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For me, the main problem with most tools that render to HTML was that they don't support all math typesetting libraries that latex supports. I used to work with
by mbid 3y ago
For me, the main problem with most tools that render to HTML was that they don't support all math typesetting libraries that latex supports. I used to work with category theory, where it's common to use the tikz-cd library to typeset commutative diagrams. tikz-cd is based on tikz, which is usually not supported for HTML output.
But apart from math typesetting, my latex documents were usually very simple: They just used sections, paragraphs, some theorem environments and references to those, perhaps similar to what the stack project uses [3]. Simple latex such as this corresponds relatively directly to HTML (except for the math formulas of course). But many latex to html tools try to implement a full tex engine, which I believe means that they lower the high-level constructs to something more low level (or that's at least my understanding). This results in very complicated HTML documents from even simple latex input documents.
So what would've been needed for me was a tool that can (1) render all math that pdflatex can render, but that apart from math only needs to (2) support a very limited set of other latex features. In a hacky way, (1) can be accomplished by simply using pdflatex to render each formula of a latex document in isolation to a separate pdf, then converting this pdf to svg, and then incuding this svg in the output HTML in the appropriate position. And (2) is simply a matter of parsing this limited subset of latex. I've prototyped a tool like that here [1]. An example output can be found here [2].
Of course, SVGs are not exactly great for accessibility. But my understanding is that many blind mathematicians are very good at reading latex source code, so perhaps an SVG with alt text set to the latex source for that image is already pretty good.
[1] https://github.com/mbid/latex-to-html https://github.com/mbid/latex-to-html
[2] https://www.mbid.me/lcc-model/ https://www.mbid.me/lcc-model/
[3] https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/ https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/
- ykonstant 3y agoTangentially, for me the stacks project is the gold standard of mathematical typography on the web. Look at this beauty: https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/074J https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/074J Also check the diagrams: https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/001U https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/001U If anyone can explain to me, a complete noob regarding html, how they achieve this result with html, css and whichever latex engine they use, I would be grateful. I want to make a personal webpage in this style.
- dolmen 3y agouMatrix tells me there are 8 external sites to grant permissions for access to resources. Definitely not a "beauty".
- ykonstant 3y agoI don't understand what this has to do with typography.
- artagnon 3y agoIt's standard MathJaX that's rendered client-side. I managed to get MathJaX + XyPic rendered server-side on my website, which is a lot nicer.
- ykonstant 3y agoOh, you misunderstand the level of my question; rephrased, how do maek wabpag with "MathJaX that's rendered client-side"? (o´▽`o)
- red_trumpet 3y agoTake a look at MathJax's website: https://www.mathjax.org/#gettingstarted https://www.mathjax.org/#gettingstarted They have a link to JSBin which contains an easy example html page.
- ykonstant 3y agoThanks!
- datadeft 3y agoHave you seen typst? I have moved over from LaTex to Typst and most if not all your use cases are covered. https://typst.app/ https://typst.app/
- _flux 3y agoExcept the main theme, which was HTML export? https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/721 https://github.com/typst/typst/issues/721 Though it's in the roadmap!