Introduction

AsciiMathParser.js is a cut-down, modified and encapsulated version of Peter Jipsen's ASCIIMathML.js v2.1 code that contains only the logic for parsing ASCIIMath math expressions into MathML.

This decouples the ASCIIMath parsing code so that is no longer tied to being run in a browser, opening it up for developers to use it in lots of interesting ways, such as:

• Integrating ASCIIMath input syntax with a different browser display engine, such as MathJax.
• Using ASCIIMath outside the browser.
• Unit testing the ASCIIMath parser.

Warning!

This code was developed in 2010/2011 and hasn't been updated since then.

Download

This code may be downloaded from https://github.com/davemckain/AsciiMathParser.js/blob/master/AsciiMathParser.js

Demo

There's a trivial static HTML demo page included here: see demo.html.

Usage

1. Obtain a DOM Document

First of all, you need to get yourself an XML DOM Document Object. If you're in a browser, you can do this yourself quite easily. I've also provided a utility file called AsciiMathParserBrowserUtilities.js that contains a method to make this even easier for you:

var document = AsciiMathParserBrowserUtilities.createXmlDocument();

NOTE: This should work in most modern browsers (as of 2010-ish), including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Opera. I originally tried to make sure it works with Microsoft's slightly lacking DOM implementation in Internet Explorer at but haven't been able to check many versions of MSXML and this hasn't been tested for a long time now!)

If you're using this code in a non-browser environment, you may have access to a reasonable DOM implementation that you can use. If not you may have to build your own. One thing that certainly works is using a Java org.w3c.dom.Document object and calling this code via the Rhino JavaScript engine. (In this particular case, I suggest you use my asciimath-parser Java code to simplify this for you.)

2. Create a parser

Make sure you first pull in AsciiMathParser.js, which contains all of the parsing code. Then:

var asciiMathParser = new AsciiMathParser(document);

creates a new ASCIIMathML parser that will use the DOM document you provide to build the resulting MathML elements

Note: An instance of AsciiMathParser() is not safe to use by multiple threads.

3. Parse snippets of ASCIIMath input

You can now use your parser to parse ASCIIMath input strings, which will return a MathML <math> DOM Element Object:

var mathElement = asciiMathParser.parseAsciiMathInput("ax^2 + bx + c");

You can call this method as many times as you like. You may pass an optional second argument to pass additional options to the compiler. If present, this argument should be a Java object containing some of the following values:

• displayMode (true|false): if true, a display="block" attribute will be added to the resulting element.
• addSourceAnnotation (true|false): If true, a MathML <annotation encoding="ASCIIMathInput"> element will be added to the resulting MathML that contains the original ASCIIMath input.

4. Do something fabulous with your MathML

You're hopefully now planning to do something exciting with the resulting MathML objects. If you think the DOM is too complicated and would rather have an XML string, then the AsciiMathParserBrowserUtilities.js utility class has a couple of functions which might be useful:

var mathmlString = AsciiMathParserBrowserUtilities.serializeXmlNode(mathElement);
var nicerMathmlString = AsciiMathParserBrowserUtilities.indentMathmlString(mathmlString);

That's pretty much all there is to it. Enjoy, maybe.

Limitations

• This code only parses ASCIIMath input syntax. There is currently no support for its LaTeX input syntax, or its SVG/graphics features.

• The MathML generated doesn't include any of the extra attributes and styling that ASCIIMathML adds. You can add these yourself if needed by manipulating the resulting MathML Element.

Original ASCIIMathML.js code information

This code is based on v2.1 of the original ASCIIMathML.js code, which can be accessed from: https://github.com/asciimath/asciimathml/commit/7afc51428eb2192d07f8ec61ac05b70de6c040dd

License

Peter Jipsen's original ASCIIMathML.js v2.1 code is LGPL 2.1 licensed, so I've preserved that here.

Author

You can contact me at david [dot] mckain [at] ed [dot] ac [dot] uk