Suggestion Why is the math output hard to read sometimes?

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The discussion focuses on the readability issues of math output in the forum, particularly regarding the display of LaTeX-rendered equations. Users have noted that the equal sign alignment and font clarity are problematic, especially on a grey background. Changes in LaTeX distributions have been identified as a potential cause of these issues, prompting suggestions for adjustments to the LaTeX renderer. Warren, a participant, has experimented with anti-aliasing settings and is considering switching to ImageMagick for better output quality. Overall, there is a consensus that improving the math output's appearance would enhance the forum's professionalism and user experience.
  • #61
As far as I can see:

1) You shouldn't need the gamma trick, (it reduces the anti-aliasing quality)
2) The anti-aliasing should be left doing it's work automatically and directly to transparent
3) dpi should be about 120 or so for a typical monitor.

The dpi (dots per inch) is important because small characters with thin lines are
automatically made thicker if they become thinner as one pixel.

So you could try something like this:

convert -channel RGBA -density 120 ps_file.ps -trim +repage -bordercolor none -border 3 ps_transparent.png

-channel RGBA renders to an anti aliased transparent image
-density 120 sets the dpi to 120Regards, Hans
 
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  • #62
I used the following command:

convert -channel RGBA -density 128 -blur 0.1x0.36 ps_file.ps -trim +repage -bordercolor none -border 3 ps_transparent.png

to get the following image from this http://www.chip-architect.org/images/ps_file.ps" . There's also a small blur used now.

ps_transparent_01.png

Regards, Hans
 
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  • #63
The view here up through post #60 all look bad. Black background, and blurry to the extend of not being readable.
 
  • #64
inline LaTeX

erm :redface: …

what's happened to the inline tex? …

(for magnetic moment \bold{\mu}):

(for magnetic moment mu):
 
  • #65
symbolipoint said:
The view here up through post #60 all look bad. Black background, and blurry to the extend of not being readable.

I have the same problem on one of my computers (an older one running IE6). Presumably that has to do with the fact that IE6 has some bugs displaying PNG images under some conditions.
 
  • #66
I'm seeing all Tex as black squares with some broken white dots. Is this the IE problem ? Nothing has changed on this machine.
 
  • #67
Mentz114 said:
I'm seeing all Tex as black squares with some broken white dots. Is this the IE problem ? Nothing has changed on this machine.

I'm pretty sure it is. They made some changes here on Physics Forums a few days ago and since then I'm having this problem on one of my computers that is running IE6. I didn't have that problem on that machine before and I don't have it now on other computers. Also, it is well known that IE6 has problems displaying PNG images that are witin certain size limits.
 
  • #68
OK, thanks Count. I'll have to copy out the Tex and render it elsewhere.

[edit] everything looks fine with FireFox. I like the bigger size. Another MS conspiracy to inconvenience me :wink:.
 
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  • #69
Mentz114 said:
I'm seeing all Tex as black squares with some broken white dots. Is this the IE problem ? Nothing has changed on this machine.

It's probably related to the so-called IE Transparency bug
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294714
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1645331,00.asp
 
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  • #70
itex ..Abc \mu \nu \gamma def

tex ..Abc \mu \nu \gamma def

The inline text seems out of wack.
 
  • #71
I've never been thrilled with inline LaTex.

EDIT: please don't get me wrong, it goes without saying that having LaTex is a great feature and Warren has done the PF community a great service in providing it to us.
 
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  • #72
Yeah, the inline LaTeX is a little tough.. I can't just use a trim command. I have to trim it exactly to some known y dimension. I'll work on it.

- Warren
 
  • #73
The typesetting worked well a few days ago, even in I.E. 6 (which is what I often use where I am). But now the typesetting on the forum does not work, so I see only blotchy black rectanges, as when I try to view this:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=319942

If something, obviously, in the forums has changed, this change is not the right kind. Maybe change it back, or change it better in a way that typesetting with TEX or LaTex will work in I.E. 6.

