I have updated to PhP 7.2 FastCGI and WordPress 5.2. I want to use WordPress to display markdown documents that have some latex, so I've installed a plugin for markdown which seems to work. However, I'm getting mixed results with "mathjax-latex". Perhaps markdown and mathjax-latex were not meant to cooperate, I will need to do more testing.
The main issue is that the LaTeX markup that does work in a markdown document that we export to HTML with, say pandoc, does not work "as is" with mathjax-latex. In particular, to get in-line math, special markup seems required.
I can easily show the result of failed efforts, but have difficulty showing the markup. The ordinary markdown code tricks, like indenting four spaces or enclosing in ```, seem not to protect code from latex interpretation.
For inline math, the single dollar sign does not work. Observe, you see dollars $x_i$. However, writing the words "latex" within hard brackets "[" does work, along with "["/latex"]". The symbol "["latex"]" is converted to slash-paren, "\ (". Also I can explicitly type a double escaped "\\ (". Here is a gamma inserted inline with the first method: \(\gamma\), and using the second method \(\gamma\). Here is another Einstein favorite with the double-backslashed parenthesis: \(E=mc^2\), but the single dollar sign is a dud $E=mc^2$. However, if I literally write '$latex' at the beginning, it works: \(E=mc^2\).
Here is an example where the dollar sign notation does not work: This x sub i is at the end of a line: $x_i$. That is a big disappointment because all of my example documents use that notation. Just now I wonder about using escapes, '\$x_i\$'. Fail!
But if I put double dollar sign xsub i on line by itself, we get a displayed equation,
$$x_i$$
Double dollar signs work to get a display equation works OK if the dollar signs are on lines by themselves, which is happy news.
$$
y_{i}\label{1b}
$$
Bad news: the preferred LaTeX markup "\[" does not work to give an inline equation:
[
E = mc^2
]
To make that work, apparently I need a double back slash. That's unfortunate.
Here is a double back slash hard bracket, to show it can work:
\[E-mc^2\]
I use double backslashed "\begin{equation}" to try for a labeled/numbered display:
\begin{equation}
\gamma\label{eq:gam}
\end{equation}
No number, and label doesn't work, trying to cross-reference, equation(\ref{eq:gam}) fails.
So, LaTeX that begins with a backslash apparently needs a double backslash, but that does not work for all \LaTeX, as you see from the fact that LaTeX is not displayed with any special markup.
