How can I view a LaTeX file in Firefox?
Alasdair
necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
Does anybody know how this can be done?
Thanks,
Alasdair
John Culleton
Unfortunately browsers are not equipped to interpret and/or delete
LaTeX tags on command. If you come across the pdf version however you can
display that in a browser extension, then cut and paste the text into an
editor and save it. This won't save any time since the pdf is
probably bigger than the original LaTeX code.
My suggestion: view the LaTeX source on line (it is after all ASCII
text) and use your imagination to grok the final format.
--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters
David N. Williams
I thought your suggestion is what he was asking how to do! Or
am I wrong? :-) Anyway, I'd like to know that. If a TeX source
file at a web site has a ".txt" instead of a ".tex" extension,
or even ".tex.txt", there's no problem viewing it as ASCII text
in the browsers I've used.
On the other hand, there are lots of file extensions, e.g.,
".fs", for which the files do get displayed by (my) browser as
ASCII text, so there must be a way to make it happen for ".tex".
Whether that's on the server side or the client side, I don't
know. If it's on the server side, I'd like to know how to do it
for TeX source files at my own web site, which is located on a
server that I have no control over.
-- David
anon k
> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting.
The file might not be served as text/plain, but as text/somethingelse,
which I think means that Firefox will reject it. I have the same
annoyance; occasionally you find LaTeX files that open in Firefox,
mostly you don't. It is the same with code in all languages: I'm told
that it's at the discretion of whoever administers the web server.
My Firefox is set to open .tex files in emacs. It's not quite
satisfactory if you're web-browsing rather than editing, but it might
suffice for a while.
However, there's meant to be some way to edit how Firefox handles MIME
extensions, so that you can force it to treat text/whatever as
text/plain. So far, the only one that I've found is in Firefox's
download options, which is where I set it to open the .tex file in
emacs. When I tried selecting Firefox, it collapsed into a frenzied
loop of opening extra tabs or windows.
Perhaps you will have more success in finding out how to force Firefox
to treat this other text as text/plain.
anon k
> Alasdair wrote:
>
>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting.
>
>
> The file might not be served as text/plain, but as text/somethingelse,
I had a few moments to probe further, and found that at least some .tex
files are being served as application/x-tex.
Now, there's an old problem of some sysadmins serving html as text/plain
(the MIME type is set in the http header, for the other person who was
asking about it), and Firefox hence displays the raw markup instead of
the intended page.
Some bright spark wrote an extension that takes such data, tacks it onto
a text/html header, and feeds it back to Firefox for correct display.
I imagine that it might be possible to gently hack that extension to do
the same to application/x-tex.
Does anyone know the extension that I'm referring to? I haven't been
able to find it today.
Ken Starks
This doesn't make any sense to me. If you can view it as text,
you have already 'downloaded' it. What you have not done, I
presume, is save it to your local file system.
Firefox, and other browsers, are overkill in a way. Perhaps you
should consider Python which will copy a file from a url to
a python object, or an editor or another file or to standard
output. It is very quick.
Quick-and-dirty example, in python, to save the
given url 'to the localfile 'myfile.txt' in the current directory:
import urllib
urllib.urlretrieve("http://www.python.org","myfile.txt")
Marc Olschok
I have no experience with Firefox, but would expect that (like almost all
browsers I have encountered so far) it has some menu within its
configuration that allows to specify applications for those mime-types that
are not meant to be handled by the browser iself. It may then be enough
to add an entry for "application/x-tex" in which you can either specify
that the browser should handle it itself or else specify some pager
program like less or more.
Marc
anon k
You can indeed custom-set the 'helper application' for opening these
files. If you set it to Firefox, then Firefox opens a new window or tab
for it but, rather than displaying it as text/plain, this new window
runs the MIME-detector again, sees that the file should be opened in
Firefox, and opens a new window which again runs the MIME detector, and
so on.
If you set some external helper application like a text editor or a
programmers' editor, it works, but this interrupts the flow of your
web-browsing if all you want to do is look over some code snippets.
This is why I suspect it better to re-package the file as text/plain
which Firefox natively handles without problems.
