I'm working on a site that is using KaTeX for rendering math. However, the interface for entering the math content is (really) not ideal, so it is actually faster for me to work in an editor, like Sublime Text 3 and import the work; however, an issue I run into is that when I import, I discover various functions / environments aren't supported (i.e. emulated) by KaTeX.
If it were just me working on the material, I would simply learn as I go and consult the KaTeX documentation page; however, I have several contractors working on digitizing content who do not have access to the site (and I don't have the ability to give them access), and so cannot learn by trial-and-error. Instead, I end up with piles of documents that all need to be manually adjusted, to render as desired with KaTeX.
As such, I wanted to assemble a preamble for a LaTeX document that would recreate the abilities (i.e. functions and environments) KaTeX can emulate, and was wondering if such a preamble / package already exists? I have tried a few quick searches, but because I'm looking for something that imitates an emulator, I'm finding it tricky to find the right choice of words to get relevant results.
I wasn't sure if this were best posted here or on the TeX.se - I suspect it falls in-between the two - so I apologize if my guess was wrong and I should've tried there first. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated, as this is creating a substantial bottle-neck in my workflow but is also just outside of my ability to solve on my own.
Supported functions is one thing. To tackle that you might actually stand a fair chance of just tokenizing the input, looking for backslash name sequences and checking them against a list extracted from KaTeX sources to see which are supported.
I guess one could even try to remove all other functions from LaTeX. Or rather hide them, such that the user input can't access them but third party libraries can. Getting rid of language features (as opposed to macros) such as \def would probably be even harder. Better askn on the TeX stack exchange for details of you really want to follow this route.
As an alternative I guess you might be able to perform the check I described above in TeX. Write a macro which reads the current file as plain text instead of TeX source, to perform this analysis. Or some such. But a separate stand-alone tool would be much easier.
If you are going for a separate tool, you might as well write it in JavaScript for Node, and have it run KaTeX on the input. That way you can at least tell whether it will get typeset to something or error out.
Whether the rendering is what you expect from LaTeX may be another question. In general KaTeX aims to reproduce LaTeX behaviour, so any difference might indicate a bug. But bugs exist, so all of this might not avoid the need for checks. How about you just processing the math part of the input with KaTeX to some HTML which authors can check without access to the site?
As for existing tools or macro packages, I know of none, but tool or library questions are off topic on stack exchange anyway.
Related
I just started using flow-typed definitions for my popular libraries in a React Native app such as React Navigation, but I find it quite hard to find the documentation on types and how to use them. I'm still getting errors in my IDE and I feel like Flow is more wasting my time than adding value to my developer experience because I've to lookup for the types all the time (and sometimes don't even find an answer). Any advice about that ?
A complex web application using many npm modules is very rarely going to be strongly typed throughout. The goal of strong typing in JS is largely to have as much typing as is feasible or even reasonable. Modules which do not have libdefs will come in as any and that's okay. Obviously it would be great if everything you pulled in had full types, but just given the way that progress is made this is practically impossible. Add to this the fact that the simple act of upgrading flow will often introduce more caught errors to your codebase, and you end up having to accept that typing is a progressive process, it shouldn't really be a blocking one.
Now that that's out of the way, you seem to have a number of different sub-questions:
I've to lookup for the types all the time
Not entirely sure what you mean by this, but you might saying it's hard to find types for the package you're using. Make sure you're familiar with how the flow-typed CLI tool works (npx flow-typed), it will help you with searching for and installing compatible libdefs. If you don't find anything for a module in flow-typed then poke around the source github repo and make sure flow types aren't shipped with the module itself. If you come across a package with a .d.ts (TypeScript) file, try converting it to a libdef with flowgen. If nothing proves fruitful, you should probably just forego types and carry on.
In this case, I would actually start my own libdef (npx flow-typed create-stub <package name>) and fill in some basic types as I went. You can start really simple, I have a libdef currently for react-select that only checks one prop of the component, the options prop (I don't remember why I have this, however :P). Again, progressive typing is the goal. Checking that one prop is actually really nice compared to checking none.
