i’ve always thought that mathml is a great idea, allowing you to write formulae in html which look good afterwards. or so i thought. then, today, i saw this. at least in my browser (firefox 2.0.0.6), i have the feeling that word by default produces nicer formulae than this. then, i started searching the web for other examples, maybe it is possible to produce better output. but then, even when looking at (seemingly) standard examples as this and this (the latter supposed to display that 44.997 is an element of the reals), i’m shocked how bad this looks, if it works after all (the first did, more or less, and the latter didn’t). i mean, i know that it might be illusive to expect that the formulae look as good as in latex, but i would have at least expected them to be rendered correctly…
well, i’d guess the only way is to stick to rendering formulae with latex and including them as images, as it is standard practice on basically all sites displaying good looking formulae on the web, as wikipedia, matroids matheplanet, matheraum, etc.
or simply don’t use any formulae in html files, as i’m doing so far. too bad.

sometimes i wonder why mathematics is working so smooth as it is. for me, this is one of the most intriguing things around, next to the questions on why do we live and on whats the question to the answer 42… based on a small set of axioms, nobody knowing whether they are free of contradiction, an enormous building of constructions and proofs has been built. so huge, that no one can learn about all of it in one lifetime. and inside this building, between lots of dirty corners with ugly computations and hard work, there sit so many beautiful small and big results, sometimes showing surprising connections to completely different parts of mathematics. this connectivity is what surprises me most. every time again. that’s what i like about mathematics, and that’s what’s keeping me doing math. and makes me even more curious about the question on why it is working so smooth.