Myself, I find it annoying that browsers are hard-coded to be so
'intelligent' about document types. If it isn't up to the user to
decide how to treat received data, we might as well have the Windows
Paperclip do it all.
Perhaps there's another browser out there that by default renders
anything you like as if it were text/plain?
Stephen Harris
http://www.integretechpub.com/techexplorer/download/
Put the download in Firefox plug-ins.
Works for me,
Stephen
Stephen Harris
That is correct. TechExplorer, free for one person (used to be owned by
IBM) will display what the output looks like, which you can compare with
the source .tex file with Firefox's View->Page Source at top of screen.
You could have the contents of the webpage source and how it displays
shown in two browsers, split screen. If the .tex file is on the HDD,
this works like instant-preview. You could make changes, save, and then
reload the file in Firefox all in different (tabs) "New Windows".
mot juste,
Stephen
Bob Tennent
>>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting.
>>
>> The file might not be served as text/plain, but as text/somethingelse,
>
> I had a few moments to probe further, and found that at least some .tex
> files are being served as application/x-tex.
>
> Now, there's an old problem of some sysadmins serving html as text/plain
> (the MIME type is set in the http header, for the other person who was
> asking about it), and Firefox hence displays the raw markup instead of
> the intended page.
I don't get it. Which http header? If the html page has
<a href="...path to something.tex">whatever</a>
and one clicks on it, where does the mime type get set? On the client,
when the http request is sent, or on the server, when it is replied to?
Bob T.
Alasdair
the problem is that I *can't* view a TeX file online, without
downloading it first, which often I don't want to do - I just want to
view the file (verbatim, so to speak), in my browser window. But this
doesn't seem like a trivial matter.
Matter what I need is a firefox extension which will treat a *.tex file
as though it were a *.txt file and view it accordingly. However, being
the lousy programmer I am, such an extension is not likely to be
written by me!
cheers,
Alasdair
anon k
It's set by the server. We mere web-readers don't see the http header
at all. You can snoop around in the Page Info window to see more,
however. There's also an extension called "Live HTTP Headers" that
helps when debugging a new web site. One of its functions is to reveal
the MIME type.
anon k
See if you can find the extension that corrects text/plain to text/html,
and I'll see if my well-rusted programming 'skills' can achieve the hack.
I too would like to be able to read some classes of code within the
browser, literal and unrendered.
anon k
> On the other hand, there are lots of file extensions, e.g.,
> ".fs", for which the files do get displayed by (my) browser as
> ASCII text, so there must be a way to make it happen for ".tex".
> Whether that's on the server side or the client side, I don't
> know. If it's on the server side, I'd like to know how to do it
> for TeX source files at my own web site, which is located on a
> server that I have no control over.
I believe that the Content-Type field in the http header is set
server-side. Not that I'm anything near an expert in these matters. If
it's sent as text/plain, the browser should automatically handle it as
such. It's only if it's sent as something else when the browser tries
something clever.
That the header determines the rendering method can be seen at those
occasional websites where you get the raw html rather than a rendered page.
There have been moves to make Firefox automatically correct that by
sniffing the first few bytes of the file, but that of course undermines
those who actually intend to provide code snippets as plain text.
Robert Heller
A *proper* Web Server will either use something like the UNIX 'file'
program (look at the start of the for signature bytes) and/or have a
table of extensions (eg .html, .exe, etc.) and use that info to
generate the http header. That is, the server generates the headers.
In the case of CGI scripts, the CGI script (again on the server) itself
generates the headers (but this depends on server settings (eg the type
of script handling)).
>
> Bob T.
>
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
hel...@deepsoft.com -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk
Michele Dondi
<k...@lampsacos.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
[snip]
>This doesn't make any sense to me. If you can view it as text,
>you have already 'downloaded' it. What you have not done, I
>presume, is save it to your local file system.
It's the other way round. He *can't* view it as text, for it is not
served as text, and so the browser prompts him to download it to disk.
Michele
--
>It's because the universe was programmed in C++.
No, no, it was programmed in Forth. See Genesis 1:12:
"And the earth brought Forth ..."
- Robert Israel in sci.math, thread "Why numbers?"
