MathJax single dollar sign delimiter

[Mohana SP]

Hi community!

We have enabled MathJax and find issue with the usage of single dollar signs as MathJax delimiters. We have to escape the dollar sign character (\$) to denote an actual dollar sign if it is used more that once in an abstract field, which is not ideal.

The MathJax documentation explains it well:

The default math delimiters are $$...$$ and \[...\] for displayed mathematics, and \(...\) for in-line mathematics. Note in particular that TeX’s $...$ in-line delimiters are not used by default. That is because dollar signs appear too often in non-mathematical settings, which could cause some text to be treated as mathematics unexpectedly.

Could this be configured in the frontend or would we need to create a PR to propose a change to remove single dollar signs as MathJax delimiters? It appears to be in this file: 

https://github.com/DSpace/dspace-angular/blob/main/src/app/core/shared/client-math.service.ts#L39

  protected mathJaxOptions = {
    tex: {
      inlineMath: [['$', '$'], ['$$', '$$'], ['\\(', '\\)']],
    },
    svg: {
      fontCache: 'global',
    },
    startup: {
      typeset: false,
    },
  };

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you!

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Mohana,

If you feel this would be a useful change for everyone using DSpace (and at a quick glance, it sounds like it may be), then I'd recommend creating a PR with the changes you propose.  It's often easier to get developer attention via a PR, as a PR is easier to understand/test.  That way others know exactly what changes you are proposing, and they can try those changes out on their local machine to verify they work there as well.

If you have any other questions, let me know.  But, my "quick opinion" is that this sounds like it'd be good to turn into a PR!

Tim