[Axiom-developer] RE: tex4ht and jsmath

[Martin Rubey]

Dear Bill, Dear Eitan,

Page, Bill writes:
 > Eitan
 > 
 > On Thursday, October 20, 2005 1:37 AM you wrote:
 > > 
 > > I'll provide a jsmath mode. Probably during the winter break.  Maybe
 > > before that.

This would be wonderful!

 > But maybe it's a bit shocking though that the MathML result is nearly twice
 > the size of the pdf file. :( Well, I guess I knew that MathML was verbose
 > ...

Oh dear. This is really true? Would this be better with jsMath? Alternatively,
is it possible to compress MathMl on the fly -- I heard that "it compresses
very well :-)" ?

 > > * Added {\csname HCode\endcsname{}} before ^ in the following 
 > > three formulas
 > > 
 > >       ${^{HAND}{\bf tv}}_{\bf x}$, 
 > >       ${^{HAND}{\bf tv}}_{\bf y}$, 
 > >       ${^{HAND}{\bf tv}}_{\bf z}$. 
 > >       $${\bf Rot(k,\theta)} = {\bf Rot(^C{\bf 
 > > z},\theta)}\eqno(1.60)$$ 
 > >
 > >   As far as TeX is concerned, in all of the cases a base {} should have
 > > been included.  TeX4ht in many occasions has problems with empty bases
 > > because they don't show in the dvi code.
 > 
 > Ah I see, like this ${{}^{HANB} ... $
 > 
 > > The code {\csname HCode\endcsname{}} works for TeX and TeX4ht.

So ${{}^{HANB} ... $ would not work for tex4ht? This seems like a problem for
me. 

 > >    The extra \\ at the end is also inappropriate for LaTeX.
 > > 
 > > Well, garbage in garbage out ;-)
 > > 
 > >   Wrong way to introduce text:   $${\rm {or\  as\ \ \ }} ... $$ 
 > >   Wrong way to introduce 
 > >          functions (sin, cos):   sin \theta &  cos \theta & 0 & 0\cr 
 > >   Wrong way to emphasize math:   {\bf x}
 > >   etc......
 > 
 > Well, please define "wrong way" - latex and dvipdfm swallowed all that with
 > out a complaint. I will agree that the contents of the file is a little
 > crufty, but certainly no worse that a code of LaTeX coding I have seen.
 > 
 > Besides a stronger discipline, how can we insure that our LaTeX coding meets
 > certain minimum standards so that it doesn't cause the conversion programs
 > to barf? Do you know of any sort of 'lint' program for LaTeX that could
 > detect and warn about the "wrong way" of doing things?

I think that chktex does this:

http://baruch.ev-en.org/proj/chktex/

it issues warnings about possible typographical errors.

On the other hand, we could simply say: a proper pamphlet file is a file that
is correctly processed by latex and tex4ht. :-)

Martin