Ulrike Fischer
I don't use firefox but opera. I tried with a tex-file on a
CTAN-Server: the file is delivered with mime-type application/x-tex and
opera shows the download dialog. But this is easy to change there: I
can switch in the "property" menu the default action for this mime-type
to "open in opera". It works fine, I see the text in the browser. I'm
quite sure that also firefox has somewhere a dialog where you can set
the default actions for different mime-types. Ask in a firefox group.
--
Ulrike Fischer
e-mail: zusätzlich meinen Vornamen vor dem @ einfügen.
e-mail: add my first name between the news and the @.
Bob Tennent
>
>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>>
> quite sure that also firefox has somewhere a dialog where you can set
> the default actions for different mime-types. Ask in a firefox group.
It does: Edit | Preferences | Downloads | View & Edit Actions
But "open in firefox" isn't one of the options available. A simple
plugin would do it however.
Bob T.
David N. Williams
> "Alasdair" <amc...@gmail.com> schrieb:
>
>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>>
>> Does anybody know how this can be done?
>
> I don't use firefox but opera. I tried with a tex-file on a
> CTAN-Server: the file is delivered with mime-type application/x-tex and
> opera shows the download dialog. But this is easy to change there: I
> can switch in the "property" menu the default action for this mime-type
> to "open in opera". It works fine, I see the text in the browser. I'm
> quite sure that also firefox has somewhere a dialog where you can set
> the default actions for different mime-types. Ask in a firefox group.
Thanks for the hint. I wasn't able to find out, not even from
the Mozilla web site, how to do this with my Mac firefox
browser. But I was able to find out how to make it work for
files served from my university web site, at least for an
initial test.
At this link
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/core.html#allowoverride
I learned that AddType is one of the directives that can be
overridden in a .htaccess file. And based on a sample .htaccess
file I saw somewhere on the web, I tried the following:
---- file: .htaccess ----
# tex
AddType text/plain .tex
------------------------
That's supposed to work for the directory in which it resides,
and any subdirectories.
I tried it here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/archive/temp/
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/archive/temp/stappsthm.tex
-- David
Bob Tennent
It can't. The following list shows what mime types are handled internally
by Firefox:
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/winmime.html
So text/plain is but text/x-tex is not. Apparently this is cast in
stone. I don't know why. What could be easier or more secure than
rendering plain text as plain text?
Use Opera as your browser.
Marc Olschok
> files. If you set it to Firefox, then Firefox opens a new window or tab
> for it but, rather than displaying it as text/plain, this new window
> runs the MIME-detector again, sees that the file should be opened in
> Firefox, and opens a new window which again runs the MIME detector, and
> so on.
This (specifying Firefox as an external helper application) is not exactly
what I had in mind; I was thinking of an option which would treat that
mime-type as if it was plain text renderable by the browser iself.
>
> If you set some external helper application like a text editor or a
> programmers' editor, it works, but this interrupts the flow of your
> web-browsing if all you want to do is look over some code snippets.
>
> This is why I suspect it better to re-package the file as text/plain
> which Firefox natively handles without problems.
>
> Myself, I find it annoying that browsers are hard-coded to be so
> 'intelligent' about document types. If it isn't up to the user to
> decide how to treat received data, we might as well have the Windows
> Paperclip do it all.
The problem is not so much intelligence but inflexibility on the
side of the browser.
>
> Perhaps there's another browser out there that by default renders
> anything you like as if it were text/plain?
The default behaviour of most browsers is prompting the user when they
encounter a Mime-type they do not expect to handle internally and for
which no external helper-application has been specified.
I use Links most of the time: displaying the data is one of the options
that are available.
Marc
Bob Tennent
>>>Some bright spark wrote an extension that takes such data, tacks it onto
>>>a text/html header, and feeds it back to Firefox for correct display.
http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/
But it doesn't work for me. After selecting "Open in Browser as Text", the
same dialog re-appears.
Bob T.
anon k
Many of us seeking this behaviour have thought that selecting Firefox as
the helper would achieve this. We learnt by experiment that it instead
generates the unending loop described above.
This is why I've been thinking that simply replacing the content-type
declaration with text/plain would fix it.
It's since occured to me that I've also seen the erroneous content type
with pdf files from time to time that are served as, and hence display
as, text/plain.
