripting measures and countermeasures.

Firefox and Local Fonts

Firefox’s same-origin security policy affects its ability to load web-based fonts, as described above. This has implications not only to cross-domain loading of MathJax, but also to using MathJax locally from your hard disk. Firefox’s interpretation of the same-origin policy for local files used to be that the “same domain” for a page is the directory where that page exists, or any of its subdirectories. This allowed MathJax to be loaded from a subdirectory of the director where the web page was loaded.

Following Secure by Design Alert: Eliminating Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerabilities one can forget about the possibility or practicality of installing Mathjax or using it by cross-site scripting on a secure server, as the same tactics have obviously been employed there by the same general group of "math bosses" to establish content distribution networks with unified command and control for math related malware.

At a certain point, I'm looking for FBI and CISA to seize domains that host command and control centers for the various types of malware which are used to display math equations on websites by cross-site scripting and back-end API SaaS connections. One of the counter-countermeasures employed is the use of legitimate domains or domains with a lot of seemingly or apparently legitimate content as "human shields" to cloak the malicious commmand and control centers by mounting or proxying them on a subdirectory or folder, such as https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/ for the Wikimedia REST API (1.0.0) (OAS3) which is contacted to display each and every math equation on any and all mediawiki installations everywhere. That is the very reason for Firefox's policy of disallowing the use of mounted subdirectories for cross-site scripting. Justina Colmena ~biz (talk) 16:42, 19 January 2025 (UTC)