readme parser renders \( as (

[paulschreiber]

The wordpress.org readme parser is stripping backslashes / treating them as escape characters.

example text:

Additionally, you can use native mathjax syntax -- $$E=mc^2$$ or \(E=mc^2\).

this is rendered as:

Additionally, you can use native mathjax syntax -- $$E=mc^2$$ or (E=mc^2). 

Sample URL:
​https://github.com/phillord/mathjax-latex

[afragen]

You should probably surround the code examples with backticks so it will render as expected. Just as you did in the above description.

[Otto42]

Not a bug. The readme.txt parser is using markdown. Backslashing parentheses is necessary, because otherwise they would be treated as a link.

[WordPress](https://wordpress.org)

That is valid markdown to make a link, and works in the readme.txt parser. Backslashing the parenths will prevent it from making that link.

If you need to use actual backslashes in markdown, you escape them. So
\\ would produce a \.

[Otto42]

For reference, markdown treats these characters as special, and thus a single backslash can be used to escape them.

\ backslash
` backtick
* asterisk
_ underscore
{} curly braces
[] square brackets
() parentheses
# hash mark
+ plus sign
- minus sign (hyphen)
. dot
! exclamation mark

[Otto42]

​https://enterprise.github.com/downloads/en/markdown-cheatsheet.pdf