Wrong Sphinx version detection for jsmath

[Mte90]

Issue Report Checklist

• Searched the issues page for similar reports
• Read the relevant sections of the Spyder Troubleshooting Guide and followed its advice
• Reproduced the issue after updating with conda update spyder (or pip, if not using Anaconda)
• Could not reproduce inside jupyter qtconsole (if console-related)
• Tried basic troubleshooting (if a bug/error)
  • Restarted Spyder
  • Reset preferences with spyder --reset
  • Reinstalled the latest version of Anaconda
  • Tried the other applicable steps from the Troubleshooting Guide
• Completed the Problem Description, Steps to Reproduce and Version sections below

Problem Description

I am getting an error everytime for the help panel:

Looking at the code the jsmath package is not updated since 2019 and I have sphinx 7.2.6.
Reading the code on this check that use jsmath should be for 1.1 < releases.

spyder/spyder/plugins/help/utils/conf.py

Line 40 in 2429caa

if sphinx_version < "1.1" or not math:

Change the line 40 in that file to:

if sphinx_version < "1.1" and not math:

Fix the issue (in my case the math variable is false).

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Versions

• Spyder version: 5.4.5
• Python version: 3.11

Dependencies

# Mandatory:
atomicwrites >=1.2.0                                                        :  1.4.1 (OK)
chardet >=2.0.0                                                             :  5.2.0 (OK)
cloudpickle >=0.5.0                                                         :  2.2.1 (OK)
cookiecutter >=1.6.0                                                        :  2.1.1 (OK)
diff_match_patch >=20181111                                                 :  20200713 (OK)
intervaltree >=3.0.2                                                        :  3.1.0 (OK)
IPython >=7.31.1,<9.0.0,!=8.8.0,!=8.9.0,!=8.10.0,!=8.11.0,!=8.12.0,!=8.12.1 :  8.14.0 (OK)
jedi >=0.17.2,<0.19.0                                                       :  0.18.2 (OK)
jellyfish >=0.7                                                             :  0.9.0 (OK)
jsonschema >=3.2.0                                                          :  4.10.3 (OK)
keyring >=17.0.0                                                            :  24.2.0 (OK)
nbconvert >=4.0                                                             :  6.5.3 (OK)
numpydoc >=0.6.0                                                            :  1.5.0 (OK)
parso >=0.7.0,<0.9.0                                                        :  0.8.3 (OK)
pexpect >=4.4.0                                                             :  4.8.0 (OK)
pickleshare >=0.4                                                           :  0.7.5 (OK)
psutil >=5.3                                                                :  5.9.5 (OK)
pygments >=2.0                                                              :  2.15.1 (OK)
pylint >=2.5.0,<3.0                                                         :  2.17.4 (OK)
pylint_venv >=3.0.2                                                         :  3.0.3 (OK)
pyls_spyder >=0.4.0                                                         :  0.4.0 (OK)
pylsp >=1.7.4,<1.8.0                                                        :  1.7.4 (OK)
pylsp_black >=1.2.0,<3.0.0                                                  :  1.3.0 (OK)
qdarkstyle >=3.0.2,<3.2.0                                                   :  3.0.3 (OK)
qstylizer >=0.2.2                                                           :  0.2.2 (OK)
qtawesome >=1.2.1                                                           :  1.2.2 (OK)
qtconsole >=5.4.2,<5.5.0                                                    :  5.4.3 (OK)
qtpy >=2.1.0                                                                :  2.3.1 (OK)
rtree >=0.9.7                                                               :  1.0.1 (OK)
setuptools >=49.6.0                                                         :  68.1.2 (OK)
sphinx >=0.6.6                                                              :  7.2.6 (OK)
spyder_kernels >=2.4.4,<2.5.0                                               :  2.4.4 (OK)
textdistance >=4.2.0                                                        :  4.5.0 (OK)
three_merge >=0.1.1                                                         :  0.1.1 (OK)
watchdog >=0.10.3                                                           :  3.0.0 (OK)
xdg >=0.26                                                                  :  0.28 (OK)
zmq >=22.1.0                                                                :  24.0.1 (OK)

# Optional:
cython >=0.21                                                               :  None (NOK)
matplotlib >=3.0.0                                                          :  3.6.3 (OK)
numpy >=1.7                                                                 :  1.24.2 (OK)
pandas >=1.1.1                                                              :  1.5.3 (OK)
scipy >=0.17.0                                                              :  None (NOK)
sympy >=0.7.3                                                               :  1.12 (OK)

[dalthviz]

Hi @Mte90 thank you for the feedback! I think I was able to reproduce this 👍 So, I think the math value is the state of the Help Render mathematical equations option:

Disabling it triggers the error indeed. From my understanding seems like your suggested fix make sense but, just in case, what do you think @ccordoba12 ?

[ccordoba12]

I think the problem is the jsmath Sphinx extension is no longer available, which causes this bug when the math option is disabled.

I think a proper solution would be to rewrite the if block referenced by @Mte90 to be:

if math:
    if sphinx_version < "1.1":
        extensions = ['sphinx.ext.jsmath']
    else:
        extensions = ['sphinx.ext.mathjax']

That way we'd really avoid loading the Sphinx extension to render math if the user requests not to.

@dalthviz or @Mte90, could you check if that works for you when enabling/disabling the math option? Thanks!

[dalthviz]

Checked and that works 👍 There is a missing thing though which is to initialize extensions to prevent errors when trying to append the 'sphinx.ext.autosummary' extension. So the change taking into account that initialization should look something like:

extensions = []

if math:
    if sphinx_version < "1.1":
        extensions = ['sphinx.ext.jsmath']
    else:
        extensions = ['sphinx.ext.mathjax']

Checked manually inspecting numpy.sin:

• With the math option enabled:

• With the math option disabled:

[ccordoba12]

Thanks @dalthviz for checking and for your additional comment on my initial code fix.

@Mte90, could you incorporate our suggestions to your pull request? Thanks!

[Mte90]

PR updated :-)

[ccordoba12]

Thanks @Mte90!