complicated LaTeX macro possible?

[Tim Arnold]

I have a macro in LaTeX and I'm doubtful it can be rendered correctly so I thought I'd ask here.

The definition in LaTeX is this:

    \newcommand{\Argument}[1]{%

       \text{\textmd{\textit{\textsf{#1}}}}%

    }

Presuming it is given in math mode, it renders its argument in medium sans-serif italic *as if in text-mode.*

At first, I thought the trickiest part was combing the two font families.

Currently I have it defined in the MathJax: {TeX: {Macros:}} section as:

    Argument: ['\\mmlToken{mtext}[mathvariant="sans-serif-italic"]{#1}',1]

I thought that would do the trick until I saw a user type:

    \Argument{num\_hours}

Of course, the backslash is rendered with my above definition for MathJaX.

As I say, I think the desired rendering may not be possible: 'num_hours' as text in san-serif italic.

Any suggestions?

thanks,

--Tim

[Peter Krautzberger]

Hi Arnold,

You have to go a little deeper in terms of macro definitions, i.e., hook into the TeX input jax. Here's an example for bolditalic that I hope is easy to modify.

Peter.

http://codepen.io/pkra/pen/HpFKr

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[Peter Krautzberger]

Uhm.. I meant Hi Tim :-)

[Davide P. Cervone]

Take out the backslash and you should be in business.  MathJax does not process any macros in text mode, including \_, so you need to use the characters you want literally, not as macros.  

Davide

[Peter Krautzberger]

Ah, I misread Tim's question. Thanks for correcting me Davide!

[Davide P. Cervone]

@Peter, his use of \mmlToken with an mtext element and mat variant of sans-serif-italic is all that is needed to get the font set correctly.

I should have said that MathJax doesn't process macros in the arguments to \mmlToken, not in text-mode (even though that is also true).  The argument to \mmlToken is put into the mtext tag verbatim, so no macros are processed there.

Davide

[Peter Krautzberger]

Right, I was thinking he wanted a macro that would accept other TeX inside of it.

[Davide P. Cervone]

Right, I was thinking he wanted a macro that would accept other TeX inside of it.

yes, your approach would allow that, but not if he wants the contents to be treated like text (e.g., spaces are retained).

Davide

[Peter Krautzberger]

Yup.

[Tim Arnold]

Thanks for the quick help! I understand the mmltoken treats the text verbatim--but if I take out the underscore it won't compile in LaTeX.

  \newcommand{\Argument}[1]{%

    \text{\textmd{\textit{\textsf{#1}}}}%

   }

    $y\Argument{num_hours}x$

00000000000000000

! Missing $ inserted.

<inserted text>

$

l.9 $y\Argument{num_hours}

x$

[Tim Arnold]

I was probably unclear with my question, but Peter's solution helped me out a lot. This bit:

MathJax.Hub.Register.StartupHook("TeX Jax Ready", function () {

var MML = MathJax.ElementJax.mml;

  MathJax.InputJax.TeX.Definitions.Add({

    macros: {

        bfit: ['SetFont',MML.VARIANT.SANSSERIFITALIC],

        mathbfit: ['Macro','{\\bfit #1}',1],

        oversegment: ['UnderOver','00AF']

    }

  });

});

seems to work with this math:

 $ \bfit num\_spec \, \mathbfit{another\_numx}$

I wouldn't have thought of that by myself!

thanks,

--Tim

[Tim Arnold]

hi Peter,

Your code really helped. I'm trying now to add it to the MathJax-Node library (locally only) in the mj-single.js lib.

Do you have any suggestion for where that StartupHook/Definitions.Add code should go? 

thanks again,

--Tim

[Davide P. Cervone]

Tim:

You should be able to pass the definition to mj-single via the config() call in the script that uses mj-single.js.  For example

var mjx = require("./lib/mj-single.js");

mjx.config({

  MathJax: {

    TeX: {Augment: {

      Definitions: {

        macros: {bfit: ['SetFont','bold-italic']}

      }

    }}

  }

});

mjx.start();

(It is not actually necessary to use the StartupHook to do this, as the Augment property of the TeX configuration block can be used to create the definition.  Note, however, that you must replace MML.VARIANT.BOLDITALIC by the string 'bold-italic', since the MML variable is not available to you here.)

It turns out, however, that the code that there is a problem using arrays within your configuration like this (the arrays are passed MathJax running inside a jsdom window, and the Array object there is not the same one as the Array object outside the jsdom window, and so MathJax doesn't recognize this as an array).

I have a patch to work around that, but it is not in the production copy of MathJax-node, so you would have to check out the issue96 branch of MathJax-node in order to obtain the fix (or just replace the two files in MathJax-node/lib with the ones from that branch).

Hope that gets you started down the right path.

Davide

[Tim Arnold]

thank you, that is good information--I'll continue to work on this.

thanks,

--Tim