Mailing List Archive

On Die, 2002-12-03 at 01:11, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Here is newest version.
>
> * It allows configuring directories from LocalSettings.php,
> * It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
> <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
> be error in real TeX)
> * It contains a TODO file containing list of all things that
> should be done before texvc is ready to be used on Wikipedias
> (copy&paste from my previous emails mostly).

Hi,

works nicely. Making the temp directory for the TeX files user
configurable would be most important IMHO. Right now I have to make my
code directory writable to use texvc, which is not nice.

Here's a TeX->MathML converter we could use:
http://mathosphere.net/editeurml/doc_english.html

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>* It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
> <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
> be error in real TeX)

Even if you fix the user unfriendliness of ^,
this should still produce e ^ {\sin} \alpha,
not e ^ {\sin \alpha}, as you seem to expect.
Unless you're changing TeX's entire philosophy of grouping,
which doesn't seem like a good idea to me.


-- Toby

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 08:07:10AM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >* It has nicer support for log-like functions (for example
> > <math>e ^ \sin \alpha</math> is allowed now, it would
> > be error in real TeX)
>
> Even if you fix the user unfriendliness of ^,
> this should still produce e ^ {\sin} \alpha,
> not e ^ {\sin \alpha}, as you seem to expect.
> Unless you're changing TeX's entire philosophy of grouping,
> which doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.

This is NOT TeX, the same way Wiki markup is not HTML.
It will just provide the best features of TeX,
and add lot of both syntactic and semantic sugar
to make it more user friendly.

I think that a ^ b ^ c should also be changed,
but I'm keeping it to mean an error for now.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.

So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
even if they already know TeX!

If you're going to invent a new markup language,
then don't make it look like TeX,
that will only confuse people.

>I think that a ^ b ^ c should also be changed,
>but I'm keeping it to mean an error for now.

At least if you change this to a ^ {b ^ c},
then that's the most obvious thing to change it to.
You can't say that about a ^ \b c -> a ^ {\b c}.


-- Toby

On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 12:31, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>
> >Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.
>
> So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
> a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
> but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
> even if they already know TeX!

Changing TeX markup to something equivalently opaque is an impressively
bad idea.

Rather, feel free to design your own idiosyncratic markup. Just don't
impose it on anyone else; make sure that Wikipedia uses standard TeX.

If only so we can simply cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.

Has anyone who's interested in doing all this mathwork contacted anyone
working on that project?

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 12:37:14PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 12:31, Toby Bartels wrote:
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >
> > >Yes, I'm changing entire TeX philosophy of grouping.
> >
> > So in order to use your system on Wikipedia,
> > a new user will not only have to learn wiki (easy)
> > but they'll also have to learn wikiTeX (harder) --
> > even if they already know TeX!
>
> Changing TeX markup to something equivalently opaque is an impressively
> bad idea.
>
> Rather, feel free to design your own idiosyncratic markup. Just don't
> impose it on anyone else; make sure that Wikipedia uses standard TeX.
>
> If only so we can simply cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
>
> Has anyone who's interested in doing all this mathwork contacted anyone
> working on that project?

The only things that are changed are things that wouldn't be legal
in TeX anyway. Care is taken so that everything that is legal TeX
stays legal pseudo-TeX.

You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.

--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.

Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
understand. Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.

I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
exactly what PlanetMath provides.

Axel

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On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> > You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
>
> Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
> understand.

While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of equations
that are used on MathPlanet.

Is it possibe to extract all equations (/$.*?$/) from PlanetMath somehow,
so I can test how much of that does texvc support and see what features
it lacks ?

> Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.

Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and paste that.

> I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
> exactly what PlanetMath provides.

I'm strongly against.
Being format-independent is too important.

On Tue, 2002-12-03 at 20:47, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro packages,
> > exactly what PlanetMath provides.
>
> I'm strongly against.
> Being format-independent is too important.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean there.

I think having the standard that we should be able to cut-and-paste
between the two resources is an appropriate constraint. At worst there
should be an "export to PlanetMath-readable format" built in from the
start.

--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 05:03:54PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> > --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> >
> > > You will be able to cut-and-paste equations from PlanetMath.
> >
> > Unless the equation contains a TeX construct that texvc doesn't
> > understand.
>
> While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
> I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of
> equations that are used on MathPlanet.

And 80% of those equations we can already represent in Wikipedia using
clean HTML. The remaining features are the fun stuff: commutative
diagrams, matrices and tables, Latex figures, equation arrays, amssymb
etc. That is what TeX mode is really needed for.

> > Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> > equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.
>
> Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and
> paste that.

As a Wikipedia user, I don't have access to that.

> > I reiterate my plea for straight TeX with a full set of macro
> > packages, exactly what PlanetMath provides.
>
> I'm strongly against.
> Being format-independent is too important.

I don't think the goal of format independence for Wikipedia markup has
been agreed upon or even been mentioned before. And while I agree that
it is desirable, I don't see that it is clearly more important than the
benefits that come from straight TeX. TeX is not just for math nerds.
There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge benefits
to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.

