# Description

The (strict) \ce syntax I provided allowed "other" LaTeX commands to be included in \ce only if they were surrounded by $. Example: <chem>A + B + C +$\cdots$</chem> However, there are quite a lot of usages out there that include these commands directly into the tag. <chem>A + B + C + \cdots</chem>. It seems like you allow that, but you parse everything in another mode (for instance, removing whitespace), so that the result will be not as expected. The + will render differently in <chem>A + B + C</chem> and <chem>A + B + C + \cdots</chem>, just because \cdots is present. This is not what a user would expect. In general, I don't like the idea of two parsing modes. Same input should lead to the same output. mhchem does support the sloppy syntax (without$), so it could be enabled if you want to include it into your grammar. I guess this will make things a little bit more complicated.

### Event Timeline

Is the wrong rendering of <chem>X + Y + {\alpha}-Z</chem> (where the presence of alpha modifies the rendering of the +) related or is this a separate bug?

The dollar sign was problematic. There is the begin{math} end{math} workaround.

To summarize it

original mhchem syntax:
<chem>A + B + C + $\cdots$</chem>
workaround:
<chem>A + B + C + \begin{math}\cdots\end{math}</chem>

original mhchem syntax:
<chem>NO_$x$</chem>
workaround (after mhchem is updated)
<chem>NO_\begin{math}x\end{math}</chem>

I don't like it very much, but at least there is a workaround.