Edit detail for #210 Pamphlet support on MathAction revision 1 of 1

changed:
-
We would like to be able to edit and display Axiom pamphlet
files on MathAction. Pamphlet files contain both source code
and documentation. All of the files necessary to build Axiom
are pamphlet files. The format is LaTeX plus some extra markup
for code sections and must be preprocessed by a "noweb" filter
before LaTeX.

Pamphlet files on MathAction would allow easy access to Axiom
system documentation plus the ablity to collaboratively edit
the Axiom source and documentation through the web. Development
versions of Axiom could then be built directly from the modified
pamphlet files. This should significantly shorten the time
required to enhance and maintain the system.

Revised Design: Thumbnail first page

  See http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxPamphlet

Because of problems with display of embedded PDF files (see
section below plus attached comments), it was decided to
replace the embedded PDF with an PNG image of the first page
(usually the title page) of the pamphlet file. This image file
is considerably smaller than the full PDF file and can be
displayed in all browsers regardless of whether an PDF viewer
plug-in is available. But since this is only an image of the
first page, we should think of this as a "thumbnail", i.e.
just a reminder of what the actual document looks like.

To access the real document, the user must click on **pdf** or
**dvi**. If a viewer for either pdf or dvi format is available
the browser will normally launch the viewer. If not, then the
browser will offer to save the file to disk.

The **src** link will display the actual source of the pamphlet
file. This can be saved to disk (using 'right-click/Save As' or
other appropriate browser idiom) for local use with an Axiom
source distribution.

The **tex** link displays the output of the literate program
'weave' operation applied to the source file. This is pure
LaTeX code and can be saved and subsequently processed by
LaTeX if desired.

The **log** link displays the log file generated by LaTeX. If
the document thumbnail does not appear after clicking 'Save'
you should check this file for error messages and make
corrections to the pamphlet file as necessary.

The **tangle** button and the associated drop down box are used
to access the program code contained in the literate progam
document. Select a code chunk name from the drop down box and
then click **tangle** to run the literate program 'tangle'
operation on the source file. The resulting code will be
displayed in the browser and can be saved to disk and used
locally if desired.

To edit pamphlet files, just click **edit** (located on the
upper right of the page) as you would for any other page
on MathAction.

Original Design: Embedded PDF

  See example page [SandBox Embeded PDF]

It is well known that conversion to HTML does not produce hiqh
quality presentations of LaTeX content. LaTeX can be easily
rendered as publication quality pdf, but the pdf format itself
is not well suited as a web format. pdf is a proprietary format
although viewers, browser plugins and pdf creation software is
freely. The use of pdf is a compromize that is made necessary by technical limitations of current web browser software.

It is possible to embed a pdf document inside an HTML web page
and to automatically generate such pages from pamphlet source
files stored as a new 'pamphlet' ZWiki PageType on MathAction.
Pamphlet files would be edited like any other wiki page and
rendered as pdf embedded in HTML, as shown on the example page, when 'Preview' or 'Save' is clicked.

In case no pdf viewer plug-in is installed in the browser,
ordinary links are provided to download the pdf file, or
alternatively a dvi format file, and also the source file
itself.

In addition to rendering the pamphlet content as pdf, clicking
the 'Save' button will also automatically update an associated
source code archive with the modified source. This will enable
developers to quickly build and test new versions of Axiom.

Please visit [SandBox Embeded PDF] to see an example of how a
pamphlet file will look in MathAction. At present this is just
a mockup built from files generated manually. In the final
working system clicking 'edit' will allow editing of the
pamphlet source code. It would be very useful if you could
leave a comment on this page describing how the page looks in
your browser.

Implementation of the new 'pamphlet' PageType in Axiom is
estimated to require only about two or three days of programming
and testing. This is much less effort then would have been
required to complete the original approach described below.

Your comments on this new design would be most welcome.

