R devel - May 2021 - Feature request – math in HTML help

On 27/05/2021 2:34 p.m., Jan Net?k wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> long I have been thinking about proper rendering of math in the HTML form
> of R documentation. As you know, you can write \eqn{} in your .Rd files and
> this is nicely rendered into the PDF Reference manual of the package with
> the aid of TeX. However, that is not the case in the aforementioned HTML
> version that is used the most in my experience (using RStudio or help
> function in your console). I think R is the best language for statisticians
> and other data-driven fields, where formal definitions of key concepts are
> necessary and widely used in the documentation, unfortunately quite
> unusable for more complicated equations.
> 
> Recently I have stumbled upon an interesting approach to this issue, see
> https://cran.r-project.org/package=mathjaxr, but it seems to me as some
> weird kind of monkey patching. All packages should be able to benefit from
> proper math rendering without any dependencies, in my opinion. I think it
> should not be much of a problem utilizing mathjax or other similar library
> to enable that. Note we already know what supposed to be math in .Rd (and
> we parse and process it in a special way in the PDF routine), the thing is
> to render it, not typeset in italics, as it is the case nowadays.
> 
> I would be happy to hear any opinion of yours!
You are being very rude.

The problem has been solved by mathjaxr.  If you don't like their 
approach, don't ask someone else (i.e. R Core) to come up with a 
different solution, do it yourself.

I hope my opinion makes you happy!

Duncan Murdoch

I am so sorry, my post sounded quite the opposite of what I intended! I
used the term "monkey patch" as a technical one (see
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch) and I said "weird"
meaning
mathjaxr is something fulfilling the concept, but only figuratively.

Actually I gave mathjaxr as a good (the best I know, in fact) example of an
approach how to solve the issue. However, no package can achieve nicely
formatted/rendered math in every single R documentation files. I thought
this could be solved globally, directly in R, as it is the case of PDF
Reference manual. I propose (in line with mathjaxr authors) that mathjax is
pretty good candidate for it.

Once more I am sorry for the ambiguity in my language.

Best,
Jan Netik

Dne ?t 27. 5. 2021 22:15 u?ivatel Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at
gmail.com>
napsal:
> On 27/05/2021 2:34 p.m., Jan Net?k wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > long I have been thinking about proper rendering of math in the HTML
form
> > of R documentation. As you know, you can write \eqn{} in your .Rd
files
> and
> > this is nicely rendered into the PDF Reference manual of the package
with
> > the aid of TeX. However, that is not the case in the aforementioned
HTML
> > version that is used the most in my experience (using RStudio or help
> > function in your console). I think R is the best language for
> statisticians
> > and other data-driven fields, where formal definitions of key concepts
> are
> > necessary and widely used in the documentation, unfortunately quite
> > unusable for more complicated equations.
> >
> > Recently I have stumbled upon an interesting approach to this issue,
see
> > https://cran.r-project.org/package=mathjaxr, but it seems to me as
some
> > weird kind of monkey patching. All packages should be able to benefit
> from
> > proper math rendering without any dependencies, in my opinion. I think
it
> > should not be much of a problem utilizing mathjax or other similar
> library
> > to enable that. Note we already know what supposed to be math in .Rd
(and
> > we parse and process it in a special way in the PDF routine), the
thing
> is
> > to render it, not typeset in italics, as it is the case nowadays.
> >
> > I would be happy to hear any opinion of yours!
>
> You are being very rude.
>
> The problem has been solved by mathjaxr.  If you don't like their
> approach, don't ask someone else (i.e. R Core) to come up with a
> different solution, do it yourself.
>
> I hope my opinion makes you happy!
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
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