Support GitHub-style backtick math syntax in Markdown

[samestep]

GitHub and VS Code both render math within dollar signs, but GitHub has some known bugs when rendering math like this, such as omitting curly braces. One workaround is to double up on backslashes, but VS Code interprets these as line breaks. A more general solution is to use GitHub's alternative syntax which nests backticks inside of the dollar signs, but VS Code does not support that syntax, resulting in extraneous apostrophes.

Markdown code	GitHub render	VS Code render
$A = \{4, 2, 1, 3\}$
$A = \\{4, 2, 1, 3\\}$
$`A = \{4, 2, 1, 3\}`$

Thus, as far as I'm aware there is currently no way to author Markdown math in VS Code such that the preview shows what GitHub will eventually render. It would be nice if VS Code supported the same backtick math syntax that GitHub supports, especially since it is already also supported by other platforms like GitLab.

[kilianmandon]

Totally agree with this, it is so annoying that I can't use the same syntax for vscode markdown and github.

[vscodenpa]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[peteryongzhong]

Very annoying issue particularly when you want to put some formulae in your markdown. A little bit inconvenient to always push to GitHub to see what happens

[vscodenpa]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[nasosev]

Any update on this please?

Another workaround, by the way, is to use \text{\{} ... \text{\}} which renders somewhat correctly on both platforms:

$$\text{\{} 1,2,3 \text{\}}$$

[mjbvz]

I believe this was fixed a few months ago:

If you're still seeing any problems, please open a new issue and I'll take a look