> I'm looking forward to the day when browsers support LaTeX content without any special plugins or libraries.
As a mathematician who appreciates cheap'n'easy (pseudo-)LaTeX availability on, for example, MathOverflow, I totally disagree with this. Browsers are big enough already. It's easy for me to install the libraries to view what I need; why make everyone else pay the cost for it? (My argument is inherently selfish: I don't want other content specialists to insist that my browser have built-in capabilities to deal with all their professional needs.)
Fair enough, your position has merit -- browsers really are very large, getting larger, and not in a way that necessarily benefits the average user. My website uses MathJax on the server side to get around this problem (example: https://arachnoid.com/NormalDistribution/), most publishers of mathematical content can use this approach.
And for discussion fora, as you mention, users can install a plugin to make Latex render correctly in this specialized environment.
> ... why make everyone else pay the cost for it?
I agree, I should have thought through my earlier position more carefully.
As a mathematician who appreciates cheap'n'easy (pseudo-)LaTeX availability on, for example, MathOverflow, I totally disagree with this. Browsers are big enough already. It's easy for me to install the libraries to view what I need; why make everyone else pay the cost for it? (My argument is inherently selfish: I don't want other content specialists to insist that my browser have built-in capabilities to deal with all their professional needs.)