I find it quite hard to find the documentation on types and how to use them
There's generally not real documentation for libdefs in flow-typed unless it's written by the package author somewhere. I usually read the libdefs themselves, but if you find usage confusing I would recommend looking at the tests associated with the libdef. You can also dig through any relevant issues or PRs to find usage examples.
sometimes don't even find an answer
Add a $FlowFixMe and come back to it later if it slows you down too much. All of these things will become much more manageable as you become more accustomed to flow and strong typing in general, and both flow and libdefs are constantly improving.
I'm still getting errors in my IDE
If you can't fix them, add a $FlowFixMe and come back later. Flow actually has a tool included in its source code that has a utility for adding $FlowFixMe for every error, but as it's not currently shipped to npm you have to clone the source to use it.
I have been using both in my projects and sometimes I find the need to use a Material UI component within a bootstrap component and the UI displays as I would expect. I have been advised though not to use this approach. Is there any reason why since both are using the grid and can be flexed?
I tend to be verbose so I'll put the concise answer up top here:
Conclusion:
Whoever said it was bad to use both might just be expressing their
opinion, in reality saying it's bad to use both really lacks context
in what you're designing. #user3770494 made a very good point- but the
point, while valid and truthy about the build size, it does depend on
the scope of the application. If it's an intraoffice application with
everyone on a fiber network local it'd all be cached in memory
anyways... but (not that you know me) I would not judge you negatively
if you mixed them together-- unless it was for a MAJOR million user
application to run on mobile (an very low devices), desktop, and other
devices around the world requiring real(ish) time updates, and
streaming dynamic content with 10000s of active users at any givin
time 24/7.
In all truth- if it's not life or death-- I'd say use both- and also
do your own. The experience of understanding more then one thing is
better then just "committing to a single solution" for personal
growth.
The rest of this reading is optional - you're welcome :)
I personally have used both in production applications (both together, and independently)... I've also done it all from scratch... (CSS is my least favorite part of job things I do - luckily I have a coworker who is great at it) Here are my thoughts:
Warning: I tend to be verbose.
Disclaimer:
As someone who likes function over form, form is an afterthought that is nit picky for clients to ask about tenuous little changes. I am going to try to leave my opinion on "how each option looks for feels" out of this as much as I can.
Also I'm looking at your question in a current choice I'm making- which is using ReactJS / create-react-app to make "demo" projects for touch screen embeaded systems- so I am going to roll out half a dozen mock programs for demos nothing that really does anytihng exactly (CCscanner, barcode scanner, gps, webcam integration, fun stuff like that). So I'm researching what will be easist for me to just commit to for this "beacuse I'm bored and got a pi3b+board for fun).
Answer:
If you have the time, dedication and resources, there is really
nothing wrong with mixing them together. But you just need to think
about the time/cost/benifit of it. DIY to make the end user happy-
even if you mix them. Totally yourself is remaking the wheel- but you
can always pull in boostrap styles etc.
The inherent risks is that if you use both- make sure you don't "Mix them" to much- because then you will always have issues with trying
to ever do version changes on either one.
I like a lot of MaterialUIs things, but I honestly dislike how a few things look (style wise by default)- functionally I like it better
then bootstrap, but at the same time, I do not like MaterialUIs React
programming style (as a purist who hates CSS But knows how important
it is- having to use !important ever ever ever ... is big big big
nonononononononon) compared to whatever way my coworkers and I use
for conventions. Not saying it's better or worse then my own
preference- but a few things about it really irk me (even if they are
done for good reasons).
Bootstrap has a lot of choices to use for- I like how it looks better, I like how it plays with ReactJS better- but there is
reactstrap vs. react-bootstrap (which is why I found your post trying
to figure which one to use for this demo thing I'm doing).