(unfortunately, some of us do not have the option of using a different web browser )
 
  • #74
symbolipoint,

I understand your frustration, but we need to provide the best quality of service to the largest number of people possible. IE6 was released eight years ago, has not been updated in five years, and is unsupported by Microsoft. It has always contained a widely-known bug in its handling of transparency, which affects many websites, not just ours.

There was no way (that I could find) to use the previous back-end programs to create decent looking TeX, so I changed to another back-end. I will look for some work-arounds for the IE6 bug, but I'm afraid that you really need to be using more recent software. If you are unable to install software on your own computer, please talk to your administrators and get them to upgrade to software still recognized by Microsoft.

- Warren
 
  • #75
IE 6 (and IE 5.1 for Mac)

Hi Warren! :smile:

Congratulations on your 10,001st post! :biggrin:
chroot said:
IE6 was released eight years ago, has not been updated in five years, and is unsupported by Microsoft. It has always contained a widely-known bug in its handling of transparency, which affects many websites, not just ours.
…
… please talk to your administrators and get them to upgrade to software still recognized by Microsoft.

I'm using IE 5.1 for Mac, with OS 9.1 (not my usual software), and the LaTeX looks fine.

So don't upgrade … change to a Mac … even an old one! :wink:​
 
  • #76
It seems the transparency bug in IE concerned PNG images.
There are apparently workarounds using CSS or maybe Javascript... but I'm not sure how this works for other browsers.

Could one use GIF images? (I recall there was some potential legal issues with GIF... but I assume that that has been resolved.)
 
  • #77
GIF images do not have an alpha channel -- pixels are either entirely transparent or entirely opaque. That will make the images look bad (as well as being larger, which is a major concern for us). And, of course, there's that pesky legal concern. GIF's dead, for good reason. :smile:

- Warren
 
  • #78
chroot said:
GIF images do not have an alpha channel -- pixels are either entirely transparent or entirely opaque. That will make the images look bad (as well as being larger, which is a major concern for us). And, of course, there's that pesky legal concern. GIF's dead, for good reason. :smile:

- Warren

While I personally prefer PNG, using GIF might not be as bad.Post #27 by Hans de Vries links to transparent-gif images by mathlinks (linked again here)
http://alt2.mathlinks.ro/latexrender/pictures/e/6/f/e6f7873e4868755812ca60c34dd13a22e4ea785b.gif
... which looks pretty good... and has a size of 1,706 bytes.
The current PF-png version (using the latex code in https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2233960#post2233960") has a size 1,624 bytes... which isn't that much of a savings to prefer PNG to GIF.According to wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format
The US LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003.[16] The counterpart patents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy expired on June 18, 2004, the Japanese counterpart patents expired on June 20, 2004 and the counterpart Canadian patent expired on July 7, 2004.[16] Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique,[16] the GIF format may now be used freely.

...and concerning what used to be an http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/formats/#gif"
Finally for a long time the compression algorithm used by GIF was patented. Consequently it was not available for use by many image processing programs, such as ImageMagick. Thus very old IM programs will output GIF format images un-compressed, and thus using more disk space than it should. You can fix this using a GIF batch compression program such as "Gifsicle" or "InterGIF". However as the patent expired completely in mid-2004, the current release of IM has the GIF image compression re-enabled again.
 
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  • #79
chroot said:
symbolipoint,

I understand your frustration, but we need to provide the best quality of service to the largest number of people possible. IE6 was released eight years ago, has not been updated in five years, and is unsupported by Microsoft. It has always contained a widely-known bug in its handling of transparency, which affects many websites, not just ours.

There was no way (that I could find) to use the previous back-end programs to create decent looking TeX, so I changed to another back-end. I will look for some work-arounds for the IE6 bug, but I'm afraid that you really need to be using more recent software. If you are unable to install software on your own computer, please talk to your administrators and get them to upgrade to software still recognized by Microsoft.

