Asset for mathematical formulas

[Samuel Schluep]

New feature, not a bug:

- Specification: http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/development/roadmap/all/math_asset
- Launchpad Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/dlcms/+spec/math-asset

[Jasper Op de Coul (jasper-infrae)]

Initial code is in https://svn.infrae.com/SilvaJSMath/trunk/,
Please see the INSTALL.txt for installing.

SilvaJSMath is a silva product that ads a codesource
which uses the jsMath project for rendering tex strings
into math symbols.

Should we do a beta release of this, or are there open issues with the product?

[Samuel Schluep (schluep)]

Before doing a release, there are some issues of my tests in June. I don't know if these issues have been solved. Here is a copy of my comments form an earlier e-mail that can also be found on http://www.dlcms.ethz.ch/development/roadmap/all/math_asset:

"Here some experiences from my side. With Jasper's tarball and without
special fonts installed I experience the following behavioral issues
(Win XP, Firefox 2.0, Zope in Debug-Mode,...)

- Using the Henrici formula p. 421
(http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/examples/Henrici.html) I get a
Firefox Warning "Unresponsive script: A script on this page may be busy,
or it may have stopped responding...", but after pressing the "Continue"
button the formula will show up.

- Further, with the same formula, some "characters", e.g. integral, root
and parentheses are not displayed correctly without the special fonts
installed.

However, every thing works well when the Fonts are installed (no
Warning, correct formula). It's just a little bit slow. But I assume
that the problems mentioned above can be solved, because the page
http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/examples/Henrici.html is
displayed with acceptable speed and without any problem with and without
the fonts installed."

[Jasper Op de Coul (jasper-infrae)]

Hi Samuel,

I tried the Henrici examples with the trunk version of SilvaJSMath using
jsMath (3.4e) and the image fonts (1.3).
This works fine for me, I think there were some changes in SilvaJSMath
since we made the tarball, could you test it with the trunk version?
Also, I think the speed is not that bad. The example jsMath page ( http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/examples/Henrici.html)
is a bit faster, probably bacause it does more aggressive caching of all the images

[Samuel Schluep (schluep)]

Hi Jasper

Testing the latest trunk version with jsMath (3.4e) and the image fonts (1.3) works acceptably fast (except for Zope's debug mode, in this case the Henrici example is incredibly slow).

Using jsMath without TeX fonts a message appears "No jsMath TeX fonts found" (this is OK), clicking on the button "jsMath Control Panel" does not work with SilvaJSMath. At the left bottom corner of the screen apears a message box "Lloading jsMath-controls.html" and after that "Can't load file" is displayed.

This should probably be fixed if possible.

[Kit Blake (kitblake)]

This is reproducable. In the log I see:

Cannot locate object at: http://localhost:8081/forest/service_resources/SilvaJSMath/jsMath/jsMath-controls.html</p>
  <hr noshade="noshade"/>

Although I wonder if we shouldn't just remove the button. Are the controls really useful?

[Samuel Schluep (schluep)]

Well I don't know. On the one hand, the jsMath dialogs are something that may confuse many ordinary viewers of a web page. On the other hand, the dialogs will guide some users to the installation of the TeX fonts which is the preferable way of using jsMath.

There is probably one further argument against removing the button. Currently, the jsMath package is installed as is. SilvaJSMath is just an adapter to integrate it into the Silva framework. This makes it easier to update jsMath: download the newest package and put it into the SilvaJSMath resources directory. To remove the button we probably need to modify the core jsMath software!

[Jasper Op de Coul (jasper-infrae)]

I looked into this, and it seems the following is happening:

When you press the button for the configuration screen, a file "jsMath-controls.html" is loaded.
This file exists on the filesystem, however the FileSystemSite product in Silva changes the name of the file
into "jsMath-controls" and then sets the type to be a pagetemplate.
The file also has errors in html, so when executed as a pagetemplate it returns errors.

I don't think we can solve this unless we change something in SilvaJSMath.
In previous versions i was able to suppress the "No jsMath TeX fonts found" menu,
without changing the jsmath javascript code, but as you pointed out, the message is quite useful.

I'm not sure what to do here, either we try to suppress the message, or we try to change FileSystemSite, or we
change JSMath. All tree options are far from optimal.

[Jasper Op de Coul (jasper-infrae)]

Okay , I think we might have found a solution after all, I'll work on it this afternoon

[Jasper Op de Coul (jasper-infrae)]

This is fixed now in SilvaJSMath trunk.
You will need to reinstall the product in the service_extensions tab for this to work.
What happens is that the .html files from the resources directory are copied to the service_resources in the ZMI
by the install script so they will keep their extension and are not converted to pagetemplates.
The files are then found through acquisition. (which means we don't have to change the javascript files)

[Samuel Schluep (schluep)]

Very nice :-) Ready for release, removing tag test-required

[Samuel Schluep (schluep)]

Setting to fix released since the version of SilvaJSMath has been set to 1.0 and SilvaMath has been released.