Most recently (for production projects) I do try to stick just with one but normally I'm making systems that are function over form. So
they don't really care that much about the UI elements, it's about
how to use it not make it pretty. So I stick with using a single one
just to make my job easier- and usally still override styles myself
... if the original styles piss me off. But I do not stick with one
because "It's bad form to use both" I just stick with one for that
reason mentioned above. I'd actually say if bandwidth is not an
issue- it's quality to use both- but only use the parts of them that
you actually use.
(I noticed someone once importing full jQuery when the only thing that they used from it was $.ajax (all be it a lot but still) ... I was like... is that not overkill?!) -- So if you use both and want to keep things slim- just make sure on compilation you're only importing what you're using. Pythonically I'm saying- never use import * from module (however you express that in Javascript as a concept - webpack/gulp/whomever should take care of most of that for you). Assuming you're using ES6/7 style Javascript.
I encountered this scenario recently and opted to use both but for specific tasks. With it being a responsive web app Bootstrap made the most sense to use for the layout and Material UI for the widgets (just my personal preference).
You can definitely use both but you should be aware of the following:
There will be a lot of overlap in offered features unless you take time and effort to manage it by carefully picking elements from each of those libraries. And even then you will face situations where you can't avoid overlap. This basically results in a bigger bundle.
You will have to maintain theming variables for both systems to have a consistent presentation across your app. Even then, there will be situations like where your table checkboxes look different from your form checkboxes because they are from different libraries.
You have to learn and understand both of the systems. It means sometimes it'll be harder to find what's causing a certain bug. You'll also be spending more time deciding which library to use for which component.
Overall, it's more work for you to work with two different systems and a higher chance of things looking inconsistent. That said, mixing in things like a grid system with limited theming might not be too bad.
If possible, I highly encourage you to choose one system and stick with it.
Using both will increase your production js size.
Material Ui and bootstrap both provide components with basic styles like buttons so choose one.
You can use bootsrap grid for structure only or even go with flex.
First of all, does anybody know of a developer's guide for WinBUGS? The website is full of detailed examples for Doodles and documentation for the model language, but I have yet to find anything about how to interpret trap windows.
Secondly, has anybody found any ways to streamline the check/load/compile/init/monitor/update cycle? By that I mean, there doesn't seem to be any way to say "don't bother rechecking the model or putting any of the settings back to their defaults (!!!), just keep loading data from these files, inits from those files, and for each generate a new coda". Even the standard Windows shortcuts are neutered here, forcing the user to keep clicking and filling the same fields with the same values over and over. This might seem like a minor issue, but when you are doing many similar analyses one after the other, it gets old fast.
I'm at the point where I'm about to use TRON.EXE to send fake mouseclicks to the program, but before going to that extreme I'm hoping there is some native and more elegant way to automate repetitive WinBUGS tasks.
Well... that's WinBUGS at its normal :-) Unfriendly, showing traps that would scare of an experienced kernel hacker.. :-) I don't think there exist some guide to traps. I mean if WinBUGS creators wanted to put some effort in being more user friendly, they would probably first made the traps more understandable, so that no guide was necessary.
I was trying to do something similar - i.e. to customize WinBUGS behaviour. First, you can call WinBUGS from R using R2WinBUGS. That way you are able to do a lot automatization but not all. For example, I wanted to have something like progress information in WinBUGS. The problem is that WinBUGS UI gets stuck during update cycles. R2WinBUGS creates the script.txt command script and there is command update (<big number of cycles>). What I wanted here was to customize this script.txt to contain a lot of smaller update(..) commands instead of one big one. But, the problem is that R2WinBUGS generates this script itself and you cannot change it.
So the way to customize WinBUGS could be that you create your own wrapper that creates the script.txt and other files. I believe you could do a lot more customization to WinBUGS this way.
However, I'm not sure if WinBUGS is worth it. Its development has stopped and while favorited by many people, it remains rigid. You can try JAGS or CppBugs which seem to have much more promissing future.