Robin Fairbairns
>Alasdair wrote:
>> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>
no doubt. but, aiui, it displays an approach at the _outcome_ of
running the latex. the question is "how do i look at the file" (for
example "i've just viewed this guy's pdf, i wonder how he did _that_
bit"). techexplorer doesn't even attempt to answer that question.
[writing catalogue entries and the uk faq, i've got an awful lot of
use for that sort of thing...]
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Ken Starks
I have already suggested that a browser may be 'over the top' for
such a simple task, so here is an idea at the other extreme.
It requires fair bit of know-how to set up, and costs a little bit of
overhead in use, but should be easy enough to use, and acceptable
in any browser. It attempts to serve up any url as plain text.
To use:
If you want, as plain text, the url:
http://path/to/the/url
type into your browser the false url:
http://localhost:8080/AsText/path/to/the/url
To achieve this:
1. Download and get 'Cocoon' working using port 8080, say. (Google for it)
2. Create a project directory called 'AsText' in
directory ..../cocoon2.1.9/build/webapp/
3. Copy the following file as .../AsText/sitemap.xmap
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<map:sitemap xmlns:map="http://apache.org/cocoon/sitemap/1.0">
<!-- sitemap to serve up an arbitrary (?) url as plain text -->
<map:pipelines>
<map:pipeline>
<map:match pattern="**">
<map:read type="resource"
src="http://{1}"
mime-type="text/plain" />
</map:match>
</map:pipeline>
</map:pipelines>
</map:sitemap>
First download and install 'Cocoon'
Bob Tennent
> I have already suggested that a browser may be 'over the top' for
> such a simple task, so here is an idea at the other extreme.
I wonder whether it might be simpler to configure privoxy to do this
translation for text/whatever headers.
Bob T.
Ken Starks
> It attempts to serve up any url as plain text.
Oops! I forgot to mention that it ignores query strings;
and doesn't like .asp etc.
But I have used it to look at tex, svg, pdf, png, Etc.
Looking at 'Binary' files such as png or partly binary
ones such as pdf is likely to be rather unfruitful.
Other brief tests.
------------------
It worked with a cgi-generated file, one that did not use
a query parameter.
It worked with another cocoon-generated file:
http://localhost:8080/AsText/localhost:8080
I have also noticed that the 'encoding' attribute of
xhtml has sometimes been altered (compared with Firefox
'view source'), and I have not yet investigated that.
Roland de Ruiter
> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>
> Does anybody know how this can be done?
>
> Alasdair
>
There was a similar discussion on "mozilla.support.firefox":
<http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.support.firefox/browse_frm/thread/ca9b29fda7527f98/3cd871b8544f1bf6?tvc=1#3cd871b8544f1bf6>
I suggested the "Open In Browser" extension:
<http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/>
This extension allows you to view a file served with an unsupported
content type as a regular text file (or HTML, or XML, or image).
It extends the "Open With/Save to Disk" dialog with "Open In browser".
Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to choose "Do this automatically for
files like this from now on", so there's always a dialog popping up when
you want to view such a file.
[I'm not a regular reader in this group, but a post in "alt.fan.mozilla"
brought me here.]
--
Regards,
Roland
anon k
> Bob Tennent wrote:
>
>
>>On 1 Sep 2006 02:40:29 -0700, Alasdair wrote:
>> > I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>> > necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>> > Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>> > files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>> > if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>> >
>> > Does anybody know how this can be done?
>>
>>It can't. The following list shows what mime types are handled internally
>>by Firefox:
>>
>>http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/winmime.html
>>
>>So text/plain is but text/x-tex is not. Apparently this is cast in
>>stone. I don't know why. What could be easier or more secure than
>>rendering plain text as plain text?
>>
>>Use Opera as your browser.
>
>
> I have already suggested that a browser may be 'over the top' for
> such a simple task, so here is an idea at the other extreme.
Over the top? I don't think so, and the reason for our disagreement
seems to be that you're thinking of the task as being to display a file
(mere text, why use a web browser?) whereas I'm thinking of the task as
browsing the web (isn't that what web browsers are for?)
