Ascii2MathML

Installation

npm

npm install ascii2mathml

import ascii2mathml = from "ascii2mathml";

Client

Download full or minified and include the script file

<script src="ascii2mathml.js"></script>
ascii2mathml = ascii2mathml.default;

Usage

var mathml = ascii2mathml(asciimath [, options]);

Or on the command line

npm install -g ascii2mathml

ascii2mathml [options] -- <expression>

# or from stdin
echo <expression> | ascii2mathml [options]

Options (with defaults)

And cli options as inline comments

var options = {
    decimalMark: '.',   // -m,  --decimalmark='.'
    colSep: ',',        // -c,  --colsep=','
    rowSep: ';',        // -r,  --rowsep=';'
    display: 'inline',  // -d,  --display
    dir: 'ltr',         //      --rtl
    bare: false,        // -b,  --bare
    standalone: false,  // -s,  --standalone
    annotate: false     // -a,  --annotate
}

You can also call ascii2mathml with only a configuration object, that will return a new function with the new defaults. For example

import ascii2mathml from 'ascii2mathml';

const mathml = ({
    decimalMark: ',',
    colSep: ';',        // default if `,` is the decimal mark
    rowSep: ';;'        // default if `;` is the column separator
});

mathml('40,2');
// <math><mn>40,2</mn></math>

mathml('(40,2; 3,17; 2,72)', {bare: true});
// <mfenced open="(" close=")" separators=";"><mn>40,2</mn><mn>3,14</mn><mn>2,72</mn></mfenced>

mathml('[40,2 ;; 3,14 ;; 2,72]', {display: 'block'});
// <math display="block"><mfenced open="[" close="]"><mtable><mtr><mtd><mn>40,2</mn></mtd></mtr><mtr><mtd><mn>3,14</mn></mtd></mtr><mtr><mtd><mn>2,72</mn></mtd></mtr></mtable></mfenced></math>

Reference

See here

The second AsciiMath – MathML converter

This package exposes a single function ascii2mathml that intuitively takes simple mathematical expressions written in an AsciiMath dialog, and outputs verbose and ugly (but structured) MathML, that is all it does.

You can use it on the command line or on the server as a node/io.js package, or in the browser by including the script source. In the browser, you choose how to parse the math in your document (by looking hard for any math-y substrings, parsing all expressions wrapped in $…$, or using some other excellent tools out there that does it for you). And you can choose what to do with the output as well (piping it to another program, calling your favorite DOM parser to inject it, or just logging it to the console).

Why not just use MathJax?

MathJax is an excellent tool that you should probably be using if all you want to do is include complex mathematical expressions in a document. And you should probably use it along side this package as well if you want Chrome users to be able to read your expressions. However, MathJax is a complex piece of software that does a great deal more than just translate simple expression into structured form, and if that is all you want to do, then MathJax is definitely overkill. Ascii2MathML promises to be a lot faster (by doing less) then MathJax, and if the readers of your document (or users of your app) are using a standard conforming browser, they will benefit a great bit. You will be able to translate your expression on the server before your readers even open the document, reducing any lag time to native.

Why AsciiMath / Why not TeΧ?

I wrote this tool, because I wanted to be able to author mathematical expressions quickly, with no overhead (imagine 1/2 instead of \frac{1}{2}). TeΧ expressions can easily become verbose and annoying to write (especially on keyboards with complex access to the \, {, and } keys). However, the purpose of this package is not to give people complete control over MathML in a non-verbose way, the purpose is to make it simple for people to write simple expression. Of course I’ll try to give as much expressive power as possible in the way, but I won’t promise to make all complex things possible.

If you want full support of MathML, and don't want to write all those tags perhaps you should look for another tool. There are other great efforts to enable people to author MathML in TeX format, take a look at TeXZilla for example.