# Askbot Project Documentation

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# Enabling MathJax in Askbot

MathJax is a rendering engine for mathematical expressions (based on cross-browser javascript code). On a MathJax-enabled site, such as Askbot you can display perfectly formatted mathematical formulae.

However, MathJax distribution is very large and is not shipped with Askbot.

To enable MathJax on your site, please do the following:

Decide where you want to store mathjax (e.g. to share it with other applications as well):

    cd /some/directory

Follow mathjax installation instructions

Edit webserver configuration so that url http://example.com/mathjax points to that directory and file MathJax.js is available at http://example.com/mathjax/MathJax.js.

For Apache, a following line in the configuration file (maybe within a VirtualHost section) will do:

    Alias /mathjax/ /filesystem/path/to/mathjax/

Finally, enable MathJax in Askbot: “settings” -> “Markup formatting”, check “Enable MathJax” and enter url http://example.com/mathjax (link “settings” is available to site administrators in the upper right corner of the forum pages).

Note

your actual forum site must be served from the same domain and subdomain as mathjax. This is very important for Firefox and some other browsers adhering to the same origin policy for the browser cookies. Mathjax does use cookies to store math display settings.

One day enabling MathJax will be even easier, but some more work needs to be done for this to happen.