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On my personal devices Mathjax looks like

enter image description here

Whereas on other devices Mathjax looks like

enter image description here

For example, the arrow between $R^4$ and $R^4$ is thicker in the first picture and thin in the second.

The edges of the letter “T” are shorter in the first one and longer in the second one.

The letter “R” in $R^4$ looks different in both pictures.

Why does Mathjax do this?

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Appearance will depend on what fonts are installed on your device, and what math renderer is chosen. For me in Safari in MacOS, here are some samples. $$T : R^4 \to R^4$$ rendered using...
HTML-CSS HTML-CSS

Common Common HTML

MathML MathML

SVG SVG

I right-click on a math expression to get a menu where I can choose the renderer:

menus

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    $\begingroup$ Just to elaborate a bit, the HTML-CSS renderer will try to see if you have the STIX fonts installed, and use them if you do. MacOS has these installed by default, so that is why the HTML-CSS output differs from CommonHTML and SVG, which use the MathJax TeX fonts by default (based on Computer Modern). The NativeMML output will be based on system fonts and MathJax doesn't control that, so you are probably getting the STIX fonts there, too. The HTML-CSS output is the oldest output format, and we dropped the automatic switching go fonts because it produced inconsistent results, as you see. $\endgroup$
    – Davide Cervone
    Commented Jan 15, 2023 at 19:10
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    $\begingroup$ See also: How do I change Math Renderer for MathJax? $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Commented Feb 4, 2023 at 22:44

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