#MathJax is localised at #Translatewiki

#Wikipedia has potentially articles on any subject. When it is about other countries, MediaWiki supports fonts when needed. When it includes mathematics, there is another need; the need to display formula properly. Mathjax has as its slogan: "beautiful math in all browsers" and it does do a great job.

The one thing that was holding back adoption of MathJax was its lack of support of other languages.

Now that the community of localisers at translatewiki.net has adopted MathJax it is a different story. The lack of a localisation can be fixed in the time honoured way; you can do it. There is not only support for the localisation in potentially 300+ languages, there is also strong internationalisation support available when needed.

When your Open Source software needs an international audience, consider translatewiki.
Thanks,
      GerardM

#MathJax is looking for #money

#Mathematics is said to be a language of its own. When you look at a formula, all the logic is in the formula and any text only aids in the understanding. Who cares for text..

This must have been what the developers of MathJax had in mind when they wrote their application. It is all about mathematics and all the rest is obvious eh, English.

MathJax CDN is what the people behind MathJax are asking money for. It provides a service that gives you beautifully presented mathematical formulae in your browser. Because MathJax knows YOUR browser, it does the best for the web page that is provided.

To finance the CDN service, they are asking for donations. I do understand English so I can inform you that at the time of publishing this blog post they had $370.00 in pledges.

Sadly both the MathJax software and the MathJax website are not internationalised. As you can read in this mail, the software will need to be adapted to allow for localisations. When the MathJax developers work together with the fine people at translatewiki.net, they will find people who can advise them on how to internationalise. Recently the JavaScript used by MediaWiki has been adapted to use grammatical gender and plural. Possibly the code or the expertise can be used for MathJax as well.

Once MathJax is internationalised it will be localised in many languages .. There are many proud mathematical cultures and traditions outside of the English speaking world. Given that MathJax is already more or less usable in the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, translatewiki.net is the obvious choice for the MathJax localisation.

When everything is said and done, the request for donations will be made in other languages as well. It surely helps when you address people in their own language.
Thanks,
      GerardM