Will \( \) style math formula be supported about remark-math

[twavv]

Sure, sure, I get it.

From my perspective, I'm just trying to give the best experience possible to the users of my editor (users who are at least partially accustomed to the \( syntax). I'm not arguing that this project should support all things LaTeX (e.g., supporting \begin{align}), but I am arguing that supporting \( is a very pragmatic thing to do.

[Ir1d]

I totally agree with you. Lets stick with $ and $$

[wooorm]

If someone wants this btw, packages/remark-math can be forked to add that. rehype-katex and such will still work if you expose the same math node in Markdown!

[Ir1d]

yeah I understand, that's nice. I believe using $ only will be better, even though it takes more time to migrate, it's worth the effort.

[wooorm]

I don’t think it’d be good for markdown to standardize several syntaxes. I think we’re in a position to push for one syntax, as the most popular markdown parser, and I think we should do that. Again: you can do whatever you want with plugins, but I don‘t think we should make it easier.

[wooorm]

While supporting this wouldn’t be too hard to implement (although brittle: the backslashes, parens, and square brackets will interfere with other Markdown constructs, whereas dollars are not in use), I’m not really in favor of adding it: I prefer that remark (and other markdown parsers) push a single way to do things. Having multiple ways to do a similar extension makes the Markdown you write less portable.

[twavv]

I (a person on the internet) disagree with this decision.

Using \( is not a config option, it's part of LaTeX syntax and is actually ENCOURAGED: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/510/are-and-preferable-to-dollar-signs-for-math-mode.

I understand that TeX !== LaTeX but it still feels like a thing that should be supported.

[wooorm]

We’re not necessarily covering (la)tex here though: it’s about math in markdown in general, which could be mathml or asciimath syntax too.

And, see #39 (comment): you can do this yourself if you want to!

[twavv]

I don't feel like users should have to fork the project to be able to do this. Is it really that complex to implement here? It seems like it's not (but I might be mistaken).

[ChristianMurphy]

@travigd there's a fine line here.
Adding configuration for markers may have value to discuss on it's own.

The push back is on reason presented, which appears to be "it's in latex, so it should be here".
That is a non-goal, markdown is not latex.

If you want a latex transformer, contributions towards syntax-tree/ideas#6 are welcome!
If there is a markdown focused reason, it may be worth exploring.

[danny-avila]

If someone wants this btw, packages/remark-math can be forked to add that. rehype-katex and such will still work if you expose the same math node in Markdown!

Can you give some examples on how to do this exactly? Looking at the package code, I'm a little lost albeit I haven't made my own plugin before.

[ChristianMurphy]

@danny-avila see the guide to plugins and ASTs at https://unifiedjs.com/learn/
And extending the parser at https://github.com/micromark/micromark#creating-a-micromark-extension