Solutions to prevent subscripts in formulas from becoming italicized

[huanyushi]

Description

Problem Description

Since Kramdown takes precedence over Mathjax compilation files, subscripts in mathematical formulas may be recognized as italicized underscores, see Mathjax Documentation:

Another source of difficulty is when MathJax is used in content-management systems that have their own document processing commands that are interpreted before the HTML page is created. For example, many blogs and wikis use formats like Markdown to allow you to create the content of your pages. In Markdown, the underscore is used to indicate italics, and this usage will conflict with MathJax’s use of the underscore to indicate a subscript. Since Markdown is applied to the page first, it may convert your subscript markers into italics.

As an example, the following code can not be interpreted correctly:

asdasd $\mathbf{a}_b = c_{\mathbf{d}}$ asdasd 

Solution

Adding a backslash before each underscore prevents it from converting underscores to italics. That is, we can use

asdasd $\mathbf{a}\_b = c\_{\mathbf{d}}$ asdasd 

which can be interpreted correctly.

End

Related link: Mathjax #3067.

But I still have questions. Adding a backslash is not convenient, I can not directly copy these formulas to other files that do not require a backslash, for example:

• if I need to copy it to a .tex file, the mathematical formula in it does not need a backslash to escape. So I must delete every backslash;
• in Visual Studio Code's markdown preview, mathematical formulas with backslashes are not interpreted properly.
• ……

So I wonder if there's a better solution?

[huanyushi]

I just found another way to do it. Add a space after the underline can solve the problem:

asdasd $\mathbf{a}_ b = c_ {\mathbf{d}}$ asdasd 

This can be copied directly to a .tex file and previewed correctly in VS code.

You're welcome to share other better solutions :).

Or is there a way to prevent underscores from being interpreted in italics, we just need to * *?