Previous Work

  The initial approach for pamphlet support in MathAction 
turned out to be much more complicated than expected and work
on this was delayed and subsquently abandoned.

The approach was to use Norman Ramsey's Latex to HTML [l2h]
noweave filter. This filter together with noweave, is able
to produce HTML files directly from noweb (pamphlet) files.
[l2h] is written in Icon - so over the last couple of days
I had to learn yet another language. Icon is quite tidy and
fast and apparently well suited language for this sort of
complex conversion. I have modified and extended [l2h] so that
inline and display math environments as well as the axiom,
aldor and reduce pseudo-environments are passed straight
through the conversion. Now that I understand Icon and
thanks to Norman's literate programming style, I have also
added some missing things needed my first set of test files.

The output of the modified l2h can then be given directly
to LatexWiki (or MathAction) as an HTML+LaTeX file. When
it is fully integrated into MathAction, the pamphlet file
itself will be stored and converted transparently using
noweave with the modified l2h filter when clicking Save.

<hr />

From MartinRubey Sun Oct 2 14:41:16 -0500 2005
From: Martin Rubey
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2005 14:41:16 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] (new) 
Message-ID: <17216.14137.764064.945324@seam101.local>
In-Reply-To: <20051001224654-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

I think that the idea is quite good, especially, since it seems to be easy to
implement. 

One (probably minor) problem is that I won't be able to use that feature at
home, since downloading the pdf files takes just too long. 

My version of Konqueror (3.1.4, very old, I know) doesn't display the pdf
embedded, but outside Konqueror (using Kghostview). Maybe I'd need to configure
something...

I think that the solution is great for a start, but in the long run I'd be
happier with a solution � la axiomui.

Still, it's great that there is support after all!

Thanks,

Martin


From BillPage Wed Oct 5 21:34:57 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:34:57 -0500
Subject: initial implementation of pamphlet support
Message-ID: <20051005213457-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

Status: planned => testing 


From BillPage Wed Oct 5 21:38:09 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 21:38:09 -0500
Subject: Working example of pamphlet support on MathAction
Message-ID: <20051005213809-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

See http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandBoxPamphlet for a real working example of an Axiom
pamphlet file which renders as PDF and DVI.

Additional work is still required for:

  1 source code archive check-in

  2 pre-rendering of {axiom}, {spad}, {aldor} and {reduce}
    psuedo environments

From unknown Fri Oct 7 12:45:27 -0500 2005
From: unknown
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 12:45:27 -0500
Subject: Math on the web
Message-ID: <20051007124527-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

This is impossible for me to view.

Acroread on linux has serious stability issues and consistently crashes my browser or forcibly grabs my mouse and won't let go.  All open-source pdf viewers (xpdf, gpdf, etc) have inferior font rendering and often cannot anti-alias the fonts.

The net result is that any user has to jump through a ton of hoops just to look at these pamphlet pages, and in the end, they're bypassing the chosen medium (the web) altogether!

While the rendering quality of the latexwiki-image or mathml is currently inferior, I don't think jumping through all these hoops is worth the small increase in rendering quality.  Instead, I think we should use the technologies built into the browser already (images/mathml) and push the browser developers to improve their rendering quality.

For instance, the mozilla people have just checked in a "patch which improves printing of transparent png's":https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141656.  Previously they printed black-on-black and were unreadable.  Another recently checked-in patch "properly aligns equations that are generated by latex2html":https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=192077.

Undoubtedly, we will encounter many bugs in the rendering of mathml.  But, I think pushing forward with "math on the web" is a desirable goal, and sidestepping the problem by embedding pdf will hurt rather than help the whole situation.  It seems to me the natural migration route is send images for old browsers, mathml for new browsers, and report bugs against the browsers when this falls down.

I know current pamphlets are a latex format, but the subset of latex actually used is quite small.  There are two ways to go here...1) write a zwiki "pagetype" which renders the subset, or 2) call latex2html or tth (or some other tool) on the backend to render as html with embedded images or mathml.

