LaTeX Tip on using LaTeX preview at other websites

[berkeman]

I was using an external website to preview my LaTeX for a reply in the forums today, and was very frustrated that my LaTeX rendered just fine at https://www.quicklatex.com but would not render at PF. I must have spent at least 10 minutes trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and finally checked my LaTeX at https://latexeditor.lagrida.com which flagged an incorrect extra opening brace. It turns out that the first website was auto-correcting my LaTeX error by dimming (greying out) that extra leading brace, and not really flagging it for me as an error.

I send these two URLs to newbies when I PM them hints and tips on how to use LaTeX here at PF, and I'm now going to include this subtlety in the behavior of these two websites.

If you have trouble using the Preview feature to check your LaTeX, you can use a website such as https://www.quicklatex.com/ or https://latexeditor.lagrida.com/ to preview your LaTeX before you post it.

 

[fresh_42]

Thanks. I updated my list accordingly. The quicklatex editor didn't pass my test either. It doesn't accept my shortcuts without terribly stumbling over the letters, missing about a third of them. I removed it and replaced it by lagrida. Here is another one that works well and is pretty rudimentary: https://mathb.in/

Note: lagrida autoadds the closure of parentheses. If I shortcut \{\} then it becomes \{\}}.

 

[berkeman]

Thanks fresh. I think I should make the same change in my notes that I send to folks. No reason to cause the same confusion for them that I experienced.

 

[pbuk]

https://www.quicklatex.com sends its input to a server where it is rendered by unknown software with unspecified $\LaTeX$ modules and sent back to the user.

https://latexeditor.lagrida.com and mathb.in use MathJax, the same as Physics Forums, which is not actually $\LaTeX$ at all, it is a system that emulates the $\LaTeX$ Math module running entirely in the browser. This obviously makes them better for testing markup to be used here,

 

[fresh_42]

I switched to TeXstudio as soon as I had calculations over several lines. That allows me to really see the result parallel to my source code - as it once was on PF, too, I may add! It is awful to code complicated formulas without checking the result in the same medium, esp. if you regularly use \sin\left(\dfrac{5}{2}x\right) instead of sin \frac {5x} 2. I sometimes even switch to TeXstudio in the middle of writing if I note that error tracing takes longer than typing.

I think websites all use MathJax because there is no way for the compilation step in a web dialogue. Yet, SE is closer to LaTeX than PF. # is faster to type on my German keyboard than $ so it's ok for me, however, I don't understand why we do not use $ as on SE.

The lack of many LaTeX symbols is more disturbing, e.g.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/a-pi-question.1064916/#post-7111110