- Warren

Well I read the forum on a computer owned by the company I work for... There is NO way the IT guys would let us change to a different version of IE. So for me, any posts with the Latex are completely illegible, useless to me...

I'm definitely not a computer geek - if there is something I can do to make the Latex legible (or even visible) please give me a clue.

Thanks
 
  • #80
gmax137 said:
Well I read the forum on a computer owned by the company I work for... There is NO way the IT guys would let us change to a different version of IE. So for me, any posts with the Latex are completely illegible, useless to me...

I'm definitely not a computer geek - if there is something I can do to make the Latex legible (or even visible) please give me a clue.

Thanks

They shouldn't let people use a 5 year old version of IE full of virus, worm, bank account
spyware and other vulnerabilities. It's the perfect way to get your company's PC's compro-
mised, turned into a zombie, get confidential data stolen, and so on...

Regards, Hans.
 
  • #81
gmax137 said:
Well I read the forum on a computer owned by the company I work for... There is NO way the IT guys would let us change to a different version of IE. So for me, any posts with the Latex are completely illegible, useless to me...

I'm definitely not a computer geek - if there is something I can do to make the Latex legible (or even visible) please give me a clue.
Are you allowed to install another browser, in addition to Internet Explorer? I'm using Firefox myself. Most computer geeks are. It's better than IE in many ways. It used to be a lot faster too, but I don't know if it's still true. I think IE may have caught up a bit. Google Chrome looks really good too. That's definitely the fastest browser.
 
  • #82
Fredrik said:
Are you allowed to install another browser, in addition to Internet Explorer? I'm using Firefox myself. Most computer geeks are. It's better than IE in many ways. It used to be a lot faster too, but I don't know if it's still true. I think IE may have caught up a bit. Google Chrome looks really good too. That's definitely the fastest browser.

Don't forget about Opera or Safari. No real reason to use IE anymore.
 
  • #83
gmax137 said:
Well I read the forum on a computer owned by the company I work for... There is NO way the IT guys would let us change to a different version of IE. So for me, any posts with the Latex are completely illegible, useless to me...

I don't understand this at all. Why won't they even let you upgrade to a more current version of IE? I could understand them choosing not to support other browsers (though, often that doesn't mean you can't install them, just that they aren't going to help you troubleshoot them), but not even to upgrade to a reasonably current version of IE?
 
  • #84
As recommended I installed firefox, and as others note the latex equations do look very nice. The only downside I've noticed so far is that the advertisements on the screen can be seen 'through' the forum text, making the text hard to read (how hard it is depends on the details of the ad). I don't remember this being a problem in IE, at least not in this forum site.

thanks for the tip on firefox. I left IE on 'my' computer so that if I need help from my IT dept they won't be too pissed off.
 
  • #85
Is it even possible to remove IE? I thought that you can't uninstall it if you run windows...
 
  • #86
Yeah, there's no need to remove IE, just don't use it unless IT comes looking.

As for ads, now that you have Firefox, if you're not interested in viewing them, go to their add-ons and find AdBlock Plus. Poof! No more ads. :biggrin:
 
  • #87
Or, become a PF contributor and see the site ad-free. :smile:

Seriously, though, I don't know what you mean about advertisements showing through text, but it doesn't sound right. Could you take a screen capture of it for me?

- Warren
 
  • #89
dx said:
Hi chroot,

I have a similar problem with Firefox, where the ads cover the post text. I attached a screenshot in post #5 in this thread: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=304395.

sometimes happens when there is a quote in the first post of a thread

Moonbear said:
As for ads, now that you have Firefox, if you're not interested in viewing them, go to their add-ons and find AdBlock Plus. Poof! No more ads. :biggrin:

poof, no more PF :wink:
 
  • #90
btw, you are logged in, you should not see that ad in the post. It's only for guests.
 

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