LaTeX in markdown

[arguiot]

As Apple works on SwiftNumerics and Google on Tensorflow for Swift, many math libraries will start to appear.

In order to make life easier for developers and newcomers alike, support for LaTex equations would be welcome.

I propose to use the following syntax (as for StackOverflow or others): $<insert equation>$ for inline equations and $$<insert equation>$$ for centered equations.

I think it won't be a challenge to implement since javascript libraries like KaTex and MathJax do that very well.

I'm submitting this issue before working on a PR to discuss about the implementation (so I don't waste my time and your time).

[johnfairh]

I think it's worth exploring; Xcode quick help doesn't support it so the main use might be in guides rather than API documentation?

Were you thinking render at client or 'server' (jazzy runtime)? Might be easier to do client-side rather than try and express the tooling dependency. Would need an optout flag to avoid adding more JS dependencies.

Brief thought on syntax: I would probably go for hooking the backticks/code generation so you'd write markdown `$equation$`. Implement codespan in the jazzy markdown renderer, spot the dollars and generate some special html tags/attrs to pick up from js at runtime.

[arguiot]

I was thinking of client side rendering (way easier). Rather than having an optout flag, I think it's worth considering an opt-in flag (so it's disabled by default).
Here is an example snippet that we could use if use KaTeX (lighter, but less advanced features than MathJax):

const regex = /^\`\$.*\$\`$/gm; // Check for your syntax
document.querySelectorAll('code').forEach((block) => {
                const content = block.innerHTML
               if (regex.test(content)) {
                            const eq = content.slice(2, -1)
                            katex.render(eq, block)
               }
});

[johnfairh]

👍 for client-side.

The jazzy change I'm suggesting gives control over generating the code element - so instead of <code>$equation$</code> it could give, for example, <span class="math">equation</span>. Then the selector is easier and the styling will be easier because there's no <code> element to fight with (unless KaTeX deals with that).

[arguiot]

As I'm not a Ruby developer, I have no idea how to do that. For me it seems easier to do all with KaTeX (as I know JavaScript well). I'll probably create a PR later this week, and you'll be able to help me with that

[arguiot]

As the new PR is likely to be merged very soon, I close this issue