Latex plain text in Tiddlywiki with Katex plugin?

[Jeronimo Minino]

Hi!

Wikitext offers great formatting options, but in specific use cases there can be a legitimate need for some more granularity in controling features like line breaks, indents and line spacing.

Yesterday I happened to read about the Katex plugin for TW in the documentation of Tiddlyshow.

As I have no previous experience with Latex (and a search for ["Katex" "plain text"] in this Google Group didn't yield the kind of results I expected) I'm now asking this question here in the hope that it makes sense: 

Besides of mathematical and chemical typesetting: Is it also possible to have some Latex plain text typesetting in Tiddlywiki using the Katex plugin?

Background:

Much of the formatting we apply to plain text in Foreign Language teaching materials (slides, handouts and the like) can be considered "semantic formatting". 

Wikitext can not offer all of the text formatting features we need -maybe in part this is due to limitations imposed by the browsers.

Before the pandemic, I used to create most of my classroom slides and PDF printouts in LibreOffice. But this year I finally decided to carry out a transition towards the goal of integrating all my teaching-related tasks in Tiddlywiki only.

I have been using Wikitext tables as a way to hack some of the current limitations on indents and line breaks, but this method of editing feels rather strenuous and suboptimal.

If Latex plain text compatibility in Tiddlywiki is possible, I would definitely want to go down the rabbithole of making out a workflow. This might involve doing the writing in a dedicated Latex editor, and then exporting/pasting the text into tiddlers.

What do you think?

[Javier Eduardo Rojas Romero]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 11:46:18AM -0800, Jeronimo Minino wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Wikitext offers great formatting options, but in specific use cases there
> can be a legitimate need for some more granularity in controling features
> like line breaks, indents and line spacing.

These you should be able to achieve by using HTML directly (e.g.,
inserting `<br>`s where you need a line break) and HTML + CSS (to adjust
line spacing, create a `<div style="line-height: 2">text goes here</div>`)

> Besides of mathematical and chemical typesetting: Is it also possible to
> have some Latex plain text typesetting in Tiddlywiki using the Katex plugin?

I ... suspect not, but I'm not sure.

> Background:
>
> Much of the formatting we apply to plain text in Foreign Language teaching
> materials (slides, handouts and the like) can be considered "semantic
> formatting".
> Wikitext can not offer all of the text formatting features we need -maybe
> in part this is due to limitations imposed by the browsers.
>

> If Latex plain text compatibility in Tiddlywiki is possible, I would
> definitely want to go down the rabbithole of making out a workflow. This
> might involve doing the writing in a dedicated Latex editor, and then
> exporting/pasting the text into tiddlers.

Please tell us more about what (typographical, I guess) problems you
need to solve (which from what you say you already know how to solve
with plain LaTeX), so we can brainstorm a
tiddlywiki-friendly/browser-friendly solution to them. I, for one,
would be happy to pitch in.

>
> What do you think?
>
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[Ste]

The LaTeX functionality provided by KaTeX can be found on the KaTeX website 

https://katex.org/docs/supported.html

[TW Tones]

Jero,

Some work a few of us are doing is likely to assist you here. With Mario as the key coder we are working on and there is a demo of it see https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywikidev/c/vS5ZI0FCiIY

Basically it allows the definition of extended and customised mark-up. In time I believe a library of custom mark-up could address any authors needs. 

I am keen to build a library of elements I will use when writing process documents and manuals, my own or a sharable custom "mark-up language" is possible. 

In the mean time do consider making use of html elements and CSS to alter the output as you need.

Tones

[Rahul Kashyap]

Hi all,

I would like to put my thoughts here. Apology if all of this doesn't fit here. 

I believe that Latex does not represent the non-linear structure of knowledge as tiddlywiki does. However,  I'm basically trying to get a document with best features of formatting as close to latex as possible. 

I am also interested in knowing people's thoughts about auto-numbering of sections (sub-sections), equations, figures, tables and lists. All of these has to be consistent especially when you transclude otherwise we're losing the most powerful feature of tiddlywiki. 

-Rahul

[Jeronimo Minino]

  Hi, Rahul.

I don't know if I get you right, but in my eyes, you could attain non-linearity by having each of your sections, subsections, equations, figures, tables, lists, etc be individual tiddlers which you can tag and transclude, independently of the use of Latex formatting in the text field.

If I understood correctly the advice by "Javier Rojas", a lot of custom formatting can be achieved by using html and css. So for the time being I am now trying to learn how to do just that, because my work does NOT include special notations (like Phonetic notation). If I hit the wall then I'll come again here and ask.

But our needs may differ. if you need some complex formattings -the likes of math or chem notation- I can´t think of an alternative to Latex.  In this context I found the link provided by "Ste" very useful.

The demo linked by "TW Tones" shows a whole universe of plugins, which I am slowly trying to explore. Take a look... maybe there is something for you there.

I have never tried auto-numbering, but if  each of your sections, subsections, equations, figures tables and lists are different tiddlers, then maybe all you need would be some kind of plugin which can calculate a numbering and place it on a field which you can then show as you see fit. I wonder if a plugin with such functionality exists.

Wish you a nice day.

[Rahul Kashyap]

Thanks for the comment.