[Idea] Advanced Line Type: LaTeX

Hello all,

Currently there is no way to represent LaTeX or any formatted math in Gemini to my
knowledge. Would there be an appetite for adding an advanced (optional) line type which
would suggest rendering the line content as LaTeX? In my head I imagine it being prefixed
with a “$”:
 ```
$ \frac{1}{2} \text{ Hello from } \LaTeX !
 ```
Adding soft math support would go a long way in expanding the types of content which can 
usefully be supported by gemini, and doing so as a line type would do so without
compromising the core values of the protocol. 

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

Andrew Thorp


Sent from my iPhone

On 2021-08-01 19:48, Andrew Thorp wrote:
> Please let me know your thoughts.

I'd rather just serve LaTeX files with application/x-latex MIME type.

On 2021-08-01 07:48PM, Andrew Thorp wrote:
> ```
> $ \frac{1}{2} \text{ Hello from } \LaTeX !
> ```
This specific format would break several of my articles where I
represent shell commands and their output like so:
 ```
$ unzip capsule.gpub
Archive:  capsule.gpub
  inflating: index.gmi
  inflating: math-gemlog-post.gmi
  inflating: math-gemlog-post-supplement.tex
$ xelatex math-gemlog-post-supplement.tex
...
$ okular math-gemlog-post-supplement.pdf &
 ```

> Adding soft math support would go a long way in expanding the types of
> content which can usefully be supported by gemini
I think this is yet another situation where serving any MIME type you
want comes in handy.  You can serve LaTeX or PDFs or MathML or HTML w/
MathJax through Gemini perfectly fine and advanced clients could render
them or just pass them through to the users' preferred application.  If
we're going to add markup that requires pulling a full TeX engine into a
client that wants to be fully spec-compliant then we might as well add
groff-style line-based italics and other markup that's more useful for
general-purpose writing than mathematical markup is.

If you really want to have mathematical markup in your gemtext document,
then I'd recommend providing a supplementary .tex file that has nice
versions of all your formulae.  As an alternative, you could add
relatively simple formulae to the gemtext in a style similar to the "ad
hoc Unicode" formulae shown here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_markup_language#Examples
Unicode has like thirteen blocks focused on math so it's not like you'd
be missing out on symbols to choose from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_operators_and_symbols_in_Unicode

~nytpu

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Alex // nytpu
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Anna “CyberTailor” writes:
> On 2021-08-01 19:48, Andrew Thorp wrote:
>> Please let me know your thoughts.
>
> I'd rather just serve LaTeX files with application/x-latex MIME type.

Or better yet, DVI, PS, or PDF generated from LaTeX. I don't want to have to
guarantee that I'll have all the required LaTeX packages installed to
render it. IMO, PDF/A is the best choice here, because of both safety
and limited dependencies.

-- 
Jason McBrayer      | “Strange is the night where black stars rise,
jmcbray@carcosa.net | and strange moons circle through the skies,
                    | but stranger still is lost Carcosa.”
                    | ― Robert W. Chambers,The King in Yellow