How can I check texts using mathjax? [closed]
Closed as not constructive by watchmaker on Oct 19, 2025 at 23:31
This question cannot be answered in a way that is helpful to anyone. It's not possible to learn something from possible answers, except for the solution for the specific problem of the asker.
This question was closed; new answers can no longer be added. Users with the Vote on Holds ability may vote to reopen this question if it has been improved or closed incorrectly.
How can I check texts using latex/mathjax (intended for this site, but not restricted to that) on my own system before getting online and spending time on try&error?
The focus is on mathjax, which is akin to or even a subset of latex.
LaTeX induces the problem of not knowing what packages the recipients have installed. We had some fun creating blackboard fonts for Greek letters using metafont, but I totally missed that others didn't have those fonts and my papers wouldn't compile.
(Only tag I found was latex, but that's not a perfect match.)
1 answer
Mathjax is a JS program that runs on websites and renders fenced Latex code.
If you just want to see how it renders, there are countless web repls out there. https://www.mathjax.org/#demo is one, this site is another. From your question, it sounds like you are trying to debug a complex Mathjax piece and the web repls don't give you enough detail about what's broken. Most people just use some Latex compiler, and then trust that "if it works in Latex it should work in Mathjax" - this has the same environment issue though.
You can run Mathjax locally with nodejs, that is probably the most direct way. Their own docs explain it: https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/web/hosting.html But if your problem is predicting what Latex packages are supported on some 3rd party site (like Codidact) this probably doesn't immediately help as you would need to know the details of what they provide.
To be more precise, it seems like Mathjax doesn't handle Latex packages because it doesn't implement full Latex. Instead they implement some Latex in JS, and provide a limited interface to extend it. See https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/input/tex/macros.html#tex-macros and https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/input/tex/extensions.html. So if your issue is matching the environment of some website, the only surefire way is to figure out specifically how their Mathjax is set up and replicating on your side with Mathjax.
That said, and while I'm also curious now if there's a way to do it, Mathjax seems like something where you just keep it simple and hope you get lucky and it just works. If you have some complex Latex, rather than fighting Mathjax, you could just convert it to a PNG or PDF (with a real latex tool) and put that online.
2 comment threads