MathJax v3.2.1 now available

The MathJax team is pleased to announce version 3.2.1 of MathJax, released earlier today. This is mostly a bug-fix release, resolving various display and input bugs and other issues. See the individual bugs linked below for more details, and the 3.2.1 milestone for the pull requests involved in this release.

New Features in this Release

Speech-Rule Engine

MathJax now integrates version 4 of Speech Rule Engine (SRE). (#800)

  • SRE v4 is a full port to ES6 using TypeScript providing transpiled JavaScript for easier integration into third party projects via its npm package.
  • Uses webpack as the primary bundler to offer a single bundle file for both node and browser.
  • Major rewrite of rule handling and provision of locales.
    • Smaller locale files and memory footprint in the index structure.
    • Hierarchical locale setup that allows inheritance within rule sets.
    • Uses ES6 promises to handle locale loading and engine setup.
  • A number of new locales for Swedish, Norwegian (Bokmal and Nynorsk), Danish (MathSpeak only), and Catalan (MathSpeak only)
  • Locale files are now served with a .json extension. (https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/issues/2403)

For more details and a full list of all changes and additions see the SRE release notes.

MathJax makes use of SRE v4 new features in the following ways:

  • Source integration
    • Integrates SRE directly via importing the relevant library files into its code and webpacks them into its components and bundles.
    • Replaces the timeout-driven SRE loading promise with SRE’s new native promises.
    • The sre.ts module now imports and exports exclusively API methods necessary for SRE’s use in MathJax
    • A new mathmaps.ts module provides a map for directly integrating and bundling locales (see more below).
  • Components integration
    • The sre component under components/src/sre now simply handles copying the locale files in the mathmaps directory.
    • The a11y/sre component under components/src/sre contains a configuration file sre_config.js that sets up the basic SRE configuration for MathJax, especially the correct path to the mathmaps folder (online or in the npm distribution).
    • Components can webpack SRE’s locale files into bundles. See the components/src/tex-chtml-full-speech component as an example.
  • MathJax Configuration
    • The sre path in MathJax is now used exclusively for pointing to a directory containing the locale files.

Most of these changes are internal and should remain unnoticeable. However, there are a couple of points to note when using SRE via MathJax:

  • Previously, MathJax would load SRE as a single library file, but now webpacks its source files, which, as a side-effect, closes several convenient loopholes you could have exploited in the past:

    • OLD: SRE’s functionality was available to a developer as if running SRE standalone. That is, in both node and browser, all of SRE’s API methods where available in the SRE namespace, and additionally, the full functionality was reachable in the browser through the sre namespace.

      NEW: Now only the explicitly exported API methods are available to import via the a11y/sre component.

    • OLD: You could easily change the version of SRE MathJax would use by:

      1. In the browser, pointing to an alternative copy of sre_browser.js using the sre path in the MathJax configuration, and
      2. In node, replacing the speech-rule-engine package with a different version in the node_modules folder.

      NEW: This is no longer possible.

  • The sreReady method is still exported but deprecated. In the future, you should use the corresponding method in the API bundle Sre.sreReady().
  • By default SRE comes without rules (or locales) preloaded, and pulls those in only when necessary. That is, it loads the relevant .json files via XML-HTTP-request in the browser, or via file loading in the node module. However, it is now possible to pre-bundle (some) locales directly into a custom distribution using webpack, which is particularly useful if you want to run MathJax offline while still using the full power of is assistive technology extension. See the tex-chtml-full-speech component as an example.

Output Improvements

  • Properly handle border and padding CSS in CHTML and SVG output. (#799)

Lazy Typesetting

  • Have lazy typesetter typeset all remaining math before printing. (#777)
  • Have lazy typesetting specify a (configurable) distance around the viewport for triggering typesetting. (#777)
  • Allow containers to be marked so that they are always typeset by the lazy typesetter. (#777)

Bugs Addressed in this Release

Output Bug Fixes

  • Update svg output to properly handle token elements with multiple child nodes. (mathjax/MathJax#2836)

  • Include CSS to reset border-collapse in CHTML output. (#2861)

  • Prevent CHTML adaptive CSS from adding character CSS multiple times. (#796)

  • Make sure all character data is included when adaptiveCSS is false. (#2724)

  • Place super- and subscripts properly around \vcenter elements. (#787)

  • Add a minimum height for accented characters. (#2766)

  • Take relative scaling into account for CHTML output of non-MathJax fonts. (#2818)

  • Fix placement of surd when root extends above the top of the root. (#2764)

  • Fix problem with msubsup when subscript is blank. (#2765)

TeX Input Fixes

  • Add \textup and \textnormal to macros allowed by textmacros. (#2846)

  • Update \operatorname to work more like in LaTeX. (#2830)

  • Have physics package match nested parentheses, fix spacing issues. (#2760, #2831)

  • Re-implement \sideset using mmultiscripts. (#1217)

  • Fix problem where errors during mhchem argument collection are not properly handled. (#2835)

  • Update XSLT to produce better results in mml3 extension. (#785)

  • Add ability for TeX input to force normal variant for CJK input. (#2744)

  • Make sure math-in-text forms an ORD atom within textmacros. (#2828)

  • Make sure explicit attributes added by \mmlToken are not removed. (#2806)

  • Fix typo in \DeclarePairedDelimiter macros, and substitute arguments in pre and post sections. (#2816, #2758)

  • Mark mo as not an accent if used in \overset and friends. (#2800)

MathML Input Fixes

  • Fix problems with verification and repair of malformed mtables. (#779)

  • Add support for mglyph use of fontfamily/index. (#2298)

  • Trim MathML string before parsing it. (#2805)

  • Only process MJX-TeXAtom classes on mrow elements. (#2822)

  • Move mml3 filter to an mmlFilter so that forceReparse isn’t needed. (#2718)

  • Make U+2061 through U+2064 have TeX class NONE so they don’t affect spacing. (#806)

Miscellaneous

  • Handle documents better when created by parsing in XHTML. (#2788)

  • Add version numbers to component files and check them when loaded. (#738)

  • Fix problem where some menu settings weren’t sticky (#2786)

  • Add a linkedom adaptor (#2833)

  • Refactor usage of all-packages to reduce redundant code in components. (#784)

  • Make variables local in legacy AsciiMath code. (#2748)

  • Make safe extension properly handle scriptlevel of 0. (#2745)

  • Update webpack files for empheq and cases. (#2762)

  • Update build tools to work with extensions better. (#737)

  • Add defaultPageReady() to MathJaxObject interface. (#746)

Availability of version 3.2.1

Although version 3.2.1 was released earlier today, it may take a day or two for the new version to propagate to the various CDN network computers, so you may not see v3.2.1 immediately if you are loading mathjax using a generic mathjax@3 URL. You should be able to obtain it immediately if you use the full version mathjax@3.2.1.

You may also have a cached version in your browser, so you may need to either clear the browser cache, or relaunch your browser (or both) in order to get the latest version (the cached version should expire in about a week, depending on the CDN being used).

Note that it is possible for some files to be updated before others, so it may be the case that users of websites that load extensions (either explicitly or by autoloading TeX packages) may get mixed versions until the CDN versions stabilize, which should be within a day. If you are loading one of the combined components (e.g., tex-chml.js), this is less likely to be an issue, and if you are loading a component ending in -full it is even less likely to occur.

Version 3.2.1 is available immediately from npm and GitHub for use in node applications.