<math>

The top-level element in MathML is <math>. Every valid MathML instance must be wrapped in <math> tags. In addition you must not nest a second <math> element in another, but you can have an arbitrary number of other child elements in it.

Attributes

In addition to the following attributes, the <math> element accepts any attributes of the <mstyle> element.

class, id, style

Provided for use with stylesheets.

dir

Overall directionality of formulas. Possible values are either ltr (left to right) or rtl (right to left).

href

Used to set a hyperlink to a specified URI.

mathbackground

The background color. You can use #rgb, #rrggbb and HTML color names.

mathcolor

The text color. You can use #rgb, #rrggbb and HTML color names.

display

This enumerated attribute specifies how the enclosed MathML markup should be rendered. It can have one of the following values:

block, which means that this element will be displayed outside the current span of text, as a block that can be positioned anywhere without changing the meaning of the text;
inline, which means that this element will be displayed inside the current span of text, and cannot be moved out of it without changing the meaning of that text.

If not present, its default value is inline.

mode

Deprecated in favor of the display attribute.
Possible values are: display (which has the same effect as display="block") and inline.

overflow

Specifies how an expression behaves if it is too long to fit in the allowed width.
Possible values are: linebreak (default), scroll, elide, truncate, scale.

Examples

$Theorem of Pythagoras$

HTML5 notation

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>MathML in HTML5</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <math>
    <mrow>
      <mrow>
        <msup>
          <mi>a</mi>
          <mn>2</mn>
        </msup>
        <mo>+</mo>
        <msup>
          <mi>b</mi>
          <mn>2</mn>
        </msup>
      </mrow>
      <mo>=</mo>
      <msup>
        <mi>c</mi>
        <mn>2</mn>
      </msup>
    </mrow>
  </math>
  </body>
</html>

XHTML notation

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/xhtml-math11-f.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
 <title>MathML in XHTML</title>
</head>
<body>
  <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">
    <mrow>
      <mrow>
        <msup>
          <mi>a</mi>
          <mn>2</mn>
        </msup>
        <mo>+</mo>
        <msup>
          <mi>b</mi>
          <mn>2</mn>
        </msup>
      </mrow>
      <mo>=</mo>
      <msup>
        <mi>c</mi>
        <mn>2</mn>
      </msup>
    </mrow>
  </math>
</body>
</html>

Notes: XHTML documents with MathML must be served as application/xhtml+xml. You can achieve that easily by adding the .xhtml extension to your local files. For Apache servers you can configure your .htaccess file to map extensions to the correct Mime type. Since you notate your MathML in an XML document, also be sure you write a well-formed XML document.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
MathML 3.0 The definition of 'The Top-Level math Element' in that specification.	Recommendation	Current specification
MathML 2.0 The definition of 'The Top-Level math Element' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial specification

Feature	Chrome	Firefox (Gecko)	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
XHTML notation	No support	1.0 (1.7 or earlier)	No support	9.5	5.1
HTML5 notation	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	5.1
`dir`	No support	12.0 (12.0)	No support	No support	No support
`href`	No support	7.0 (7.0)	No support	No support	No support [1]
`mathbackground`	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	5.1
`mathcolor`	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	5.1
`overflow`	No support	No support	No support	No support	No support

Feature	Android	Chrome for Android	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	IE Mobile	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile
XHTML notation	No support	No support	1.0 (1.0)	No support	No support	No support
HTML5 notation	No support	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	No support
`dir`	No support	No support	12.0 (12.0)	No support	No support	No support
`href`	No support	No support	7.0 (7.0)	No support	No support	No support [1]
`mathbackground`	No support	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	No support
`mathcolor`	No support	No support	4.0 (2.0)	No support	No support	No support
`overflow`	No support	No support	No support	No support	No support	No support

[1] See bug 85733.

Gecko-specific notes

Gecko 7.0 (Firefox 7.0 / Thunderbird 7.0 / SeaMonkey 2.4) introduced support for accepting all MathML attributes on the top-level math element (i.e. the same behavior as a <mstyle> element). However, the displaystyle attribute was not taken into account and has been added in Gecko 8.0 (Firefox 8.0 / Thunderbird 8.0 / SeaMonkey 2.5).

A textual fall-back (alttext) or referring to an alternative image using the attributes altimg, altimg-width, altimg-height or altimg-valign is currently not implemented in Gecko.