Let's inundate the Mozilla devs with a simple feature request: the
freedom to tell our browsers how to treat a file, as opposed to this
microsoft-style attitude of deciding in advance what's better for us.
Robin Fairbairns
>I suggested the "Open In Browser" extension:
><http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/>
>
>This extension allows you to view a file served with an unsupported
>content type as a regular text file (or HTML, or XML, or image).
>It extends the "Open With/Save to Disk" dialog with "Open In browser".
>Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to choose "Do this automatically for
>files like this from now on", so there's always a dialog popping up when
>you want to view such a file.
hmm. i loaded that yesterday, and it didn't seem to work (even after
closing firefox and starting again).
it does now. thanks, roland.
so there's a case-history. let it settle in...
(or work out what i did wrong, and do it right instead.)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Bob Tennent
> I suggested the "Open In Browser" extension:
><http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/>
>
> This extension allows you to view a file served with an unsupported
> content type as a regular text file (or HTML, or XML, or image).
It doesn't work for me: after selecting Open in Browser as Text, I just get
another instance of the same dialogue.
It might be worthwhile to "vote" for an appropriate feature request:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258012
Bob T.
Bob Tennent
> On Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:14:42 +0200, Roland de Ruiter wrote:
>
> > I suggested the "Open In Browser" extension:
> ><http://www.spasche.net/mozilla/>
> >
> > This extension allows you to view a file served with an unsupported
> > content type as a regular text file (or HTML, or XML, or image).
>
> It doesn't work for me: after selecting Open in Browser as Text, I just get
> another instance of the same dialogue.
It didn't work because the links in question (at CTAN!) are in fact ftp:
rather than http: and the extension only works with http.
William F Hammond
> The default behaviour of most browsers is prompting the user when they
> encounter a Mime-type they do not expect to handle internally and for
> which no external helper-application has been specified.
My impression as a user of linux is that the early Mozilla brand did
it this way, but Firefox is somewhat different in that the normal gui
will not allow the user to add a mimetype to its list but only to
change the external apps for things already in its list. However, I
recall, without remembering details, finding a back door way to add a
type to the list by browsing the local file system. I was able that
way to hook up xine with firefox for certain kinds of "media" files.
But, as already said, the correct way for most parties serving TeX or
LaTeX source on the web is to use the mimetype text/plain. In fact,
here is a locally customized line from conf/mime.types for a recent
apache server I watch:
text/plain asc txt ltx tex texi sgml glm
And, as said, in the .htaccess for a directory -- when the server's
keeper has them enabled -- one would put "AddType " at the beginning
of the line.
-- Bill
Bob Tennent
> But, as already said, the correct way for most parties serving TeX or
> LaTeX source on the web is to use the mimetype text/plain. In fact,
> here is a locally customized line from conf/mime.types for a recent
> apache server I watch:
>
> text/plain asc txt ltx tex texi sgml glm
>
> And, as said, in the .htaccess for a directory -- when the server's
> keeper has them enabled -- one would put "AddType " at the beginning
> of the line.
The files at CTAN, probably the most important repositories of tex files
on the web, have ftp:// addresses. Is there a workaround for them?
Bob T.
Ralf Stubner
> The files at CTAN, probably the most important repositories of tex files
> on the web, have ftp:// addresses. Is there a workaround for them?
The Other CTAN nodes (http://dante.ctan.org/CTAN/ and
http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/) can be accessed via HTTP without
problem. If you edit the URLs by hand by removing the 'pub', you do the
same with http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/. I don't know why the newer
interface on the latter host uses the FTP-URLs for the 'view' target.
cheerio
ralf
Robin Fairbairns
because we can't view a directory if the user insists it has an
index.html in it.
tiresome, that; in root and branch directories we want to use the
index.html file, but in leaf directories we want to avoid it.
i suspect the solution is for us all to go to a cms such as jim's
already using at tug.ctan.org
it's a long-term solution, though. we're running way behind on every
project we have in hand.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Stephen Harris
Firefox -> View -> Page Source
contains the latex code and I suppose a little html code.
One can view the source code plus what it generates on the
HDD plus display changes when the source is edited using
another instance of Firefox and reloading.
