LaTeX Why are MathJax images not displaying on my webpage?

[mishrashubham]

because the user didn't use itex

I wish I had posted only a day later.

BTW, how old do posts have to be in order to become un-editable by the poster?

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

We currently host 1,114,554 latex graphics.

I am having no difficulties seeing the equations, other than a brief loading time. I'm using Chrome on Windows 7.

What is the difference between tex and itex tags?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

i'm going to keep it up all night because the devs haven't gotten back to me yet

 

[Lacy33]

Let me know when you get this fixed because I still can't do math.

 

[coelho]

For me the greatest problem with this new implementation of latex is it only works when the javascript is enabled.
I usually let it disabled as it makes the pages load way faster (or rather less slowly... dial-up speed here ), and i would prefer keep this way.

 

[Redbelly98]

I just printed the thread

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=491078&highlight=speed,

and every "+", "-", "=", and integral sign (and possible other stuff) is missing

printed to a physical piece of paper? do they display fine in the thread?

I notice that if you select equations in the post George linked to, the "+", "-", "=", and "/" symbols are not highlighted like the others. This would be a faster way to see the problem than printing out hardcopies, if you are trying to debug this issue.

 

[jhae2.718]

It looks like operators don't highlight in any post. It seems to work fine on the MathJax demo page, but not on PF.

Edit: it works in FF4 if you switch the renderer to HTML-CSS. (Right click on an equation, go to Settings > Math Renderer > HTML-CSS).

Math also looks better IMO.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

It looks like operators don't highlight in any post. It seems to work fine on the MathJax demo page, but not on PF.

Edit: it works in FF4 if you switch the renderer to HTML-CSS. (Right click on an equation, go to Settings > Math Renderer > HTML-CSS).

Math also looks better IMO.

hmm it should have always been HTML-CSS. Was your default set to MathML? FF has known MathML problems still.

On second thought it does appear at least FF is defaulting to NativeMML. I manually changed FF to use HTML-CSS and the equations look greatly improved.

 

[jhae2.718]

On PF at least Firefox defaulted to MathML rendering. Not sure if you can force HTML-CSS rendering from the server side.

Also, when using HTML rendering it seems to me that the 120% scaling is overkill. (FF seemed to render MathML unusually small, but for me at least HTML/CSS rendering is fine at 100%.)

 

[Fredrik]

BTW, how old do posts have to be in order to become un-editable by the poster?

I think the current limit is 11 hours and 40 minutes (700 minutes).

 

[mishrashubham]

I think the current limit is 11 hours and 40 minutes (700 minutes).

thanks

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

If there aren't any serious problems I think I'll continue to leave the MathJax up for the time being.

 

[Fredrik]

If there aren't any serious problems I think I'll continue to leave the MathJax up for the time being.

It looks like the worst problems have been solved, so I don't see any reason to go back to the old system. Thanks for all the work you've done on this.

The most serious problem right now is that we sometimes have to insert spaces in correct LaTeX code. For example, I tried this earlier today:

|\psi\rangle\langle\psi|=\frac{1}{2}\big(|\text{here}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{here}\rangle\langle\text{there}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle\text{there}|\big)

The result:
|\psi\rangle\langle\psi|=\frac{1}{2}\big(|\text{here}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{here}\rangle\langle\text{there}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle\text{there}|\big)

The first "here" is displayed as "he re". The second time \rangle is followed by \langle, the parser seems to miss the backslash. And then the \text before the last "here" seems to be read as \te. It can all be fixed by inserting spaces before the keywords that cause problems:

|\psi\rangle\langle\psi|=\frac{1}{2}\big(| \text{here}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{here}\rangle \langle\text{there}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle \text{here}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle\text{there}|\big)

But then the last "there" is displayed as "ther e", so I have to insert another space before the last \text.

|\psi\rangle\langle\psi|=\frac{1}{2}\big(| \text{here}\rangle\langle\text{here}|+|\text{here}\rangle \langle\text{there}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle \text{here}|+|\text{there}\rangle\langle \text{there}|\big)

Isn't there something you can do to force Firefox to display math that looks as pretty as in Internet Explorer? Is there something we can do, other than switch to IE?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Isn't there something you can do to force Firefox to display math as well as Internet Explorer? Is there something I can do, other than switch to IE?

I recently forced FF to use HTML instead of MathML. It looks much better to me in FF now. Maybe try clearing your cache.

 

[Borek]

The first "here" is displayed as "he re".

As far as I can tell this is vBulletin problem (feature). It splits long text inserting spaces after every 50 characters:

01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

If you try to quote my post, there are no spaces between digits, they are added to the displayed text only. Unfortunately, MathJax works not with the original post text, but with whatever vBulletin displays.

