Math Loading Speedups

[Andrew Scholer]

Some questions around speeding up the rendering of math heavy pages motivated by a sample Jeremy created:
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~jsylvest/pretext-dev/delayed-knowl/exercises-vectors.html

1) Is there a reason we don't have MathJax set to lazy load?

https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/output/lazy.html

In addition to reducing the time until MathJax is done with its initial processing, it would help with linking to content in the middle of a page. Try this link and note how the content jumps around:
https://sites.ualberta.ca/~jsylvest/pretext-dev/delayed-knowl/exercises-vectors.html#exercisegroup-vectors-parallel-to-line

The effect is worse if you are on a slow device or simulate one in the dev tools:

2) Has anyone ever experimented with prerendering math during build?
It seems like page loads could be significantly snappier if the known math content was rendered as part of building pages. That would be a much bigger lift than #1, but seems like it could make a significant difference in time to final display and responsiveness during that time.

[Rob Beezer]

On 5/17/26 09:20, Andrew Scholer wrote:
> 1) Is there a reason we don't have MathJax set to lazy load?

No. I did the bare minimum for the upgrade, and got little feedback during the
trial period.

Happy to iterate over performance features, even if we go backwards
inadvertently. Just so long as content does not get wrecked.

Rob