LaTeX support in articles

[martinbeentjes]

Feature

User Story

As an author of an article I want to be able to mathematical typesetting using LaTeX so that readers can read the mathematical typesetting better.

Definition of Done

• The author can add the LaTeX into the article
• The reader sees the rendered LaTeX

Notes

• I came upon this idea when I saw the article "Fun with secrets" by Paula.
• I suggest using KaTeX to implement the rendering of the math text

[Zhao-Andy]

Hey @martinbeentjes, thanks for the feedback. Definitely something we're interested in. We're going to make some overall improvements to the editor soon, and this will probably be on the list.

We're going to close the issue for now though since we're focused on open sourcing the repo.

[martinbeentjes]

Thanks for the heads up! And good luck with open sourcing the repo!

[FRosner]

Now after the repo is open source, let's get to it! 🤣

I figured out that DEV uses the redcarpet Markdown parser. It seems that people already tried rendering LaTeX equations in redcarpet: vmg/redcarpet#559

To avoid unwanted interactions with the Markdown syntax, the recommendation seems to be to embed the equations into backticks which turns off Markdown rendering and then inside enclose everything into dollar signs to enable LaTeX.

I'd be happy to give it a shot unless it's already being worked on or not of interest. What do you think @Zhao-Andy?

[FRosner]

I'd like to see

• layout of existing posts is not broken

as part of the DoD.

[pkfrank]

Hey @FRosner — thanks for opening this back up. @benhalpern will chime in with a few additional notes shortly.

[stale]

Thanks for contributing to this issue. As it has been 90 days since the last activity, we are automatically closing the issue in 7 days. This is often because the request was already solved in some way and it just wasn't updated or it's no longer applicable. If this issue still requires attention, please respond with a comment. Happy Coding!

[Tadaboody]

AFAIK this hasn't been implemented yet.
I think this is still applicable and would like it to be re-opened.

[gypsydave5]

I would be interested in helping, as (I think) would @DrBearhands.

[FRosner]

I wanted to do it but when I had time dev.to was closed source. Now it's open source but I don't have time anymore :(

[maestromac]

Feel free to give it a whirl @gypsydave5 ! MarkdownParser.rb is where all the processing is situated.