Thread:Talk:Requests for comment/Reduce math rendering preferences/Issues/reply (2)

I find myself worrying that things like $$a^b$$, which currently look just fine, will be turned into things like $$a^b\,$$ , which don't. It's simple formulas like these that get used most often outside of math articles, and while they look fine in HTML, they look terrible as PNGs because their baselines are wrong. E.g., in en:Chemistry we find, "The speed of a chemical reaction (at given temperature T) is related to the activation energy E, by the Boltzmann's population factor $$e^{-E/kT}$$", which doesn't look great but isn't awful. If we force PNG rendering then we get, "The speed of a chemical reaction (at given temperature T) is related to the activation energy E, by the Boltzmann's population factor $$e^{-E/kT}\,$$", which is atrocious. If not for baseline problems, I would support removing HTML rendering, but as it is I'm conflicted.However, I would support reducing the number of possibilities down to three: TeX only, PNG only, and a single HTML option. There's no reason to have so many different HTML options.