Long equations in assemblage in HTML

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

An issue in APEX reported by Karl-Dieter:

We have a quick reference in the appendix with various formulas, etc. Right now each item is in an assemblage. (Maybe this isn't the best choice?)

When an equation is long, it spills out of the box drawn around the assemblage, as seen here: 

Assemblage: Simpson’s Rule:

https://opentext.uleth.ca/apex-calculus/reference-formulas.html#reference-formulas-simpsons

If the screen is narrow (e.g. on mobile) the equation fits into a slider that's contained in the bounding box, but as soon as the screen widens, the equation spills out. 

Is this something than can be fixed in CSS?

Or is this a case where the answer is either "don't author long formulas" or "don't use assemblage"?

[Rob Beezer]

Just don't author assemblage, don't author long equations, and don't use MathJax 3.

Seriously, MathJax 4 is going to roll out over the next few weeks. I think it has new features for line-breaking. No idea if they will be useful, or if we will configure them. But I'm not too interested in pursuing this while we are still on MJ3.

But do remind me to pursue this soon after a CLI release has MJ4, and perhaps we can do some testing with some debugging switches? Can you wait?

Rob

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

I can wait. Reported by KDC yesterday but my experience has been that half my students don't even realize the appendix exists. 

The issue is aesthetic and doesn't affect usability.

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[kcri...@gmail.com]

I can wait. Reported by KDC yesterday but my experience has been that half my students don't even realize the appendix exists. 

The issue is aesthetic and doesn't affect usability.

Indeed!  Only faculty look at appendices.   I only reported on the Apex GH because I didn't realize it was a more general issue, so I'm glad Sean reached out here. 

[Sean Fitzpatrick]

An update on this: I've got a version using MathJax 4 live here: 

https://opentext.uleth.ca/apex-video/reference-formulas.html

By default, the equation still overflows the bounding box. But the MathJax menu has options: Math Settings --> Wide Expressions

Testing using Firefox on Linux: 

- line break works, and works fairly well, although I tried it twice and got different break points

- scale also works

- truncate and scroll seem to do nothing

The default on mobile is scroll. 

Now, given that the default on a laptop is overflow, perhaps I should still edit these equations to manually set the line breaks? I'm not sure. 

I suspect that the casual reader will be unaware that they can access the MathJax menu to change the display settings.

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[Sean Fitzpatrick]

For equations that are only slightly too long, the line breaking is poor.

If your equation is something like

f(x)=(some slightly long expression) 

MathJax breaks before the equals sign, and leaves f(x) orphaned (and centred!) on it's own line. It looks like

                        f(x)

=(some slightly long expression)