Re: Agenda for teleconference Wednesday October 24, 2007

From: Markus Krötzsch <mak@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Subject: Re: Agenda for teleconference Wednesday October 24, 2007
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:40:15 +0200

> On Mittwoch, 24. Oktober 2007, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> > From: "Sandro Hawke" <sandro@w3.org>
> > Subject: Re: Agenda for teleconference Wednesday October 24, 2007
> > Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:08:56 -0400
> >
> > > "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com> writes:
> > > > From: Ian Horrocks <ian.horrocks@comlab.ox.ac.uk>
> > > > Subject: Agenda for teleconference Wednesday October 24, 2007
> > > > Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:52:36 +0100
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > >            o PROPOSED: Documents to be edited using wiki markup
> > > > > 		facilities (templates, tex math, etc). Revisit if there
> > > > > 		are problems.
> > > >
> > > > [...]
> > > >
> > > > Real TeX, with everything?  Just TeX?  I would miss LaTeX math stuff.
> > > > Is there a compact document on the capabilities we would be getting?
> > >
> > > AMS LaTeX, as per:
> > >       http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula
> >
> > That page says:
> >
> > 	MediaWiki uses a subset of TeX markup, including some extensions
> > 	from LaTeX and AMSLaTeX, for mathematical formulae. 
> 
> I think there is a whitelist of commands that are allowed in the wiki. This 
> is, I think, a security issue (since TeX is a complex programming language 
> that may have undesired side-effects when running user-built programs on the 
> server).

Sure, there may have to be some limitations.  What are they?  

> > 	It generates 
> > 	either PNG images or simple HTML markup, depending on user
> > 	preferences and the complexity of the expression. In the future,
> > 	as more browsers are smarter, it will be able to generate
> > 	enhanced HTML or even MathML in many cases. (See blahtex for
> > 	information about current work on adding MathML support.)
> >
> > 	More precisely, MediaWiki filters the markup through Texvc,
> > 	which in turn passes the commands to TeX for the actual
> > 	rendering. Thus, only a limited part of the full TeX language is
> > 	supported; see below for details.
> >
> > From this I take it that there are significant restrictions.  The web
> > page describing the language accepted prints as 19 pages.
> >
> > I don't like the part about displaying as "PNG images".  This makes
> > searching very difficult.
> 
> AFAIK the wiki builds its search index on the input text, not on the output 
> HTML. Moreover, all the PNGs will have the (La)TeX code as an alternative 
> text label (so that text-browsers can read stuff as well, and smart web 
> searches may index it).

Well, I don't see how to get firefox to look for all uses of "a" in a
document that includes texvc.  In fact, the situation is precisely the
worst of all worlds: *some* uses of "a" in the texvc output are
included, which can give rise to the the expectation that *all* uses of
"a" in the document are included.  For an example of how the search
fails try searching for a in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula, and then
highlight all matches.

> > I don't see anything about user-defined commands on the page, from which
> > I take it that they are not allowed.  This is a very serious lack!  Of
> > course, HTML also has a problem here.
> 
> This might be easy to fix, if we have a *fixed* set of common user-defined 
> add-ons/packages to use in the wiki tex. We basically can change the preamble 
> of the TeX that is used to make the formulae as we like. I do not know 
> whether and how this could be done through the wiki, though.

I wonder whether \newcommand is on the whitelist.

> -- Markus
> 
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > >       -- Sandro


peter

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2007 17:01:03 UTC