Re: Math and the Emacs info viewer

[Raymond Toy]

On 7/31/24 2:31 AM, Rahguzar wrote:

Hi,

I am trying to build an info manual for the SageMath project. The manual
functions very well except those parts which include a lot of
mathematical notation. I want to ask if there are ways to improve the
presentation of these parts in the Emacs viewer.

This doesn’t solve your issue, but Maxima’s user manual just uses plain ASCII to display mathematical formulas in an info file. I don’t think any one really uses the info file to read the manual, though.

The info file is used as help in Maxima which can use some Unicode characters to replace the plain ASCII equations to make them look a bit better in a terminal.

But what I usually use when viewing formulas is the HTML version of the manual, which uses MathJax to render the equations very nicely. Asking maxima for help on a topic opens a new window via your browser to the html page for the requested topic.

I can think of two ways:

1. Do what Wikipedia does displaying math: i.e. convert math into images
when the texi file is being built and include the images in the info the
usual way. Emacs info viewer can display images so this will work very
well especially for display math. Doing this just for the display math
would be a big improvement.

2. Retain information about the boundaries of math in the info document.
These segments can be then be rendered using the preview machinery
available in Emacs packages.

Are any of these two possible currently?

Thanks,
Rahguzar