Tradeoff between LaTex, MathML, and XHTMLMathML in an iOS app?

Question

I plan to use Xcode to make an app for the iPhone that displays math equations that high school and college students often use. I do all my math with Mathematica, and it allows me to save such equations in three relevant formats. (1) LaTex (.tex); (2) MathML (.mml); (3) XHTMLMathML.

The Mathemactica documentation says the third format is XHTML with embedded MathML. I found some of the examples at this browser test don't look so good on my iPhone. So I will propbably not rely completly on MathML.

I am a total beginner with Xcode and the three file formats that I mention above, but I have some experience with OOP in C++. Assuming Mathematica can do a good job writing the required LaTeX, MathML, XHHTMLMathML needed for whatever equation, what are the tradeoffs between the three file formats? Can I mix the formats in the same app?

Answer 1

I would suggest to use HTML. The "right" way to include mathematical content is MathML -- which is part of HTML5 (but see below for using TeX).

iOS's UIwebview is webkit based and therefore has the same partial MathML support (though on iOS5 it's significantly worse due to a font bug) so I would also suggest to use MathJax (disclaimer: I'm part of MathJax).

MathJax is an open source javascript library which understands TeX and Asciimath input, converts either one to MathML and renders MathML as HTML-CSS or SVG (in any modern browser).

MathJax has no problem mixing these input formats. Additionally, it has better MathML support than webkit (and you can always configure MathJax to use the native MathML support if you want -- say when you know your content should render fine in webkits native support).

To get you started, you can take a look at this open source app to see how MathJax can be integrated in an iOS app.