<story><title>AsciiMath – An easy-to-write markup language for mathematics</title><url>http://asciimath.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jwmerrill</author><text>To everyone who says &amp;quot;why do we need this when we have LaTeX?&amp;quot; I ask the question &amp;quot;why do we need Markdown when we have HTML?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about Markdown is that it&amp;#x27;s quite legible in its source form, which makes it less distracting to edit. Same deal with AsciiMath and LaTeX: AsciiMath is more legible in its source form which means that it has lower overhead during editing.&lt;p&gt;One of these is more legible than the other:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  (f&amp;#x27;(x^2+y^2)^2)&amp;#x2F;(g&amp;#x27;(x^2+y^2)^2)
  \frac{f&amp;#x27;\left(x^2+y^2\right)}{g&amp;#x27;\left(x^2+y^2\right)^2}
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
In my experience, most people who learn LaTeX don&amp;#x27;t do so until sometime around the middle or end of their undergrad career (certainly in Physics--maybe mathematicians learn it sooner). Earlier than that, people struggle with junk like the Microsoft equation editor. No big deal?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baldfat</author><text>I would say that markdown for informal writing is fine and I like Markdown for many thing BUT if I need formatting LaTeX is a better tool. I have always waited for a new system but its hard to replace what works (With some cursing and banging on the desktop).  Writing Math equations there is almost always a need for formatting within the document.&lt;p&gt;To me a math equation is just another plot. I love making quick plots but when it is my name on the document I want to be able to control every line and space.&lt;p&gt;I really like Scribble a Racket made document language is certainly the way to go but it will take a while to get broader usage. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&amp;#x2F;scribble&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&amp;#x2F;scribble&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;EDIT----&lt;p&gt;Math Library - &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&amp;#x2F;scribble-math&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&amp;#x2F;scribble-math&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;What Scribble does really well is you write your document and it is a one line change to change the output. It can output to MathJax or LaTeX or Markdown or PDF etc....</text></comment>
<story><title>AsciiMath – An easy-to-write markup language for mathematics</title><url>http://asciimath.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jwmerrill</author><text>To everyone who says &amp;quot;why do we need this when we have LaTeX?&amp;quot; I ask the question &amp;quot;why do we need Markdown when we have HTML?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The nice thing about Markdown is that it&amp;#x27;s quite legible in its source form, which makes it less distracting to edit. Same deal with AsciiMath and LaTeX: AsciiMath is more legible in its source form which means that it has lower overhead during editing.&lt;p&gt;One of these is more legible than the other:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  (f&amp;#x27;(x^2+y^2)^2)&amp;#x2F;(g&amp;#x27;(x^2+y^2)^2)
  \frac{f&amp;#x27;\left(x^2+y^2\right)}{g&amp;#x27;\left(x^2+y^2\right)^2}
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
In my experience, most people who learn LaTeX don&amp;#x27;t do so until sometime around the middle or end of their undergrad career (certainly in Physics--maybe mathematicians learn it sooner). Earlier than that, people struggle with junk like the Microsoft equation editor. No big deal?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paulddraper</author><text>I like MS equation editor.&lt;p&gt;I think it does a pretty great job at being a WYSIWYG editor.</text></comment>