Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics Online Edition

[Michael A. Gottlieb]

Dear Oliver,

Here are the results of yesterday's survey:

Most of my colleagues prefer "matchFontHeight: false" in the online edition of FLP, However some prefer "matchFontHeight: true," which increases the math font size by 11%, making it bigger than the body text, and that does not look very good, as you have noted. However, I made some careful measurements and discovered that "matchFontHeight: false" leaves the mathematics somewhat smaller than our (Georgia font) body text, which also does not look very good. So, what I've done is this: In the "HTML-CSS" section of Mathjax.Hub.Config I set  "matchFontHeight: false" but also "scale: 106" which increases the math font size by 6%. This gives a good match to our body text. I also edited "styles" to make the top and bottom margin around display equations 15% smaller (reducing them from 1em to .85em). And finally, in the "Tex" section of Mathjax.Hub.Config I changed TagIndent to 0.25em; previously it was set to 0em, which allowed the equation numbers to crowd wider equations on narrower displays.

I consider the overall improvement to be considerable, so thanks once again for bringing matchFontHeight to my attention.

Best regards,

Mike 

On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Michael A. Gottlieb <address@hidden> wrote:

Dear Oliver,

Thanks very much for this information.  Now that I better understand the nature of your complaint I see you are absolutely correct: MathJax's "matchFontHeight" option should be renamed "DontMatchFontHeight" ! In my (Mac Chrome) browser it's rendering the math 11% bigger than the body text. I've gotten so used to looking at it that way that I didn't notice it was too big! This is not particularly good from an aesthetic POV, and it also makes the online edition somewhat less readable on small devices. To demonstrate this to my colleagues I've generated an alternate version of FLP chapter I:19 which can be compared to the current version.  I will run "matchFontHeight: false" up the flagpole and see who salutes.

Thanks again for your help.

Best regards,

Mike

On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 7:33 AM, Oliver Heimlich <address@hidden> wrote:

On 12.01.2016 18:59, Oliver Heimlich wrote:
> On 12.01.2016 11:16, Michael A. Gottlieb wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Michael Godfrey forwarded the following to me from this list, written by
>> John S.:
>>
>>
>>     This [online edition of The Feynman Lectures] does not render well
>>     in my browser. The MathJax numbers use a different font with a
>>     different weight compared to the surrounding text, which looks very bad.
>>     ...
>>
>>     MathJax looks bad in Google Chrome on OSX unless I right click and
>>     go choose Math Settings-Math Renderer and select SVG as the
>>     renderer. The HTML-CSS, Common HTML (which was the default), and
>>     Fast HTML all look really bad for me.
>>
>>
>> This concerns me because I am the editor of The Feynman Lectures on
>> Physics (FLP) and the publisher of the online edition. I also find it
>> surprising because I use Google Chrome on OSX and don't see any problems
>> with the rendering of mathematics by MathJax in the online edition of FLP.
>>
>> That  VG rendering works right but HTML-CSS doesn't on your system
>> suggests a font problem... but (if you haven't changed the MathJax
>> defaults) any fonts missing from your OS should be downloaded
>> automatically when they are needed.
>>
>> I would like to help resolve this problem, if I can.
>>
>> Mike Gottlieb
>
> Well, “looking bad” is a bit harsh.  Most visitors don't have an eye for
> these details and won't even notice.  Please look at the screenshots
> attached to get an impression.  There seems to be a font problem on my
> system.  I have disabled any adblockers and do not enforce particular
> fonts in my browser.  Text zoom is at 100%.
>
> There is a very short period of time during page load when the font
> looks good.  But then MathJax changes fonts.
>
> Looking at the DOM, I can see “font-size: 113%” for all MathJax frames.
>  This seem to cause the too big fonts and also some bad extra margin to
> the left.  Maybe you can disable this font-enlargement in MathJax.
>
> Oliver
>

Hi Michael,

I could find the cause for the ugly increased font-size on my system by
playing around with MathJax (see [1]). It is caused by the
“matchFontHeight” option, which is enabled by default. It does a bad job
on my system and increases the font size (don't know why).

When I disable this in MathJax, the FLP math looks good to me.

Best
Oliver


[1]
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Latex-equation-support-in-the-documentation-created-by-generate-html-package-td4677129.html