Html code is also in text like .tex and you can copy
the source code from Firefox's View into a text editor,
rename it to latexfiletest1.html and play with making
changes, save it, and reload it in another split screen
browser instance and compare changes to the original result.
It will work out like doing previews with multiple split
screen images available for comparison (min/max windows).
This is fairly standard for building/comparing webpages and
should work when adapted to making/showing text-based .tex
content as well. Thanks for your work, hope this is helpful.
Best regards,
Stephen
Robin Fairbairns
>Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> [writing catalogue entries and the uk faq, i've got an awful lot of
>> use for that sort of thing...]
>
>Firefox -> View -> Page Source
that would be fine if the page came up in the browser. the point of
the thread is that it doesn't.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Ralf Stubner
> Ralf Stubner <ralf.s...@physik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:
>>Bob Tennent <Bo...@cs.queensu.ca> writes:
>>
>>> The files at CTAN, probably the most important repositories of tex files
>>> on the web, have ftp:// addresses. Is there a workaround for them?
>>
>>The Other CTAN nodes (http://dante.ctan.org/CTAN/ and
>>http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/) can be accessed via HTTP without
>>problem. If you edit the URLs by hand by removing the 'pub', you do the
>>same with http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/. I don't know why the newer
>>interface on the latter host uses the FTP-URLs for the 'view' target.
>
> because we can't view a directory if the user insists it has an
> index.html in it.
>
> tiresome, that; in root and branch directories we want to use the
> index.html file, but in leaf directories we want to avoid it.
>
> i suspect the solution is for us all to go to a cms such as jim's
> already using at tug.ctan.org
I am sorry, I don't understand. I was talking about the CMS solution
used at tug.ctan.org. It works very well and looks greate, but has the
unfortunate feature that the links for individual files (nit
directories) entitled as 'view' all point to ftp://tug.ctan.org/, even
though the same files can be viewed via HTTP as well. I don't know if
there are any technical reasons for this, but it has the unfortunate side
effect the open-in-browser extension does not work properly. For
example, consider the 'view' link beside 'antpolt.tex' on
<URL:http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/source/>
This points to
<URL:ftp://tug.ctan.org/pub/tex-archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/source/antpolt.tex>
which I cannot open in firefox. However, with the help of this nice
extension I can open this file in firefox if it is served via HTTP at
<URL:http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/Free_Math_Font_Survey/source/antpolt.tex>
On the other CTAN nodes the interface provided via HTTP is much more
basic. But since it is purely HTTP, the open-in-browser extension works
without problems there.
> it's a long-term solution, though. we're running way behind on every
> project we have in hand.
If that weren't true for my own projects as well ... :-(
cheerio
ralf
Stephen Harris
I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
Does anybody know how this can be done?
Thanks,
Alasdair
Ctrl-U is an easier and faster way than those other time-wasting
suggestions that marginally work. That is the point of Alasdair's
post, not the intellectual flotsam that smattered this thread.
Maurizio Loreti
> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
> necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
> Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
> files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
> if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
I have silently watched this thread, and I am wanting to add my 2
cents. In /etc/mime.types (this is a linux RHEL 3 system) there is a
line saying that all files having extensions .tex belong to an
application type x-tex:
application/x-tex tex
I have edited /etc/mailcap (man 4 mailcap for more) adding a line
application/x-tex; gview %s
after clicking on a .tex file, a requester is shown (firefox 1.0.8)
where I can choose to open the file with gview (the read-only GUI
version of vi), with another application, or to download it.
--
Maurizio Loreti http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/mlo.html
Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Padova, Italy ROT13: ybe...@cq.vasa.vg
TinTin™
You could simply use that to send a raw http header to the browser and
include your tex file.
I did not test this but this should work
_view.php_
<?php
header ("Content-type: text/plain");
include (your_tex_file.tex');
?>
This tells the browser to interpret the view.php file as a plain text
file, which is what you want. This is untested, however.
Could that be helpfull? Or am I missing something here.
Robin Fairbairns
>Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> Stephen Harris <cybergu...@yahoo.com> writes:
>>> Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>>>> [writing catalogue entries and the uk faq, i've got an awful lot of
>>>> use for that sort of thing...]
