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LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

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Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#31

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dhosek wrote: post #27
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added DVI support to NCSA Mosaic back in 1993-94, believing it to be a better format for "rich" documents than HTML or PDF. Nobody else seemed convinced :(

The problem with DVI is twofold: First, font support is purely by reference which means that you need some way of connecting the fonts used in the document with the DVI file. Use of the wrong font could produce some spectacularly bad output. Second, graphical support, other than rectangular boxes is only handled through the xxx opcode which never had any standardized meaning (although I tried). This limitation also a…

I would never advocate for DVI today.

In 1993/94 ? It was a much stronger candidate, and given that any DVI (including images) could be rendered into PDF (or whatever), its supposed technical limitations at that time were not of much significance.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#32

Post by stereo »

dhosek wrote: post #27
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added DVI support to NCSA Mosaic back in 1993-94, believing it to be a better format for "rich" documents than HTML or PDF. Nobody else seemed convinced :(

The problem with DVI is twofold: First, font support is purely by reference which means that you need some way of connecting the fonts used in the document with the DVI file. Use of the wrong font could produce some spectacularly bad output. Second, graphical support, other than rectangular boxes is only handled through the xxx opcode which never had any standardized meaning (although I tried). This limitation also a…

Html back then had the same limitations.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#33

Post by Onavo »

jerf wrote: post #15
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to imagine anything worse than LaTeX for web layout. Imagine resizing a page and waiting for the re-compilation of the whole page.

That's part of the reason I'd find it so funny, yes. The reason why I consider it a possibility is that LaTeX has two things out of the gate: The technical capability, and a small but arguably rabid user base. It's the sort of thing that can take an early lead but is quite unlikely to sustain it. But you can't deny that LaTeX has had incredible staying power, despite the list of issues that everyone who uses it has w…

There's also PDF/PostScript as a format, but it's also made for fixed/absolute/print layouts. HTML/CSS (and I suppose related tech like XAML) were the only technologies where responsiveness was first priority.

Now if only the browser conglomerates can disrupt Pantone too...

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#34

Post by dhosek »

stereo wrote: post #32
dhosek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with DVI is twofold: First, font support is purely by reference which means that you need some way of connecting the fonts used in the document with the DVI file. Use of the wrong font could produce some spectacularly bad output. Second, graphical support, other than rectangular boxes is only handled through the xxx opcode which never had any standardized meaning (although I tried). This limitation also a…

Html back then had the same limitations.

Not really. was a first-class tag if not from the beginning, pretty early on and the same with color.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#35

Post by gcr »

nicoburns wrote: post #6
jerf wrote: post #5

Over the years many people have hypothesized that once WASM was really mature, it would become practical to fix the issues with web browser layout by sending down custom layout machines to users. I would find it hilarious if LaTeX turned into a leader in that space. I doubt it could hold on to that. There's a lot of things that something designed from the beginning for web-like uses could probably improve on that wou…

Running layout in WASM is already practical. A good demo is https://www.nicbarker.com/clay The things you can't do are things like expose an accessibility tree (without a dummy DOM), interact with the system IME, and access system fonts.

This page starts flickering madly when I pinch-to-zoom. Until a11y details like this are figured out, I don’t think this should be considered for general use beyond a cool prototype.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#36

Post by jampekka »

jerf wrote: post #5

Over the years many people have hypothesized that once WASM was really mature, it would become practical to fix the issues with web browser layout by sending down custom layout machines to users. I would find it hilarious if LaTeX turned into a leader in that space. I doubt it could hold on to that. There's a lot of things that something designed from the beginning for web-like uses could probably improve on that wou…

I use LaTeX daily and hate it with a passion. I kinda lost all hope when ArXiv decided to do the HTML support by hacking a LaTeX to HTML conversion.

We already have a very powerful layouting engine: the web browser. The only missing piece is printing/pagination, for which there was some CSS Paged Media progress, but that stalled.

However, why the hell are we even doing paged media? For screen viewing it's strictly worse, and very few people print papers anymore. And even for those HTML pages print passably enough.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#37

Post by jampekka »

joshjob42 wrote: post #3

Add LuaLaTeX and you're cookin' with gas. For real would be fantastic if we could get more or less the full LaTeX ecosystem readily and rapidly available online and in a huge variety of desktop applications.

Please no. LaTeX and its ecosystem needs to be put out to pasture.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#39

Post by rwl »

jampekka wrote: post #36
jerf wrote: post #5

Over the years many people have hypothesized that once WASM was really mature, it would become practical to fix the issues with web browser layout by sending down custom layout machines to users. I would find it hilarious if LaTeX turned into a leader in that space. I doubt it could hold on to that. There's a lot of things that something designed from the beginning for web-like uses could probably improve on that wou…

I use LaTeX daily and hate it with a passion. I kinda lost all hope when ArXiv decided to do the HTML support by hacking a LaTeX to HTML conversion. We already have a very powerful layouting engine: the web browser. The only missing piece is printing/pagination, for which there was some CSS Paged Media progress, but that stalled. However, why the hell are we even doing paged media? For screen viewing it's strictly wo…

Citations. Until we can cite specific passages in HTML as quickly, easily and readably as we can cite pages in paged media, HTML will remain a second class citizen for serious scholarship.

Re: LaTeX.wasm: LaTeX Engines in Browsers

#40

Post by jampekka »

rwl wrote: post #39
jampekka wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use LaTeX daily and hate it with a passion. I kinda lost all hope when ArXiv decided to do the HTML support by hacking a LaTeX to HTML conversion. We already have a very powerful layouting engine: the web browser. The only missing piece is printing/pagination, for which there was some CSS Paged Media progress, but that stalled. However, why the hell are we even doing paged media? For screen viewing it's strictly wo…

Citations. Until we can cite specific passages in HTML as quickly, easily and readably as we can cite pages in paged media, HTML will remain a second class citizen for serious scholarship.

Sections, anchors, url text fragments.

In many fields citing a page is also quite rare.

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