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Three standard math programs which engineers and scientists use are Mathematica, Matlab and Mathcad. Each has its own syntax. Favoring MathML as a standard would upset the other two vendors. When you throw in spreadsheet software or even a standard language like Fortran or C, you have another can of worms, due to function naming.
None of the three core programs displays equations in a pretty format, not even for simple matrices. That would involve another standard, with "typesetting" thrown into the consideration. Since any given equation can result in a number of renderings, where do you stop the process of "beautifying" the resulting graphic image? This is why I always spend a lot of time adjusting the positions of symbols when I write a technical paper. I know, this is terribly backward. It leads to errors, since an author may have already validated an equation in his/her math app, only to see a sign added/omitted in the published version, which he probably generated in a word processing app. And don't expect a reviewer to catch the error. It's frustrating.
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