IdeaSift

Mathematical notation is hard to enter and move between tools

People working with mathematical content run into friction entering notation and converting it between formats such as LaTeX, Unicode, MathML, and SVG. Some lack an interactive notation editor, while others find markup tedious or need rendering and custom-command support their current workflow does not provide. Formalizing informal mathematics is a related but substantially harder problem that a simple format converter would not solve.

For mathematical-content authors and developers. Mentioned from Oct 2015 to Aug 2026 on Bluesky, product forums, GitHub and Hacker News.

6 different people described this problem in 6 separate discussions.

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1 mention in the last 12 weeks
Indie fit
4.0/10
Pain
4.7/10
Frequency
7.0/10
Willingness to pay
0.0/10
Momentum
4.7/10
Who pays
Professionals
Competition
Medium
Build difficulty
Medium

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. I cannot adopt it until this gap is closed in the studio. Interactive 2D mathematical typesetting / notation input (front-end)
  2. Writing MathML from scratch looks tedious, but pandoc and/or LaTeXML might be just the thing to make a conversion easy
    dcuthbertson on Hacker NewsApr 2024Asked for a tool
Build brief

See what to build and who will buy it

  • 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
  • 4 places to find your first customers
  • 4 more quotes from people who have this problem
  • Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks