5 ms·

Fast Math Rendering on the Web

46 points by bollu 7y ago

Fudgel 7y ago
Looks like chrome are working on a MathML implementation, so you might be able to use that at some point since it already works in Firefox. https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/MathML https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/MathML
- xmmrm 7y ago
  Specifically, MathML Core: https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml-core/ https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml-core/
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    For the time being, Firefox and Webkit are the only serious options for MathML.
- bollu 7y ago
  Yep, I'm waiting for MathML to be here so I can switch the whole thing over. Unfortunately, it's not here (yet)!
- lol768 7y ago
  s/chrome/Igalia/ As far as I can see Google aren't sponsoring this work (it's unclear to me why not), they've agreed it's worth doing and are reviewing patches.
londons_explore 7y ago
That page is kinda laggy to load on my machine... Specifically Chrome on Linux the GPU tile rendering is far slower than I can scroll, perhaps because some text blocks are large enough that the out-of-tile culling leaves too much work for each tile rendered? Perhaps the custom font has something that really slows down rendering or something?
- contravariant 7y ago
  The more likely cause is that (for some reason) this entire blog is one single html page. Which explains why they needed a better math rendering solution, although it raises numerous other questions.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Just because the page is huge shouldn't theoretically make the top bit of the page load slowly... After all, the number of words on the screen for my GPU to render isn't higher just because the scrollbar is a mile long... Practically, if the draw culling algorithm is bad, rendering will get slow, which looks like it might be happening here.
mbeex 7y ago
>I can write math that loads instantly on your browser, using no MathJax, KaTeX or any client side processing You can render math statically with KaTeX and some standard static site-generator too. Here an example from my blog (using Pelican): https://depot.traits.de/pages/2020/02/21-markdown-example.html#mathematics https://depot.traits.de/pages/2020/02/21-markdown-example.ht...
anderskaseorg 7y ago
Obviously you should use whatever language you want on your projects, but in case you’re interested: > unfortunately, asking rust to treat UTF-8 string as a "ball of bytes" is hard, when it's stupidly easy with C. String::as_bytes seems pretty easy, and there are byte literals b'?' of type u8 and b"???" of type [u8]. You can avoid interacting with the UTF-8 types at all if you don’t want to. > Plus, I wanted to use arena-style-allocation where I make huge allocations in one go and then don't think about memory, something that I don't have control over in Rust. Perhaps the bumpalo and typed-arena crates would interest you. https://docs.rs/bumpalo/ https://docs.rs/bumpalo/ https://docs.rs/typed-arena/ https://docs.rs/typed-arena/
- kevincox 7y ago
  Unfortunately `&[u8]` is missing a lot of convenience methods that are on `&str`. It is getting better over time but I have definitely encounter the problem before where I tried to switch some string-based code to byte-based and was disappointed by the missing functionality.
  - llogiq 7y ago
    Then perhaps the bstr crate (https://docs.rs/bstr/0.2.12/bstr https://docs.rs/bstr/0.2.12/bstr) might be what you want.
oefrha 7y ago
The rendering reminds me of typeset math from the 60s. Not a fan. Instead of trying to come up with a compromise on rendering, a better idea might be simply not rendering your entire blog on one page... A plain HTML page with svg images weighing in at a shocking 2.6MB is not gonna load “instantly” anyhow. You can keep the source in a single markdown file if you wish, but there’s no reason you can’t split up the posts during processing, and that’s a much easier technical problem than this math rendering compromise.
- bollu 7y ago
  I explained why I don't want to do this, right? > Far more importantly, it provides spatio-temporal locality. I add things in chronological order to tbe blog, as I learn thing. If I need to recall something I had studied, go to that location in the blog based on a sense of when. > When I do get to a location I want, the scrollbar gives me a sense of where I am in the file. this is important to me, since it hepls me reason spatially about what i know and what I've learnt. It's someting I love about books, and deeply miss when navigtaing the web.I'm determined to keep this spatio-temporal locality on my little slice of the internet. And: > I need a single file to edit, so I can rapidly jot down new ideas. This is the essence of why I'm able to log most of what I study: because it's seamless. I really wish I _could_ get used to the usual way of doing things, but it just doesn't sit right with me, unfortunately.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    I thought those are all about your single markdown source file, not the HTML output. Still, this may work well when the website is sitting on your local disk, but probably not so well when it’s served remotely, especially not when it grows to say 10MB.
  - mbeex 7y ago
    I understand your intention, the non-linear hypertext affects cognitive abilities badly in many ways. But your approach has limits. You might have 9000 lines of text now, but any non-trivial corpus of knowledge will make things explode. You have to split the file at some point. Otherwise - in your analogy - you will not read a book, but a library in a linear fashion.
kekeblom 7y ago
Why don’t these things just generate svg and serve that embedded in the html?
Koshkin 7y ago
I like Knuth’s attempt at math typesetting much more, and I think that we’d be in a better place right now if all web browsers supported Plain TeX out of the box.
- krasjet 7y ago
  I tried to partially bring the ecosystem of TeX to the Web via SVG[1] a while ago, but I really hope there is an alternative to TeX for the Web to avoid the hassle of conversion. Matthew Butterick's Pollen[2] seems to be a good start, but currently the ecosystem is too small. It needs some more attention. [1]: https://krasjet.com/voice/karasu/ https://krasjet.com/voice/karasu/ [2]: https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/

46 points by bollu 7y ago

Looks like chrome are working on a MathML implementation, so you might be able to use that at some point since it already works in Firefox. https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://mathml.igalia.com/ https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/MathML https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/MathML

xmmrm 7y ago
Specifically, MathML Core: https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml-core/ https://mathml-refresh.github.io/mathml-core/
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  For the time being, Firefox and Webkit are the only serious options for MathML.
bollu 7y ago
Yep, I'm waiting for MathML to be here so I can switch the whole thing over. Unfortunately, it's not here (yet)!
lol768 7y ago
s/chrome/Igalia/ As far as I can see Google aren't sponsoring this work (it's unclear to me why not), they've agreed it's worth doing and are reviewing patches.

londons_explore 7y ago

That page is kinda laggy to load on my machine... Specifically Chrome on Linux the GPU tile rendering is far slower than I can scroll, perhaps because some text blocks are large enough that the out-of-tile culling leaves too much work for each tile rendered? Perhaps the custom font has something that really slows down rendering or something?

contravariant 7y ago
The more likely cause is that (for some reason) this entire blog is one single html page. Which explains why they needed a better math rendering solution, although it raises numerous other questions.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Just because the page is huge shouldn't theoretically make the top bit of the page load slowly... After all, the number of words on the screen for my GPU to render isn't higher just because the scrollbar is a mile long... Practically, if the draw culling algorithm is bad, rendering will get slow, which looks like it might be happening here.

mbeex 7y ago

>I can write math that loads instantly on your browser, using no MathJax, KaTeX or any client side processing You can render math statically with KaTeX and some standard static site-generator too. Here an example from my blog (using Pelican): https://depot.traits.de/pages/2020/02/21-markdown-example.html#mathematics https://depot.traits.de/pages/2020/02/21-markdown-example.ht...

anderskaseorg 7y ago

Obviously you should use whatever language you want on your projects, but in case you’re interested: > unfortunately, asking rust to treat UTF-8 string as a "ball of bytes" is hard, when it's stupidly easy with C. String::as_bytes seems pretty easy, and there are byte literals b'?' of type u8 and b"???" of type [u8]. You can avoid interacting with the UTF-8 types at all if you don’t want to. > Plus, I wanted to use arena-style-allocation where I make huge allocations in one go and then don't think about memory, something that I don't have control over in Rust. Perhaps the bumpalo and typed-arena crates would interest you. https://docs.rs/bumpalo/ https://docs.rs/bumpalo/ https://docs.rs/typed-arena/ https://docs.rs/typed-arena/

kevincox 7y ago
Unfortunately `&[u8]` is missing a lot of convenience methods that are on `&str`. It is getting better over time but I have definitely encounter the problem before where I tried to switch some string-based code to byte-based and was disappointed by the missing functionality.
- llogiq 7y ago
  Then perhaps the bstr crate (https://docs.rs/bstr/0.2.12/bstr https://docs.rs/bstr/0.2.12/bstr) might be what you want.

oefrha 7y ago

The rendering reminds me of typeset math from the 60s. Not a fan. Instead of trying to come up with a compromise on rendering, a better idea might be simply not rendering your entire blog on one page... A plain HTML page with svg images weighing in at a shocking 2.6MB is not gonna load “instantly” anyhow. You can keep the source in a single markdown file if you wish, but there’s no reason you can’t split up the posts during processing, and that’s a much easier technical problem than this math rendering compromise.

bollu 7y ago
I explained why I don't want to do this, right? > Far more importantly, it provides spatio-temporal locality. I add things in chronological order to tbe blog, as I learn thing. If I need to recall something I had studied, go to that location in the blog based on a sense of when. > When I do get to a location I want, the scrollbar gives me a sense of where I am in the file. this is important to me, since it hepls me reason spatially about what i know and what I've learnt. It's someting I love about books, and deeply miss when navigtaing the web.I'm determined to keep this spatio-temporal locality on my little slice of the internet. And: > I need a single file to edit, so I can rapidly jot down new ideas. This is the essence of why I'm able to log most of what I study: because it's seamless. I really wish I _could_ get used to the usual way of doing things, but it just doesn't sit right with me, unfortunately.
- oefrha 7y ago
  I thought those are all about your single markdown source file, not the HTML output. Still, this may work well when the website is sitting on your local disk, but probably not so well when it’s served remotely, especially not when it grows to say 10MB.
- mbeex 7y ago
  I understand your intention, the non-linear hypertext affects cognitive abilities badly in many ways. But your approach has limits. You might have 9000 lines of text now, but any non-trivial corpus of knowledge will make things explode. You have to split the file at some point. Otherwise - in your analogy - you will not read a book, but a library in a linear fashion.

kekeblom 7y ago

Why don’t these things just generate svg and serve that embedded in the html?

Koshkin 7y ago

I like Knuth’s attempt at math typesetting much more, and I think that we’d be in a better place right now if all web browsers supported Plain TeX out of the box.

krasjet 7y ago
I tried to partially bring the ecosystem of TeX to the Web via SVG[1] a while ago, but I really hope there is an alternative to TeX for the Web to avoid the hassle of conversion. Matthew Butterick's Pollen[2] seems to be a good start, but currently the ecosystem is too small. It needs some more attention. [1]: https://krasjet.com/voice/karasu/ https://krasjet.com/voice/karasu/ [2]: https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/