This way forum formatting doesn't break, but sometimes it means other problems (like in this case).

 

[Fredrik]

I recently forced FF to use HTML instead of MathML. It looks much better to me in FF now. Maybe try clearing your cache.

Many things have improved. Things don't get messed up when I put my mouse over math expressions. The extra space that was displayed next to the phi in \|\phi\|=\|x_0\| is gone. Etc. Math looks OK in Firefox, so I'm not saying that it absolutely must be fixed, but it still doesn't look as good as it does in IE. (I tried clearing the cache. No difference. But perhaps the change you're talking about explains the other improvements that I had already observed).

As far as I can tell this is vBulletin problem (feature). It splits long text inserting spaces after every 50 characters:

Ah, this make sense. Maybe I should be asking why we didn't have this problem before. I see that code tags override this behavior. I hope it's possible to get tex and itex tags to do the same.

01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

 

[Dale]

For me, the rendering of math is really slow now. I am using IE 8.

 

[mishrashubham]

This is just to inform that opera mini doesn't render math, all I see is the tex code.

However opera mobile does display the pages correctly although it takes a lot of time (took me almost a minute to load page with some 10 equations).

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

This is just to inform that opera mini doesn't render math, all I see is the tex code.

However opera mobile does display the pages correctly although it takes a lot of time (took me almost a minute to load page with some 10 equations).

the mobile skin is not hooked in yet

 

[samalkhaiat]

For me, the rendering of math is really slow now. I am using IE8.

It is very very slow. I would choose to read garbage threads about UFO than those with ten or so equations!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

It is very very slow. I would choose to read garbage threads about UFO than those with ten or so equations!

Honestly I think speed is most likely affected by the age of the browser. Recent browser versions of Chrome (11,12), FF (4) and even IE (9) have made great advances in the Javascript engine. If you find the math is loading slowly I would urge you to update to a recent version.

 

[gb7nash]

I've used firefox and IE, and for some reason latex isn't converting for me. I only see the tags and what you type.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I've used firefox and IE, and for some reason latex isn't converting for me. I only see the tags and what you type.

do you have JS security settings that are maybe affecting it? any errors reported?

 

[gb7nash]

do you have JS security settings that are maybe affecting it? any errors reported?

Not that I know of. Latex was working for me prior to this week and I didn't change any security settings. No errors either, I just literally see what the user is typing.

 

[Fredrik]

Not that I know of. Latex was working for me prior to this week and I didn't change any security settings. No errors either, I just literally see what the user is typing.

This site has switched to different LaTeX software (that's what this thread is about), so what was working a week ago may not be relevant. Check if Javascript is enabled (in your browser settings). Are you using a proxy? (If you're accessing this site from home, the answer is almost always no). Have you tried to just refresh the page?

By the way, I also see exactly what I typed (including the tex tags) when I save a change to a post I made earlier. But it only happens in that particular situation, and a refresh always solves the problem.

 

[fluidistic]

I noticed the latex images changed since a few days. I don't know if it's because I'm using linux (latex looks different in windows with my computer) but I really like the new look.

 

[mishrashubham]

the mobile skin is not hooked in yet

I am happy that PF even has a mobile version.

 

[Dale]

Honestly I think speed is most likely affected by the age of the browser. Recent browser versions of Chrome (11,12), FF (4) and even IE (9) have made great advances in the Javascript engine. If you find the math is loading slowly I would urge you to update to a recent version.

I can't update. IE 8 is what is mandated by our IT department. They get mad if you install unapproved browsers.

Why did we need to change? I liked the speed and quality of the previous LaTeX engine.

 

[Dale]

Looking at it, I have javascript enabled, but when it tries to render it gives a little message "Loading Web-Fonts Tex/Main/Regular" and then "Web-Fonts not available -- using image fonts instead". The attempt to load the webfonts takes a long time and then the image fonts also takes a long time. Any tips on enabling Web-Fonts?

EDIT: I found it, under security settings. It is still slow, but only annoyingly slow instead of painfully slow.

EDIT2: Actually, it can still be painfully slow. This page took 2 minutes 16 seconds to load: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=337236&page=23

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Why did we need to change? I liked the speed and quality of the previous LaTeX engine.

1. PF hosts nearly 1.3 million latex images
2. Several thousand and counting are hotlinked across the web
3. The old image processor is hard on the server
4. The old image processor is unsupported (chroot is busy)
5. Broken in preview
6. Not available in PMs
7. Limited in blogs and is actually a spin off program

I have just made a tweak to help speed up IE8 viewing. Please update here again on your experience. Thanks!