Is LaTeX Preview Working Properly?

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  • Thread starter Thread starter chroot
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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the functionality of LaTeX preview in the forum, including user experiences, bugs, and the overall effectiveness of the recent updates. Participants explore the implications of LaTeX support in various contexts, including posts and blogs.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • Warren announces the installation of LaTeX preview and invites feedback on bugs.
  • Some participants express appreciation for the LaTeX feature, noting its usefulness in posting replies.
  • robphy reports a bug where LaTeX in blog/journal entries displays incorrect images instead of the expected output.
  • Warren clarifies that the issue with LaTeX in blogs is a bug, not an intended feature.
  • Participants discuss the inconsistency of LaTeX rendering in preview mode, with some reporting that it works fine when posted but not in previews.
  • Mark mentions that LaTeX preview worked well before a recent hard drive failure and expresses a desire for it to function properly during the preview phase.
  • Some users report persistent issues with LaTeX previews across different browsers and systems, indicating a potential user account-related problem.
  • There is a discussion about the CPU intensity of generating new LaTeX images and how refreshing posts may impact image generation.
  • Some participants question the efficiency of image generation for repeated LaTeX commands.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a mix of experiences with LaTeX preview functionality, with some reporting successful rendering while others encounter persistent issues. There is no consensus on the reliability of the feature, and multiple competing views on its effectiveness remain.

Contextual Notes

Some participants note that LaTeX does not display correctly in preview mode, and there are mentions of browser-specific issues and user account dependencies affecting functionality.

  • #61
DrGreg said:
They are both displaying the top row of pixels missing on my computer.
That seems to be an issue with the noparse tags, not with tex or itex. I have noticed before that noparse doesn't always work as advertised.
 
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  • #62
Fredrik said:
That problem has been around for a long time Gokul, but since you're retired staff with over 10K posts, I guess you've been here much longer than that. Another problem with itex (example: \mathbb R) is that it changes the distance to the next line. You would often get better results with tex tags actually. And I'll just type a few more words to make sure that there's at least one line of text below the math expression.
Thanks for the pointer, Fredrik. I've definitely noticed the line-spacing issue, but oddly, never noticed the other problem until now. And I find it hard to believe that I've only ever used dots or vectors on tall symbols within tex tags and never with itex (but I guess that's possible)!
 
  • #63
The LaTeX preview does not work for me. When I hit the Preview Post button, I see my old equations. What is the solution?
 
  • #64
Dickfore said:
The LaTeX preview does not work for me. When I hit the Preview Post button, I see my old equations. What is the solution?
Use your browser's command to refresh the window after the "Preview Post" has gone wrong. See post #53.

By the way, does anyone know if chroot is aware of this problem?
 
  • #65
I'm aware of it, I just can't tell if it's something going on on the server end, or the client end. Nothing on the site itself has changed, so it's either something caused by a downstream provider (i.e. a caching proxy server), something in some newer version of a browser, or...

I will do some poking around to gather some evidence of these hypotheses.

- Warren
 
  • #66
I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows 7, but I just tried it with Internet Explorer 8.0.7600.16385 on the same computer, and it has the same problem. The refresh/resend workaround works in IE too.
 
  • #67
Likewise with Firefox 3.0 on OS X.
 
  • #68
In Google Chrome on Windows Vista too.

<br /> \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}{\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}{e^{\textup{i} \, k \, (x - x&#039;)} \, f(x&#039;) dx&#039; \, \frac{dk}{2\pi}}} = f(x)<br />
 
  • #69
Test1

\int_0^\infty e^{-x}\,dxNope. Problem exists using Google Chrome on OSX too.
 
  • #70
I also use google chrome, and I can vouch for Saladsamurai that preview only works sometimes (better than before though).
 
  • #71
I just did another test. Logging out and back in again doesn't solve the issue, but when I logged out, restarted the browser, cleared the browser cache and logged back in, it worked as it should. (But only once). I also tried to just clear the browser cache between previews, and that didn't work. Really weird.
 
  • #72
I have the same problem [Chrome/Firefox under Windows 7]
The only workaround that works for me is refreshing the preview page.
 
  • #73
test a foo e bar c.

Edit: D'oh. I meant to just preview that, not post it. At least I learned something, I think. Clearing the cache for the last hour doesn't help, but clearing the cache and the cookies. for the last hour does help. Hm, I guess I should try just the cookies too.

Uh...just clearing the cookies is not sufficient, and now I see that clearing both the cookies and the cache doesn't work either. Not when I preview anyway. I'll have to post this to see if "preview changes" behaves differently than "save changes".

Yes, it does. If I clear both before I post, it will look OK immediately after I have posted (without the refresh that's needed otherwise). This isn't at all useful as some sort of workaround, but maybe it will help chroot figure out what's wrong.
 
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  • #74
Wait, you find clearing your cookies and cache before posting (and then probably having to re-login and stuff) easier than pressing F5 once?
 
  • #75
You may want to read the last paragraph of my post again. :smile:
 
  • #76
I can't get TeX to work at all (Chrome 6), not even after clearing cache and refreshing, and I tried submitting. I may have had errors in my first attempt, but I don't see any now. This is inline: Gm

This is display:

Gm

I've tried it in Firefox too. No different.

(I see on coming back later that the inline one is now displaying, but the display one is still just a broken image)
 
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  • #77
Jonathan Scott said:
I can't get TeX to work at all (Chrome 6), not even after clearing cache and refreshing, and I tried submitting. I may have had errors in my first attempt, but I don't see any now. This is inline: Gm

This is display:

Gm

I've tried it in Firefox too. No different.

(I see on coming back later that the inline one is now displaying, but the display one is still just a broken image)

Seems to be working today (apart from the usual need to refresh during preview). This could perhaps be related to the fact that I apparently used TEX tags in upper case instead of tex in lower case. I had tried both, but I may have made some other mistake when I was using the lower case version.
 

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