Potential MathJax section in the formatting help

Yes, we should add how to use MathJax to the help for this site. Unfortunately, there are several things that work against getting this done:

1. The Codidact help system sucks! When we first started this site, I wrote a bunch of help pages, carefully designed to present information keeping both the user's context and what we need them to know before posting here in mind. Unfortunately, I could only control the entries in what is now the "Electrical Engineering Site" box. Codidact controls all the other help boxes, and worse yet, where they are placed on the page. The result is a new user is presented mostly with drivel they don't care about at first glance. The stuff we really need them to know is at the bottom. I expect most user give up before even noticing it's there.

2. I haven't found a good but concise description of how to use MathJax yet. Everything I have found always links to elsewhere. The help on the Math site you linked to gives some information, but not much. As a result of all this, I don't know how to use MathJax (every time I've wanted to, finding the docs would have taken too long when I just wanted to write a simple equation), so I don't know how to explain it the right way.

3. If I could arrange the EE site help page to properly present information in the right order and formatting relevant to a user, then I might be willing to spend a few hours really learning MathJax and writing a basic description. However, as long as Codidact Help has the horrible presentation it does, it's not worth my volunteer effort.

So the answer is "Great, but the Codidact help needs to be fixed first". I tried that many years ago and got nowhere, so gave up and stopped writing help pages. If you want to revisit that, post about it on main Meta.

posted 6 days ago

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Olin Lathrop‭

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