No, it wasn't. Scientists at CERN used DVI and later PDF like everyone else. HTML has no provisions for typesetting equations and is therefore not suitable for physics papers (without much newer hacks such as MathML).
No, it wasn't. Scientists at CERN used DVI and later PDF like everyone else. HTML has no provisions for typesetting equations and is therefore not suitable for physics papers (without much newer hacks such as MathML).
MathML isn't new. It predates Windows 98 and the birth of a substantial part of HN's userbase.
Why not typeset in something else and import the image into html/css?