Mathjax does not render new lines
I can't make a new-line in MathJax.
Markup:
$$1 + 2 \\ 3$$
Result:
$$1 + 2 \ 3$$
It's supposed to look something like this (but centred):
$1 + 2$
$3$
1 answer
Tl;dr, Markdown and LaTeX don't like each other
The problem lies in a conflict between the Markdown and MathJax parsers. The Markdown parser runs first[1] and uses \ as an escape character, and so \\ becomes a single backslash. The MathJax parser then only sees that single backslash, which means it won't create the newline.
This also breaks some other formulations, for example, sets:
$\{1,2,3\}$
Expected result: $\{1,2,3\}$
Actual result: ${1,2,3}$
The Markdown parser turns \{ into a literal {.
A list of backslash-escaped characters can be found here.
Workarounds
There are two ways to get around this problem.
Firstly, you can wrap the code in HTML tags. This will prevent the Markdown renderer from parsing the inside of it. Taking the earlier example, we would type
<p>$\{1,2,3\}$</p>
which turns into
$\{1,2,3\}$
You could also escape your backslashes if it comes before a markdown escape character. This method is more annoying, however, as it will break compatibility with pure LaTeX.
The previous example would be written as either \\{1,2,3\\} (escaping the backslash) or \\\{1,2,3\\\} (escaping both the backslash and braces), and a newline would be written as \\\\.
(You can use \\\ if the character following it isn't a Markdown escape character)
Note: MathJax 3 has issues with \\
If the above doesn't work, then it might be a problem with MathJax. Try using the \displaylines environment (Note: it uses three backslashes instead of two, or you can use \cr)
<p>$$\displaylines{123 \\\ 321}$$</p>
or
<p>$$\displaylines{123 \cr 321}$$</p>
will give you
$$\displaylines{123 \cr 321}$$
-
Technically, the Markdown parser runs server side and gives the parsed document to the client, which runs MathJax on it, but all that matters here is the order. ↩︎
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