Unfortunately I am quite busy and won't be able to work on this any time soon.  :(

Just my 2 cents.

-- Bob

From root Fri Oct 7 13:23:36 -0500 2005
From: root
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:23:36 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <200510071818.j97IIpN04846@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <20051007124527-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>
	(mathaction@axiom-developer.org)

Is it possible to get a handle to a "canvass" in a browser?
If so it would be possible to do both graphics and a dvi mechanism.

Tim


From BobMcElrath Fri Oct 7 13:25:30 -0500 2005
From: Bob McElrath
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:25:30 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <20051007182535.GD14708@mcelrath.org>
In-Reply-To: <200510071818.j97IIpN04846@localhost.localdomain>

root [mathaction@axiom-developer.org] wrote:
> Is it possible to get a handle to a "canvass" in a browser?
> If so it would be possible to do both graphics and a dvi mechanism.

Yes, SVG has this capability.



From root Fri Oct 7 13:27:36 -0500 2005
From: root
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:27:36 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <200510071823.j97INdU04850@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <20051007124527-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>
	(mathaction@axiom-developer.org)

Actually, in answer to my canvas question:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Canvas_tutorial

shows that it possible to use a <canvas> tag and draw into it.


Tim


From BobMcElrath Fri Oct 7 13:32:00 -0500 2005
From: Bob McElrath
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:32:00 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <20051007183205.GA21453@mcelrath.org>
In-Reply-To: <200510071823.j97INdU04850@localhost.localdomain>

root [mathaction@axiom-developer.org] wrote:
> shows that it possible to use a <canvas> tag and draw into it.

Coooooolllll....

http://mozilla.doslash.org/stuff/canvas/shell.html



From BillPage Fri Oct 7 13:47:40 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:47:40 -0500
Subject: Math on the web
Message-ID: <01e601c5cb6f$9577c530$6700a8c0@asus>
In-Reply-To: <20051007124527-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

> 
> The net result is that any user has to jump through a ton
> of hoops just to look at these pamphlet pages, and in the
> end, they're bypassing the chosen medium (the web)
> altogether!
>

That's odd. It worked "right out of the box" for me using
Konquorer on Fedora Core 3. Even the embed PDF looks nice
with properly aliased fonts. I didn't have to touch a thing.
It doesn't seem like "bypassing the web" to me, although
using a proprietary format like PDF is admittedly not very
compatible with the open source philosphy.
 
Increasing rendering quality is not the objective of pamphlet
support. The goal is to provide a source format that is
identical to the noweb file format used by the Axiom
distribution. It should be possible to edit Axiom pamphlet
files through the web and have the result displayable in a
format that allows the quality to be checked and the changes
in code re-compile. This pages can then be directly included
in the Axiom source archive.

Being able to view pamphlet files online is an "extra"
feature that may work better on some configurations than
others. That is why I provided a link to the dvi. To bad
there doesn't seem to be an "embedded dvi viewer"...

> 
> I know current pamphlets are a latex format, but the subset 
> of latex actually used is quite small.  There are two ways
> to  go here...1) write a zwiki "pagetype" which renders the 
> subset,

Pamphlet files are latex plus noweb markup with embedded
code. I tried rendering just a subset of latex (see previous
work) but that ate a lot of time and failed.

> or 2) call latex2html or tth (or some other tool) on the
> backend to render as html with embedded images or mathml.
>

Maybe, but integration with Zwiki/LatexWiki is a pain.
 
> Unfortunately I am quite busy and won't be able to work
> on this any time soon.  :(
> 
> Just my 2 cents.
> 

And there-in lies **all** of our problems. :)


From BillPage Fri Oct 7 13:53:56 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 13:53:56 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210Pamphlet support on
	MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <01e701c5cb70$772c8830$6700a8c0@asus>
In-Reply-To: <200510071818.j97IIpN04846@localhost.localdomain>

> 
> ... "canvass" in a browser?
> If so it would be possible to do both graphics and a dvi
> mechanism.
> 

Neat stuff! I think especially interesting for AxiomUI ...
but does it really do dvi?


