bracket syntax \(\)\[\] for math problematic

[nschloe]

Description

Here's another issue with the bracket syntax: \[ and \] are actually valid Markdown characters (see Markdown definition here), rendering to [ and ], respectively. The escaping is to set brackets apart from Markdown links à la [abc](https://example.com). Markdown formatters like prettier or mdformat escape brackets in various places, accidentally producing Gitea math. (See here for the corresponding mdformat bug.)

Related to #27602.

Edit: I've surveyed math syntaxes and performance on GitHub, Gitea, GitLab.. Gitea's bracket-syntax is unique and hence not compatible. The backticked syntax is sorely missing from Gitea, especially given its great performance on the other platforms.

Gitea Version

1.22.0+dev-188-g1be49fdda

Can you reproduce the bug on the Gitea demo site?

Yes

Log Gist

No response

Screenshots

No response

Git Version

No response

Operating System

No response

How are you running Gitea?

https://try.gitea.io/

Database

None

[jamesbraza]

@nschloe did you try using the mdformat-myst plugin? See hukkin/mdformat#334

[nschloe]

Yeah, same result with

import mdformat

print(mdformat.text("[a]", extensions={"myst"}))

\[a\]

[jamesbraza]

Thought it was worth a shot haha, sorry. Hope this gets resolved! You can also try prettier while mdformat isn't compatible

[nschloe]

As mentioned in my original post, prettier also escapes square brackets (though not always, as mdformat does).

[nschloe]

We now have backtick math, which is much preferred. I'm not sure if the docs should not mention or discourage the bracket math notation.

[deltamualpha]

I think this might also be a good place to document that the \[...\] syntax tends to crop up often in release notes that tools like renovate add to automated MRs. Some discussion of the results is here: renovatebot/renovate#33587 but here's some messy KaTeX errors all over some harmless, well-escaped markdown:

I've just set GITEA__markdown__ENABLE_MATH=false on my self-hosted instance because of noise like this.