Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Reading/Find a more satisfactory display of LaTeX formulas

Find a more satisfactory display of LaTeX formulas

(Machine translation from French to English.)

  • Problem: The current system for displaying and exporting mathematical formulas leaves much to be desired. The formulas are converted into images where the text appears in black on a transparent background, then inserted into the text thread. For this reason, mathematical formulas more or less clash with the surrounding text:
- on the site, the formulas are always black, whatever the color of the surrounding text (see this page, the note); the same on the e-reader, where the problem even more annoying for people who use an e-reader with a dark background: the formulas are properly illegible;
- the alignment of the mathematical text on the line is not perfect, nor its size;
- more anecdotally, the font differs from the ambient font.
This also causes purely typographical problems, in particular the rejection of punctuation on the next line when the formula is at the end of the line (cf. the same example, in the second paragraph, or the next page, first line).

I would therefore like to see the formulas rendered in a more coherent manner with the surrounding text, and above all in such a way as not to violate the most basic rules of typography.

  • Who would benefit: All readers of scientific texts, especially those who export them from Wikisource.
  • Proposed solution: For display on website: solutions, like MathJax for example? For export: we could offer several export options, one that would keep the current state, with conversion of formulas into images; another with export of the TeX syntax directly (well rendered under Caliber for example); etc.
  • Other comments: Please note that the request does not concern the input of mathematics by contributors, but their display and export.
  • Phabricator tasks:
  • Proposer: ElioPrrl (talk) 18:25, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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