From root Fri Oct 7 14:09:12 -0500 2005
From: root
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:09:12 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <200510071905.j97J5El04885@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <01e601c5cb6f$9577c530$6700a8c0@asus>
	(mathaction@axiom-developer.org)

dvi plugin from several places. this page appears to claim that techexplorer
can do it:

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/kp229/ndvi

Tim


From CY Fri Oct 7 14:15:32 -0500 2005
From: C Y
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:15:32 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the web
Message-ID: <20051007191537.18947.qmail@web31705.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <01e601c5cb6f$9577c530$6700a8c0@asus>

--- Bill Page <mathaction@axiom-developer.org> wrote:

> That's odd. It worked "right out of the box" for me using
> Konquorer on Fedora Core 3. Even the embed PDF looks nice
> with properly aliased fonts. I didn't have to touch a thing.
> It doesn't seem like "bypassing the web" to me, although
> using a proprietary format like PDF is admittedly not very
> compatible with the open source philosphy.

I must be misunderstanding something - AFAIK pdf isn't proprietary. 
It's fully documented, and there is no restriction on creating either
viewers or generaters for it.  In what sense it is more or less
proprietary than postscript or dvi or mathml?

Now the open source viewers might not quite be up to the Acrobat Reader
standard in rendering quality, but to the best of my knowledge that
isn't because pdf is proprietary.  (BTY, I recommend the recent
releases of kpdf - it is getting quite good.)

Cheers,
CY


		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 
http://mail.yahoo.com


From BillPage Fri Oct 7 14:27:48 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:27:48 -0500
Subject: ndvi
Message-ID: <20051007142748-0500@page.axiom-developer.org>

If anyone can get ndvi to work with FireFox then I will get
very excited.

Yes, "techexplorer can do it" (and a lot more too!) but
unfortunately techexplorer went proprietary :( and that's
where it sits ... Techexplorer used to be part of the
commercial distribution of Axiom on windows. I **wish**
that we could have kept it as part of the open source
version of Axiom!!

From BillPage Fri Oct 7 14:29:50 -0500 2005
From: Bill Page
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:29:50 -0500
Subject: real demonstration of pamphlet files
Message-ID: <20051007142950-0500@page.axiom-developer.org>

In can anyone hasn't notice the new link on the FrontPage
you can see some real examples of Axiom pamphlet files here:

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/axiom--test--1

From M.Edward(Ed)Borasky Fri Oct 7 20:03:27 -0500 2005
From: M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 20:03:27 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] Math on the	web
Message-ID: <43471ADF.90206@cesmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <20051007124527-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

unknown wrote:

>Changes http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/210PamphletSupportOnMathAction/diff
>--
>This is impossible for me to view.
>
>Acroread on linux has serious stability issues and consistently crashes my browser or forcibly grabs my mouse and won't let go.  All open-source pdf viewers (xpdf, gpdf, etc) have inferior font rendering and often cannot anti-alias the fonts.
>  
>
I've had a few problems with Acroread 7 on Linux but for the most part 
they only happen when viewing a PDF off the web with Firefox. If you 
download the file to your hard drive and open it, it should work fine. 
Be sure you have the latest Acroread and Firefox. What distro are you 
running?

>While the rendering quality of the latexwiki-image or mathml is currently inferior, I don't think jumping through all these hoops is worth the small increase in rendering quality.  Instead, I think we should use the technologies built into the browser already (images/mathml) and push the browser developers to improve their rendering quality.
>  
>
Yes, I agree. Have you tried Amaya? They're trying to be the "reference 
browser", and I know they want to fix any rendering issues. I'm on their 
mailing list.

