Why would anyone want Markdown in a chat window? No one is sending document-length chat messages with text formatting. That's what email is for. On the rare occasions you want italics or bullets in a chat, you can get close enough with ASCII if whitespace is preserved.
The purpose of the LaTeX support is being able to communicate Mathematics with ease. Markdown is useless for that. And it's hugely useful e.g., when tutoring or holding office hours via chat (or even via Skype -- just typing the formula is usually easier than writing it on a piece of paper or aiming the camera at a whiteboard).
Your second paragraph is a perfect response and answers my question. Thanks. No need to feel defensive, though. Some people really come here with the ability to learn something new. ;-)
The LaTeX support is a brilliant move. The world is full of chat systems, so you need to have a unique feature, and this is a great feature for a particular user group.
Why not? At some point in time someone probably said why do you want a smiley face in a chat window? Now there are lots of "emoji" symbols. Pandoc uses markdown with inline latex, it gives you multiple ways of typing things and it's less verbose to type. Instead of using an equation array in latex, use a numbered markdown list with latex formulae. Skype has it's annoyances too, ever tried to actually communicate "(B)", you get a great beer symbol you likely didn't intend to write.
A subset of markdown is good in my eyes. To avoid the smiley case, just format and display everything including the formatting characters. Similar to how irssi treats _lines like this_, it will underline all of the characters inbetween while preserving the outer '_' characters.
Or allow user filters priority on formatting so you can modify the behavior on your own (I guess you already could with greasemonkey or some other plugin). Even with just a toggle for disabling markdown/latex would let you copy and paste the latex code out to get unformatted text.
> Instead of using an equation array in latex, use a numbered markdown list with latex formulae
That's a plausible benefit if you're editing a document where nice-looking numbering matters (e.g., an email). In chat, if I have multiple equations, I can just do something like:
1. $equation here$
2. $equation here$
I prefer chat to do as little formatting as possible while still providing a way to write Math. Otherwise you end up with unintended formatting, which is hugely annoying (a la (B) in Skype).
> Skype has it's annoyances too, ever tried to actually communicate "(B)", you get a great beer symbol you likely didn't intend to write.
Yeah, but it doesn't change the (B) on the white board I have the camera pointed at, which is the way everyone communicates mathematics via skpy.
I guess my point is that 1. $equation here$ is exactly the markdown for a numbered list and it will give you somewhat nicer formatting/alignment that stands out if you have to scroll back up. Chat is already in the process of changing, look at slack[1]. The whole idea of markdown is that you don't have to do a lot of formatting.
I agree with the unintended formatting but having all of latex can give you unintended formatting too. IMO markdown doesn't have that much formatting. Markdown could be abused but then again look how the latex is being abused on the site already, people put $$\huge ...$$.
Is it ideal to be writing on a whiteboard to communicate your math? From a teaching/tutoring perspective, unless the video is being recorded, you lose the history. Email is nice but it requires a (possibly) long waiting time for a response comparatively.
LaTeX is for presenting mathematical equations, Markdown is for rich text formatting of natural language. There's nothing particularly wrong with Markdown, but it's not really essential for functional chat either. Conversely, chat programs that don't have LaTeX support are useless to me (and a lot of other people).
Markdown "replaces" the parts of LaTeX related to document formatting, but that's precisely the fragment of LaTeX that doesn't hugely matter in the context of chat. Markdown doesn't replace the parts of LaTeX related to Mathematical typesetting, which is the fragment of LaTeX that does hugely matter in the context of chat.
I think the fundamental confusion in Markdown "vs." LaTeX discussions stems from the fact that LaTeX is a system for type setting mathematics, where the emphasis is on the Mathematics part. But people who haven't typeset a lot of Mathematics don't get what the fuss is about.
> Is it ideal to be writing on a whiteboard to communicate your math?
No, it's aweful! Which is why chat client LaTeX support is so much better than the Skype video chat hack, and also why Markdown isn't a replacement for LaTeX.
The purpose of the LaTeX support is being able to communicate Mathematics with ease. Markdown is useless for that. And it's hugely useful e.g., when tutoring or holding office hours via chat (or even via Skype -- just typing the formula is usually easier than writing it on a piece of paper or aiming the camera at a whiteboard).