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On sites like Physics SE or Mathematics SE, it is not uncommon that you have to write formulas in the question title. I know this is discouraged because most people don't search for:

"How can it be that Doppler Factor $k=\frac{1}{k}$?"

(note the last MathJax part) on Google.

However, it sometimes is necessary. In these situations, I would consider a preview (like we have with the question body) to be useful. As of now, you have to hope that everything is correct, post the question and might have to find out that your beautiful equations renders like a mess because you forgot a }.

So, can we get a preview for titles when writing questions?

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  • 8
    Not a MathJax user but can't you put your title also in the body and then comment it with an html comments <!--- How can it be that Doppler Factor $k=\frac{1}{k}$? --> before you post? Or is the title renderer different from the post renderer?
    – rene
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 15:11
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    Thats also why there is a 5 min grace period. Edits within that period won't show up as an edit
    – Luuklag
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 15:14
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    @rene I think equations should render the same. This is actually a very good workaround, I never thought of this.
    – jng224
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 15:15
  • Some related posts: Please include the title in the question preview and Show a preview of the title when editing/asking - at least on the MathJax sites.
    – Martin
    Commented Jan 16 at 11:12

1 Answer 1

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I'm not against this feature, but if this is implemented, please hide the preview by default. Titles don't support regular Markdown formatting, and I'm not even sure they were intended to support MathJax either or if this is just .

A title preview will take away screen space one way or another; space which in 99.9% of the cases is more useful doing something else, like not having to scroll too much when previewing the body or submitting the question.

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  • What do you mean by "I'm not sure they are supposed to support MathJax either"? Titles definitely do support MathJax (I'm not saying I'm a fan of titles with MathJax in them, but it's definitely supported).
    – user1271772
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 22:01
  • @user1271772 I know they support them, but not if that was intentional (perhaps that's a better word to use).
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 6:59
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    I see, perhaps it was a coincidence. But I've had Mods at Math.SE get angry at me for removing MathJax in question titles. One of them even changed 2 to $2$ in a title! So even if it was unintentional that it works, the mods certainly "intend" for it to continue working. There's also a Meta post there, saying that if you remove MathJax from titles and make the title "look worse", you can get in trouble (maybe some people were doing it because they wanted their questions not to be blacklisted from HNQ, which the mods there believe is not worth making titles look "worse").
    – user1271772
    Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 7:07
  • @user1271772 that may have been an old trick to get the question off the HNQ list. (Nowadays, mods have a special option for that.)
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 7:10
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    "One final clarification. There will be a zero tolerance policy towards people who make titles worse just to get a question on or off the HNQ. People who abuse this list will be punished." math.meta.stackexchange.com/q/31425/202425 (quite recent: August 2020)
    – user1271772
    Commented Dec 17, 2020 at 7:11
  • @Glorfindel It is true that mods have the other tools to remove a question from the HNQ - still, adding MathJax is available to the regular users, too. (Although it was certainly not intended for this purpose.) Personally I am not sure what would be the best solution of that issue. It would be nice to allow all questions into the HNQ - but that would mean that we need MathJax rendering in that list. At the same time, I don't think it is good to have a worse title only to leave a chance for the question to gete into the HNQ list. (In any case, it is only tangential to this feature request.)
    – Martin
    Commented Feb 6 at 8:19

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