AsciiMath – An easy-to-write markup language for mathematics
To everyone who says "why do we need this when we have LaTeX?" I ask the question "why do we need Markdown when we have HTML?"<p>The nice thing about Markdown is that it's quite legible in its source form, which makes it less distracting to edit. Same deal with AsciiMath and LaTeX: AsciiMath is more legible in its source form which means that it has lower overhead during editing.<p>One of these is more legible than the other:<p><pre><code>  (f'(x^2+y^2)^2)/(g'(x^2+y^2)^2)
  \frac{f'\left(x^2+y^2\right)}{g'\left(x^2+y^2\right)^2}
</code></pre>
In my experience, most people who learn LaTeX don't do so until sometime around the middle or end of their undergrad career (certainly in Physics--maybe mathematicians learn it sooner). Earlier than that, people struggle with junk like the Microsoft equation editor. No big deal?