User talk:Rdm: Difference between revisions
→"math" HTML tag not rendering properly - diff reveals alttext attribute problem
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: Anyways, for a diffuse problem like this, maybe we just need to take a different approach. For now, I guess, I try to read the markup in the source, and I sometimes try to find a browser that will render the stuff. That's probably not a good solution... --[[User:Rdm|Rdm]] ([[User talk:Rdm|talk]]) 21:28, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
:: Following the discovery that formulae were consistently ceasing to be visible on OSX and iOS Chrome and Safari after Gerard made some edits which included introducing two white space characters into <math> tags (one before and/or one after the Latex code) - I ran a diff on the HTML source code generated by the wiki software. First '''without''', and then '''with''' the flanking spaces.
:: It turns out that the wiki preprocessor does '''not''' pass those redundant spaces through, but instead responds to them (for reasons best known to its writers and its particular history) by injecting a lengthy and redundant "alttext" attribute into the math tag.
:: The intended effect of an '''alttext''' attribute in the top level math tag seems unclear. This Mozilla page suggests that the attribute is marginal https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/MathML/Element/math, and the current MathML standard says that it: "provides a textual alternative as a fall-back for user agents that do not support embedded MathML or images."
:: Given the redundant injection of flanking white space around Latex content in <math> tags changes the code generated by the Wiki preprocessing software in this way, and has the effect of preventing the display of formulae on the main browsers used on two large platforms (99% of iOS browser usage and 90% of OS X browser usage – see http://www.zdnet.com/article/which-browser-is-most-popular-on-each-major-operating-system/) I recommend that the use of these spaces is explicitly discouraged in the Rosetta code editing guidelines. The practice adds no value for users, but does entail costs. [[User:Hout|Hout]] ([[User talk:Hout|talk]]) 21:40, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
== Sieve of Eratosthenes ==
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