Preprocess TeX to replace '–' with '-'?

[Christian Perfect]

This is a hack solution to a problem I'm having: wordpress replaces instances of - (the minus sign) in my text with the character –, or unicode character #8211, the en-dash. At the moment, wordpress doesn't let you customise which characters its wptexturize function replaces - you either get all of its "fixes" or none.

I want to keep making my quotation marks pretty and so on, and persuading WordPress to pay attention to TeX delimiters isn't an option, and the en-dash doesn't have a meaning in TeX at the moment, I'd like to get MathJax to preprocess TeX to replace – with -.

I'm sure I already know the answer to do this, but my brain isn't running quickly today: how do I do it?

[Peter Krautzberger]

Here you go http://jsbin.com/veliwecimi/1/edit

  <script type="text/x-mathjax-config"> 

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

          MathJax.InputJax.TeX.prefilterHooks.Add(function (data) { 

            data.math = data.math.replace(/–/g, '-'); 

          }); 

        }); 

  </script> 

Peter.

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[Christian Perfect]

Thanks! I knew there was a mechanism for prefilters but I couldn't find it in the docs.

[Peter Krautzberger]

> but I couldn't find it in the docs.

yeah, we need to figure out how to organize these kinds of things. "When we have time"(tm)...

[Murray]

Christian

The MathJax prefilter is one way, but FYI, it is possible to customize the wptexturize process. If you get stuck on other Wordpress gremlins, it's easy to create a Wordpress plugin:

This works (it comes from here, corrected):

<?php

/*

Plugin Name: Un-en-dash the Double Dash

*/

add_filter( 'the_content' , 'mh_un_en_dash' , 50 );

add_filter( 'the_title', 'mh_un_en_dash' , 50 );

add_filter( 'the_excerpt', 'mh_un_en_dash' , 50 );

add_filter( 'comment_text', 'mh_un_en_dash' , 50 );

add_filter( 'list_cats', 'mh_un_en_dash' , 50 );

function mh_un_en_dash( $text ) {

        $content = str_replace( '&#8211;' , '-' , $text );

        return $content;

}

?>

Save it as a PHP file and upload to the "plugins" folder. Then enable it.

The other way around the problem is to try putting your LaTeX in a "pre" tag (Wordpress doesn't chew anything in the following tags):

<pre>, <code>, <kbd>, <style>, <script>, and <tt>

This is what I had to do on this page, otherwise Wordpress mangled the JSXGraph code:

http://www.intmath.com/blog/jsxgraph-interactive-javascript-graphs/4579

Regards

Murray 

[Christian Perfect]

I considered making a plugin to do what you want, but I'd prefer to keep the en-dash in normal text. Using a MathJax prefilter to only do the replacement on TeX feels like the best way to me.