Furthermore, trying to become ouput format independent by inventing a
new input format strikes me as less than helpful.

Axel


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On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:02:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
> --- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> > While texvc lacks support for lot of important features now,
> > I don't think it will be difficult to make it support 99% of
> > equations that are used on MathPlanet.
>
> And 80% of those equations we can already represent in Wikipedia using
> clean HTML. The remaining features are the fun stuff: commutative
> diagrams, matrices and tables, Latex figures, equation arrays, amssymb
> etc. That is what TeX mode is really needed for.

Not really. Fractions, sums and integrals can't be represented in clean HTML,
but can be represented in texvc's pseudo-TeX. Many things that are
represented in HTML look ugly on graphical browsers and are completely
illegible in text mode.

And there will always be things that will have to be done by hand and uploaded.

> > > Furthermore, people won't be able to cut-and-paste our
> > > equations into PlanetMath, which doesn't seem nice.
> >
> > Well, texvc creates real TeX at some point, so you could copy and
> > paste that.
>
> As a Wikipedia user, I don't have access to that.

This will be fixed.

> TeX is not just for math nerds.
> There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
> diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge benefits
> to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.

You will still be able to compile them on your computer and upload,
just like you can do it now.

> Furthermore, trying to become ouput format independent by inventing a
> new input format strikes me as less than helpful.

texvc can support multiple formats for both input and output.
It supports subset of TeX right now and a few extensions to TeX.

Do you think that some of following extensions should be disabled ?
* % is percent (\% in real TeX), not comment
* \foo aliases for \bar, if there exists HTML entity &foo; that means
the same thing as \bar
* a couple cases of inserting {}s where TeX would just fail.

If we turn them off we'll get proper subset of TeX.

Would that be any better ?


And texvc can be extended to support "math in html" or whatever markup
you wish.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>The only things that are changed are things that wouldn't be legal
>in TeX anyway. Care is taken so that everything that is legal TeX
>stays legal pseudo-TeX.

Thus, "a ^ \b c" is interpreted as "a ^ {\b c}"
*if* \b is a command (like \sin) that can't legally follow ^,
but "a ^ \b c" interpreted as "a ^ \b c" (= "{a ^ \b} c")
if \b is a command (like \pi) that *can* legally follow ^.

I don't think that this counts as user friendly.
There are good reasons for TeX's consistent notion of grouping.

I am not arguing that extending the range of legal TeX
is an inherently bad idea, only that it's tricky,
and that you didn't do it well in this particular case.


-- Toby

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>I'm strongly against.
>Being format-independent is too important.

How is TeX not format independent?
LaTeX input can be output in various forms:
* human readable LaTeX source (most of the time)
* HTML and GIF (using latex2html)
* HTML and MathML (using mathosphere)
* PostScript (using latex and dvips)
* PDF (using pdflatex)
* probably more (we could search CTAN)
This is more than texvc can do!

That is, more than texvc so far, at least.
But if you want texvc to output a different format,
then you'll have to write the programme to do that.
Why not write the programme for LaTeX instead?


-- Toby

--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:02:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > TeX is not just for math nerds.
> > There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
> > diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge
> > benefits to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.
>
> You will still be able to compile them on your computer and upload,
> just like you can do it now.

Sure, but I don't want to, because it's not the wiki way: people who
intend to improve my work are then required to install the necessary
software and recreate the work from scratch. It's clearly much more
user friendly to allow direct editing of the work's description in the
browser.

My point was that you want to give up this advantage for the goal of
output format independence, and that I don't agree with these
priorities.

Axel

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Please, let's do it Axel's way. He contributes most of the math articles. Besides, I also want to be able to edit a math equation directly in my browser.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Axel Boldt [mailto:axelboldt@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 12:47 PM
To: wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] TeX, version 4


--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 07:02:34PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:

> > TeX is not just for math nerds.
> > There are several powerful macro packages for creating all sorts of
> > diagrams, flow charts and graphics. These would provide huge
> > benefits to lots of Wikipedians outside of math.
>
> You will still be able to compile them on your computer and upload,
> just like you can do it now.

Sure, but I don't want to, because it's not the wiki way: people who
intend to improve my work are then required to install the necessary
software and recreate the work from scratch. It's clearly much more
user friendly to allow direct editing of the work's description in the
browser.

My point was that you want to give up this advantage for the goal of
output format independence, and that I don't agree with these
priorities.

Axel

On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 03:03:45PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Please, let's do it Axel's way. He contributes most of the math articles.
> Besides, I also want to be able to edit a math equation directly in my browser.

You will be able to edit math equations directly in your browsers with texvc.

What you won't be able to do is to edit such things as
TeX descriptions of graphs, chess boards, music scores etc.
At least for now. If suddently tons of people will want to
edit chess boards on Wikipedia, we will be able to easily add
support for it, including generation of HTML tables showing
given chess board.