>>> Firefox -> View -> Page Source
>>
>> that would be fine if the page came up in the browser. the point of
>> the thread is that it doesn't.
>
>I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
>necessarily downloading it. What I want to do is to set up my Mozilla
>Firefox browser so that it treats TeX files as it treats plain text
>files: displays them as plain ASCII text without any formatting. And
>if I decide I want to download the file I can easily do it.
>
>Does anybody know how this can be done?
i think the upshot of the thread is that it can't be done, other than
with the open-in-browser plug-in that someone mentioned. that works
for me (in my up-to-date firefox under linux).
>Ctrl-U is an easier and faster way than those other time-wasting
>suggestions that marginally work. That is the point of Alasdair's
>post, not the intellectual flotsam that smattered this thread.
indeed, ^u is great for viewing what's actually in your browser (do it
all the time when i'm working on generated html). but if you can't
get the stuff into your browser, it's next to useless: do you know
otherwise?
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Bob Tennent
> Ctrl-U is an easier and faster way than those other time-wasting
> suggestions that marginally work. That is the point of Alasdair's
> post, not the intellectual flotsam that smattered this thread.
Sorry to add to the "intellectual flotsam" but I believe you simply
don't understand what is being asked for. Alasdair didn't ask to see an
html file in a new window. He wants to see a .tex file in the current
(Firefox) window.
This concept seems quite difficult for some to comprehend. It took about
10 counter-replies for me to get the point accepted on a Firefox forum,
where I was mocked for suggesting that a .tex file was plain ASCII text.
If you still don't understand, I've set up a demo. Bring up this web
page in Firefox:
http://linus.cs.queensu.ca/TeX/
When you click on the suggested link, you should be given several
choices; but unless you've installed the Open-in-Browser extension,
opening the .tex file in the current window as a straight text file won't
be available. And even with the extension, that choice can't be made
permanent. The reason is that Firefox doesn't allow it. You're welcome
to do Ctrl-U and view the 4-line html, but that won't help you view
the .tex file in the original browser window. Nor is it necessary to
edit /etc/mime.types: Firefox will allow you to open a .tex file in any
(other) application; but that's not what the OP asked for.
Now, bring up the same page in Opera; you will be allowed to open the
.tex file in the current window.
Bob T.
Donald Arseneau
> This concept seems quite difficult for some to comprehend. It took about
> 10 counter-replies for me to get the point accepted on a Firefox forum,
You don't need to convince me. It is a sorely-missed lost ability.
I currently have emacs set as my default helper app because
I couldn't find any way to just open tex or sty files.
--
Donald Arseneau as...@triumf.ca
anon k
> Alasdair didn't ask to see an
> html file in a new window. He wants to see a .tex file in the current
> (Firefox) window.
>
> This concept seems quite difficult for some to comprehend. It took about
> 10 counter-replies for me to get the point accepted on a Firefox forum,
> where I was mocked for suggesting that a .tex file was plain ASCII text.
Indeed, the mentality there is that the only reason you'd want to get a
.tex file is to edit or compile it, not to read it. So much for all
their usability studies and freedom for the user.
I still haven't found the extension that I was looking for (it
automatically re-serves text/plain as text/html, without an extra
dialog) but have started looking into how to write an extension that
would do this for us. I will be very, very slow, and may not succeed,
so perhaps it'd be useful for someone else to take up this task too. It
must be trivial for those who know a little more than nil.
Dirk Schlimm
> I occasionally need to peer at a LaTeX file on the web, without
> necessarily downloading it.
> [...]
> Does anybody know how this can be done?
Check out the openinbrowser extension:
http://www.spasche.net/mozilla
It works well for me.
- dirk
anon k
It doesn't appear to let me set Firefox as the default application for
opening .tex files; I always get the annoying dialog asking what to do
with it.
Michele Dondi
>It doesn't appear to let me set Firefox as the default application for
>opening .tex files; I always get the annoying dialog asking what to do
>with it.
Yes: previous discussion *seems* to imply that this is the best one
can currently get.
Michele
--
>It's because the universe was programmed in C++.
No, no, it was programmed in Forth. See Genesis 1:12:
"And the earth brought Forth ..."
- Robert Israel in sci.math, thread "Why numbers?"