>Undoubtedly, we will encounter many bugs in the rendering of mathml.  But, I think pushing forward with "math on the web" is a desirable goal, and sidestepping the problem by embedding pdf will hurt rather than help the whole situation.  It seems to me the natural migration route is send images for old browsers, mathml for new browsers, and report bugs against the browsers when this falls down.
>  
>
Yes, I agree. Start with Amaya; they're likely to be more responsive 
than Firefox/Mozilla.

-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://www.borasky-research.net/
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

http://pdxneurosemantics.com
http://pdx-sales-coach.com
http://algocompsynth.com


From michel.lavaud Fri Oct 7 21:37:02 -0500 2005
From: michel.lavaud
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:37:02 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210	Pamphlet support on
	MathAction] Math on the web
Message-ID: <43474E28.10436.107FC94@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <20051007191537.18947.qmail@web31705.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

On 7 Oct 2005 at 14:15, C Y wrote:

> I must be misunderstanding something - AFAIK pdf isn't proprietary.
> It's fully documented, and there is no restriction on creating either
> viewers or generaters for it.  In what sense it is more or less
> proprietary than postscript or dvi or mathml?

The pdf format is proprietary _and_ fully documented  -  as is the Word format. And 
what Microsoft did, Adobe can do it : that is, he can decide some day to change the 
pdf format in a way incompatible with previous versions (as MS did for Word  - to 
enhance performances, or increase his income or whatever reason), users cannot do 
anything against that. And if the modifications are not strictly upward compatible with 
preceding ones,  some formulas included in scientific articles could become inexact, 
without the author being aware of it, and without the reader being able to notice it :for 
texts, the reader can easily detect and correct errors while reading, but this is 
impossible for formulas, in general.This could be as catastrophic for science as the 
burning of Alexandria's library.

Unfortunately, many scientists are not aware of this problem with pdf. Even among 
TeX developers, many promote replacing dvi by pdf. Pdf  is acceptable for short-life 
documents, but not (IMHO) for scientific documents : only exactness certified over 
very long periods of time ought to be taken into consideration for science. It does not 
seem reasonable to rely on  proprietary formats such as Word or pdf and cross one's 
fingers, hoping they won't do something wrong. Because some day, they will :-(

The most critical community against pdf lately were not scientists but lawyers, 
because of Enron and other affairs, that generated "tons" of electronic documents, 
and they fear that these documents could become unreadable in the long term. The 
problem of defining an A-pdf format (Archival-pdf) was resurrected on this occasion. 
For scientists, I think it would be important that everybody realize the problem, before 
our libraries of pdf documents "burn".  The dvi format is completely safe because it is 
frozen and very simple, and is very well suited because it has been devised for 
science.

Best wishes,

Michel.Lavaud@univ-orleans.fr
http://www.univ-orleans.fr/EXT/ASTEX
ftp://ftp.univ-orleans.fr/pub/tex/PC/AsTeX
liste de discussion: astex@univ-orleans.fr
Abonnement � la liste: envoyer un message de contenu
"sub astex Nom Prenom Etablissement" � sympa@univ-orleans.fr


From root Fri Oct 7 21:49:49 -0500 2005
From: root
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:49:49 -0500
Subject: [#210 Pamphlet support on MathAction] [#210	Pamphlet support on
	MathAction] [#210	Pamphlet support on	MathAction] Math on the web
Message-ID: <200510080245.j982jxb05019@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <43474E28.10436.107FC94@localhost>
	(mathaction@axiom-developer.org)

Actually, I continue to maintain the position that documents should be
available in SOURCE form, not pdf, not dvi, etc. Only source allows you
the ability to use the information in any way.

Tim


From BillPage Wed Jun 21 06:16:30 -0500 2006
From: Bill Page
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:16:30 -0500
Subject: pamphlets work as planned on MathAction
Message-ID: <20060621061630-0500@wiki.axiom-developer.org>

Status: testing => closed