To me a math equation is just another plot. I love making quick plots but when it is my name on the document I want to be able to control every line and space.

I really like Scribble a Racket made document language is certainly the way to go but it will take a while to get broader usage. https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/

EDIT----

Math Library - http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble-math/

What Scribble does really well is you write your document and it is a one line change to change the output. It can output to MathJax or LaTeX or Markdown or PDF etc....

Lots of people make that mistake, making a nice listing with newlines in between but them it becomes an ugly single line.

BBcode from forums in the past worked better for comments.

That is a very specific thing for source code editors. But bad for comment boxes. So I don't understand the popularity of markdown for comment boxes.

IMHO markdown should have done the opposite, make listening to all your newlines the default, and if you want to make it ignore a newline, end the line with a backslash or something like that.

I think it does a pretty great job at being a WYSIWYG editor.

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/latexseminar-130324215215-ph...

That output is from the ancient equation editor (MathType Lite, effectively). It used a user-defined font (usuallly Times New Roman), so had no idea about what and where to kern. Output from Word 2007 onwards is significantly better as since then math typesetting is native to Word instead of an OLE object from another application. Also they have their own font (which I find okay for math but ugly for body text), which uses an OpenType table to define math-relevant spacing and kerning factors.

The syntax is something between ASCIImath and LaTeX and IMHO quite readable and way more writable than the latter. The syntax is also described in a Unicode Technical Note (http://unicode.org/notes/tn28/), so there's no reason it couldn't be used elsewhere, either.

What has been typed in Word (mostly; as it included cursor movement to get out of inner expressions again; thus can't be pasted right now):

    \iiint_G [u\nabla^2 v+(\nabla u,\nabla v)]\dd^3 V =\oiint_S (u \partial v/\partial n +v \partial u/\partial n)\dd^2 A

    ∭_G〖[u∇^2 v+(∇u,∇v)] ⅆ^3 V〗=∯_S〖(u ∂v/∂n+v ∂u/∂n) ⅆ^2 A〗

    ∭_G[u∇^2 v+(∇u,∇v)] ⅆ^3 V =∯_S(u ∂v/∂n+v ∂u/∂n) ⅆ^2 A

And yet, despite how much I like LyX, I keep using real LaTeX instead -- especially when there is complex maths. That's because the ability to create macros in maths eventually outweighs everything else readability-wise.

And I'm afraid the same logic applies to AsciiMath. Is there some equivalent to

    \newcommand[1]{vr}{\mathbf{r_#1}}

For example, a λ is just 'l'+tab.

Simarly, you can cycle through other symbols. For b: b->β->

Sadly, TeXmacs hasn't gotten as much love as it deserves: I find it way better than jupyter at producing notebooks/papers that involve math, interactive code, and prose.

Ouch, no Ubuntu package since Vivid? The screenshots look OK... is this worth building from source?

I mean you can always use evil-red-text. But then what is the point LyX?

I'd be curious to hear what you think about the equation editor in Desmos[1] (full disclosure, my employer).

We use an open source WYSIWYG typesetting library called MathQuill[2]. The keystrokes you use are very similar to AsciiMath, but the result is direct editing of the typeset math. E.g. you type '_' to move into a subscript, '^' to move into a superscript, '/' to create a fraction, 'sqrt' to create a radical, etc.

I believe that I can edit much faster with this interface than with Microsoft Equation Editor, and that it's approximately similar difficulty to learn. But I'm biased.

[1] https://www.desmos.com/calculator

[2] http://mathquill.com/

MS equation editor? It's got so much better! The version released when office 2007 came out allows a latex like syntax when writing equations. - still don't use it myself because that would require using ms office which was still broken in other ways when i last used it (2010).

I think I remember MS being better in some edge cases. OTOH, I haven't used it in so long maybe that speaks for itself.

But i was always a bit disappointed, because i had to try hard to keep my source readable. LATEX really clutters your enumerations, equations etc with way to much syntax. I always thought about writing a simple Markdown-with special math mode (similar to AsciiMath)-to-LATEX compiler.