"First class" in computing terms means strictly "built in", "supported as a native object" -- it doesn't say anything about quality (as opposed to e.g. "first class" airplane seats).
>This viewpoint explains a lot about web technology. The syntax doesn’t matter. The visual output doesn’t matter. Practical adoption by users doesn’t matter. All that matters is ticking features down on a checklist somewhere.
Sounds like a generic lament.
What matters here is: (a) performance, which is and always will be better than some plain-js implementation. (b) being native (which means it will eventually be on all browsers, without asking the users to load anything extra, and will mean writers can just depend on it), (c) the visual output will be better (for one, it will be native vector fonts laid out, not a canvas drawing which is not infinitely zoomable or non-math aware SVG where it's just pretty pictures), (d) it will be able to interact with all other browser capabilities better than any pure-JS implementation.
The syntax is irrelevant, as it can be a target for any other syntax one prefers. In fact MathJax already delegates to MathML rendering where it can.
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