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MathML fails to render equations under certain edge cases
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Description

MathML seems to almost always work for me but I found one page that rampant with errors that prevent MathML from working almost entirely. Please see:

Exhibit A -- View with MathML rendering enabled in your user preferences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Action_(physics)&oldid=649419549

As you can hopefully see (I've tested in multiple browsers on multiple platforms), almost none of the equations render at all. I could not find a single cause or solution -- I tried many different changes and none showed much consistency. The best I can come up with for a cause is that many of these equations use slightly nonstandard (?) fonts like \varepsilon, \mathcal, \mathbf, etc and this combines with nonstandard punctuation (in or around the equation) in some way to cause issues, e.g. "<math>blah</math>." [note the period] or ":<math> [newline] blah [newline] </math>". Only issue with this explanation is that the problem is there even for the last few equations which don't all seem to have issues like that.

Regardless of the cause, the best and most consistent solution I found was to simply add empty brackets before the end of every math element, i.e. replace all "</math>" --> "{}</math>". Please see:

Exhibit B -- Fixed version with diff. Again, view with MathML enabled to see that the issue is corrected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Action_(physics)&diff=673395237&oldid=649419549

Please let me know if you do not see the problems I described, or if you do and you have some better idea what is going on here. Thanks.

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Wicklet raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.
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I reverted the edit. Can you recheck.

Well I don't know what happened but it seems to be working now. I assure you this problem was very real yesterday. I suppose it may have been the result of certain browser extensions, although like I said I tried on multiple browsers.

Physikerwelt claimed this task.

@Wicklet: I belive that you had a problem... but unfortunately I can not reproduce it, so I'm closing this bug now

Hi, I'm running into this issue again on many Wikipedia pages now, including the one discussed here. I noticed it works in Firefox but not any other browser. Can you please check in another standard browser (Chrome, Safari, IE). Please check as soon as possible — maybe it's a server issue, since it started working again for me before.

Still having this problem, can you please check again?

I carfully checked the page again. It looks all good and correct to me. I read throug the whole page and I did not find issues with the formulae. Furthermore, the content of the page is correct as well (even though I don't see the significance for the relativistic Lagrangian). I feel sorry but I don't know what I could do to make progress with this problem.

Thanks for looking. Did you make sure to check in Chrome or some other browser besides Firefox? I have seen the issue in multiple browsers with all extensions disabled, on multiple computers, on multiple networks, and have checked for things like proxy configurations and so on. So the only possible sources I can imagine are from some specific way that both my computers are configured, or else something within my user account. Is there any way to check this without logging in? Other than that I can try checking on a friend's computer on my user account or another account if possible.

By the way, for reference here are some images of what I am seeing (which I should have provided before, sorry).

Screen Shot 2015-08-08 at 4.22.04 PM.png (825×1 px, 327 KB)

Screen Shot 2015-08-08 at 4.22.34 PM.png (826×1 px, 243 KB)

Screen Shot 2015-08-08 at 4.22.59 PM.png (827×1 px, 348 KB)

I have tried this with Windows 7 in Firefox 40.0, Explorer 11, Chrome 44 and Tor browser, and with XP in Firefox 39, and Explorer 7 both logged out and logged in and with math preferences set to png and MathML for all combinations.

The only combination that had the problem stated was XP with Explorer 7 and MathML. That is, the problem is only apparent with out of date junk combined with non-standard user settings.

I guess I never mentioned specifically my platforms before. I have seen the issue on all current technology, not out-of-date non-standard junk. Chrome 42+ (stable and canary), IE 11, Safari 8+, on Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.10+.

I still see the issue on occasion. Ran into it again a few days ago. Anything else I can do to provide more data or information?

Physikerwelt claimed this task.

Since no additional data was reported in the last 4 month I close this issue or now. Feel free to reopen if needed.