Observation on intertext

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OHappyDay

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Jun 22, 2026, 12:11:43 PMJun 22
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Dear all,

I made an observation on using <intertext> on a sequence of several equations: 
I wanted to put short text between the equations which works well but:

If two <intertext> sections contain identical text the building process breaks for print. Buildung the HTML version succeeds but the HTML output is missing the first of the two <intertext> lines.

Something to worry about?
Klaus

The error message for the print build looks like that:

! LaTeX Error: \begin{align*} on input line 522 ended by \end{sectionptx}.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              
                                                 
l.537 \end{sectionptx}

David W. Farmer

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Jun 22, 2026, 12:48:31 PMJun 22
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Can you please provide an example of what you mean?
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OHappyDay

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Jun 22, 2026, 3:22:37 PMJun 22
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I habe this without <intertext>:

<md>
<mrow> N_1 &amp; = \binom{52}{13} = 635.013.559.600</mrow>
<mrow>
N_2 &amp; = \binom{39}{13} = 8.122.425.444
</mrow>

<mrow>
N_3 &amp; = \binom{26}{13} = 10.400.600
</mrow>

<mrow>
N_4 &amp; = 1
</mrow>
</md>

Inserting <intertext> with identical content. If I change either <intertext> content so they are different then there is no problem building it for both web and print.

<md>
<mrow> N_1 &amp; = \binom{52}{13} = 635.013.559.600</mrow>
<intertext>Some text</intertext>
<mrow>
N_2 &amp; = \binom{39}{13} = 8.122.425.444
</mrow>
<intertext>Some text</intertext>
<mrow>
N_3 &amp; = \binom{26}{13} = 10.400.600
</mrow>

<mrow>
N_4 &amp; = 1
</mrow>
</md>



Rob Beezer

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Jun 22, 2026, 3:42:01 PMJun 22
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Thanks very much, Klaus. Confirmed. (Wild.)

A test of equal nodes was (mistakenly) testing their string values.

My assistant thinks you are playing cards. Bridge?

Should have a fix in place shortly, after I finish something else. Thanks very
much for the report and the example to work with.

Rob
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OHappyDay

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Jun 22, 2026, 3:45:07 PMJun 22
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Thanks for the confirmation. And yes, I am a Bridge player. Setting up a little site with some numbers on the game...

Klaus

OHappyDay

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Jun 22, 2026, 3:54:03 PMJun 22
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If you are interested (it's in German unfortunately) here is it: https://bridgev.krtschil.net/

Rob Beezer

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Jun 22, 2026, 4:48:58 PMJun 22
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Not unfortunate - I had to demonstrate reading proficiency for mathematics in
German as part of my PhD. But it was a low bar. ;-)

Very nice project!

Rob
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kcri...@gmail.com

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Jun 24, 2026, 3:24:35 PMJun 24
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Very nice project! 

Das stimme ich zu!  Hört sich schön an, am Rheinufer Bridge zu spielen.

I have a very small technical question for Rob (or others) which this example brings up.  In https://bridgev.krtschil.net/ch-3.html you'll note the string "ggfs." which is a German abbreviation not dissimilar to e.g., i.e., and friends, and which often occurs in the middle of a sentence (another being bzw.).  Commonly in LaTeX there are various workarounds for periods not at the end of sentences (some at https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/552648/normal-sized-breaking-space-after-a-period) which PTX (presumably intentionally) may not support (see https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-paragraphs.html#topic-character-elements-5-5). 

My question is whether the new conversion LaTeX no LaTeX will "look" more like the current pdf (which treats this period as end of sentence) or more like the html (which doesn't have longer spaces at the end of sentences, as far as I can tell, so they are all the same).  I recognize it is still under development, and I don't know if I have a desired outcome, just a question.  I certainly would not expect PTX to handle the wide variety of possible items of this nature in all languages - the list at 
https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-paragraphs.html#topic-paragraphs-9-5 is already probably unmaintainable enough as it is :-)

My apologies for hijacking the thread; it seemed more relevant here than there, since it is more a support question than dev question, and came directly from Klaus' cool example.

Rob Beezer

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Jun 26, 2026, 12:47:15 PM (13 days ago) Jun 26
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On 6/23/26 10:56, kcri...@gmail.com wrote:
> I have a very small technical question for Rob (or others) which this example
> brings up.  In https://bridgev.krtschil.net/ch-3.html you'll note the string
> "ggfs." which is a German abbreviation not dissimilar to e.g., i.e., and
> friends, and which often occurs in the middle of a sentence (another being
> bzw.).  Commonly in LaTeX there are various workarounds for periods not at the
> end of sentences (some at https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/552648/normal-
> sized-breaking-space-after-a-period) which PTX (presumably intentionally) may
> not support (see https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-
> paragraphs.html#topic-character-elements-5-5).

As you surmise - abbreviations is a very slippery slope. There's about 40 pages
worth in CMoS. If anything, I get tempted to remove the "Latin" abbreviations,
which I thought maybe saw more universal use.

> My question is whether the new conversion LaTeX no LaTeX will "look" more like
> the current pdf (which treats this period as end of sentence) or more like the
> html (which doesn't have longer spaces at the end of sentences, as far as I can
> tell, so they are all the same).  I recognize it is still under development, and
> I don't know if I have a desired outcome, just a question.  I certainly would
> not expect PTX to handle the wide variety of possible items of this nature in
> all languages - the list at
> https://pretextbook.org/doc/guide/html/topic-paragraphs.html#topic-
> paragraphs-9-5 is already probably unmaintainable enough as it is :-)
>
LaTeX's distinction of the end-of-a-sentence versus a period-i-abbreviation is
noble, but the solution (.\ ) is pretty stupid. So we markup each sentence with
an #s to accomodate this?

It is way too early to see what XSL-FO does, there are bigger fish to fry. You
could get out your on-screen ruler and look at teh XSL-FO version of the sample
article, and report back.

(No, we are not re-opening this period/spacing discussion here again.)

Rob


kcri...@gmail.com

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Jun 27, 2026, 7:46:06 AM (12 days ago) Jun 27
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It is way too early to see what XSL-FO does, there are bigger fish to fry. You
could get out your on-screen ruler and look at teh XSL-FO version of the sample
article, and report back.

Okay, I didn't realize that conversion was ready for non-experts to use - it looked like it was still in pretty active development.  I may give it a whirl.  Regarding fish, yes, I hope I made it pretty clear this was a pretty marginal question - but one I thought someone might have known off the top of their head, that's all.  Thanks!

Charles M

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Jun 28, 2026, 12:12:20 AM (11 days ago) Jun 28
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It's not the solution that users want, but---for reasons other than spacing---I abandoned years ago the convention of putting a full stop after abbreviations.  It's now the standard BBC convention, anyway.  Even many British publications have apparently started a new trend of abandoning full stops in Latin expressions such as ie, eg, viz, etc.  I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where this would  result in an ambiguity.  In olden days, abbreviations of honorifics in English were typically written with a majuscule initial letter and one or two subsequent letters as superscripts without a full stop.

Join me in the revolution.

Charles

Rob Beezer

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Jun 28, 2026, 11:49:10 AM (11 days ago) Jun 28
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Thanks, Charles. I had no idea a revolution was underway. ;-)

We could easily make our dozen or so empty elements for Latin abbreviations render without a full stop. Under the influence of a publisher switch. But what to call it? Then we would be fomenting revolution.

Is there a trend to lower-case initialisms, too? I see it in a certain British weekly newspaper. "Cboe" is the only one I recall right now, but that seems to be the exchange's decision, not the journalist's.

Rob
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