# Revision history displays rendered MathJax when it should display markdown

I just edited this post to change

    The 216 is 6 cubed is made of 27 small cubes


to

The $216$ is $6$ cubed ($6^3$) made of $27$ small cubes
$\big(\quad~~$The $216$ is $6$ cubed ($6^3$) made of $27$ small cubes$\quad~~\big)$

But when I look at the revision history in “side-by-side markdown” mode in Internet Explorer 11, I see

The \$216\$ is \$6\$ cubed ($6^3$) made of \$27\$ small cubes

Image:

i.e., the $6^3$ is shown in its resolved/display form, $6^3$, even though it should be shown as markdown.  Firefox displays it correctly.

• Seems fine to me.
– Deusovi Mod
Sep 23, 2016 at 19:58
• Interesting. See update. Sep 23, 2016 at 20:04
• My screenshot was taken from Chrome.
– Deusovi Mod
Sep 23, 2016 at 20:05
• Can we migrate this to Meta Stack Exchange? Sep 24, 2016 at 2:09
• @Peanut:  It has been stated repeatedly that the Community Managers keep an eye on the community-local meta sites, so they will (eventually?) see posts that report potential bugs in the common software base, and so there's no need to migrate such issues there.  And it might be seen as clutter on the Main Meta, since only a few communities have MathJax.  But, hey, if somebody wants to migrate it, I have no objection. Sep 24, 2016 at 4:14
• status-reproduced. My guess is that it shows up as rendered MathJax if you added something which was 100% in maths formatting but shows the dollar signs if all you did was add dollar signs. This makes sense: if you add $6^3$ into a post, it'll be more useful to see $6^3$ than $6^3$ in the revision history, but if you add some dollar signs, it'll be useful to see those in the revision history rather than just that you replaced 6 by $6$. Sep 25, 2016 at 16:45
• @randal'thor: Well, (1) it makes a certain amount of sense as a design feature — except that’s what “side-by-side” mode is for: to show how the text is rendered (displayed) when the post is viewed. (2) The fact that it behaves differently in different browsers obviously is status-not-good. Sep 25, 2016 at 18:29
• See this meta.math.se post for why there is a difference between browsers (there isn't, but there is a timing race condition between loading two files, so some people will get one first and others will get the other first). Sep 26, 2016 at 10:18