axiom VS KaTeX

The literate macro is just standard latex. The command line extraction functions are:

Lisp program to extract latex chunks: https://github.com/daly/axiom/blob/master/books/tangle.lisp

C program to extract latex chunks: https://github.com/daly/axiom/blob/master/books/tanglec.c

Note that the C program is just a hand translation of the Lisp code.

The lisp code has an explanation and the necessary latex macros. The idea is to scan the latex, find each named code 'chunk', and add each one to a hash table. Then the hash table is scanned to dump the requested chunk to stdout. For example:

\begin{chunk}{part1}

I think one "unfortunate" side effect of literate programming with a "stupid" procedual language like C, Pascal or even Java - is that your lp system tends toward becoming your macro system.

It does allow straightforward, short procedual/structured programs to become very readable and easily understandable - but for bigger "piles of code" - it's probably not that good a fit in practice.

I guess https://github.com/daly/axiom is both an argument for this being true (I seem to recall there was an effort to get away from lp) - and against (proof of existence: it's a big system, it's old, it seems to not be dead).

Then there's the other thing - I don't recall who's quote it is - but it is along the lines of: "There are few good programmers, there are few good writers of prose/technical documentation - therefore the subset of people that are both great programmers and great writers are tiny - and that is the subset for whom literate programming is a great fit".

I do think there's a middle ground though, and "notebooks" for "executable, repeatable" research papers is one such middle ground (or: to write a great cs paper your team need to have both skills anyway).

But there are certainly great programmers that can't write documentation on how to escape a wet paper bag.

From the code point of view, Axiom seems more interesting to me, but I need to study it more.

I want to resolve this KaTeX issue, so in order to test my ideas, is there some LaTeX test file with just a lot of equations, preferably inline (since this issue is related to inline math) but without fancy libraries or stuff not included in KaTeX?

> Could you elaborate on why you switched away from it?

I started using KaTeX sometime after 2015 because it promised to be fast (the fastest! [1]). I had to change the representation of a bunch of expressions because KaTeX didn't support some environments, whilst MathJax did. It was a trade-off I was willing to accept at the time.

Many years later, I started writing a personal static-site generator. I wanted comparatively lightweight pages, so rendering server-side was an option. I re-evaluated MathJax vs KaTeX again and this time I leaned towards MathJax, as speed was no longer an issue for me. It looks like KaTeX has broader support now [2].

[1] https://katex.org

[2] https://katex.org/docs/support_table.html

Another alternative: Create a WebView by using UIViewRepresentable and Webkit together with MathJax or Katex where Katex is the better option. Here is a link to katex: https://katex.org/

This isn't a LaTeX question. It's a web dev question. Probably best directed at folks who make (or use) KaTeX.

KaTeX

(1) [https://katex.org/

If you want to make it from scratch, go with https://www.slatejs.org/examples/richtext, then use something like https://katex.org/ for rendering the LaTeX, and maybe Mathjs.org for plotting.

The speed of KaTeX is great, but the lack of support for diagrams (a la tikz-cd) is what makes KaTeX unsuitable for general adoption by mathematicians (e.g., mathoverflow.net and all online mathematical wiki I know use MathJax). KaTeX has some rudimentary support for diagrams though the {CD} environment, but something more fully fledged akin to tizk-cd or xymatrix is needed. There's been some discussion on their github (https://github.com/KaTeX/KaTeX/issues/219), but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Haven't personally used it, but have heard of KaTeX