For a wrapper around R2WinBUGS that adds lots of functionality to streamline serious WinBUGS use, see my package rube (http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~hseltman/rube/) which is not yet on CRAN.
Among other things, it gives plain English error messages rather than passing your model/data/inits along to WinBUGS when a trap error is certain. It also gives a highly useful summary of your model/data/inits for finding problems that cannot be automatically detected. Of course, it does not catch all trap errors.
Turns out I didn't RTFM enough on the second part of my question. It turns out that the section of the WinBUGS 1.4 manual entitled "Batch-Mode: Scripts" lists all the batch commands. All the important UI functionality has a batch-mode command. There was only a little trial-and-error in getting the arguments right (for example over.relax('true')). What really took me a while to sort out is that WinBUGS seems to have trouble with some Windows paths, but as long as everything is in a subdirectory of the directory where WinBUGS is installed, it runs okay.
It's still kind of messy to have to keep loading all these little files, but I wrote an R-script that uses functions from the BRugs package to create all the files, name them in a consistent pattern, and generate a script that will then initialize the model and load them, over and over again.
I'll leave this question open for a while, though, to see if anybody has any suggestions on where I can learn to make better use of traps.
This follows on from this question where I was getting a few answers assuming I was using files for storing my HTML templates.
Before recently I've always saved 'compiled' templates as html files in a directory (above the root). My templates usually have two types of variable - 'static' variables which are not replaced on every usage but are used across the site - basically for ease of maintenanceif I decide to change the site name for example; and dynamic vars that change on every page load.
I always used to save these as files on the server - but my friend pointed out something I'd overlooked: why have 5-10 filesystem calls when you can have one database call?
What I want to know is which is more efficient? Calling several HTML files from the system or calling several rows of templates from the database (in one query/call).
Don't Store Editable HTML In the database
Seriously, because the maintenance overhead for mere changes becomes exhaustive once you realise you can no longer just pop open a text editor.
I worked on many projects which had HTML content in the database, and it was a constant nightmare of "find that row the content is on" and I really would liked to have shot the person whom made it.
Also, DON'T PREMATURELY OPTIMISE . If you find it a problem thats slowing the project down, then change it. Because making the code exhaustively less maintainable to save a millisecond. But design the code well enough that should you need to change where the content comes from later it should be easy to do.
Surely that can be resolved by having
a suitable web interface for editing
the templates?
Erm, really not, unless you're only trying to compete with notepad. Syntax highlighting and all the other full host of features you can get in a standard editor just make your developers suicidal when they find themselves editing web pages by hacking at an undersized text area with awful white on black ( not to mention the extra fun you get with having to worry about entity encoding etc, for instance, try editing html with in a text area where the html content contains a text area element! )
On FileIO While File IO can be a bottleneck, keep in mind that if you have a proper linux install, and plenty of memory, a handy thing known as "disk-cache" takes effect, which in effect, keeps files used in memory, so file IO becomes mere memcpy.
On the contrary, in real stress tests on any of the code I have used, the biggest slowdowns have been in the database!, primarily the nice slow CONNECT string, query parse time, extra php<->mysql interactions. You're not really looking at gaining anything. Filesystem lookup is close to database index lookup, and you don't have any unknowns other than "you need to stream it from a disk", no table locking stuff to worry about!
You should probably try something like a caching library, X-Cache comes highly recommended, thats more likely to give you visible performance gains.
I pretty much agree with the gist of Kent Fredric's answer. But, if you really want to know, which is more efficient/faster, you cannot reasonably expect to get the answer here. If you want that answer, there is only one way to get it: profile the application both ways.
I've recently started using Eclipse Ganymede CDT for C development and I couldn't like it more. I'm aware the learning curve could be sort of pronounced, therefore and with your help, my goal is to flatten it as much as possible. I'm looking for the best hacks, hints, tips, tricks, and best practices to really unleash the full power of the IDE.
Accurate Indexing
With CDT you should be sure to enable the "Full Indexing" option rather than the "Fast Indexing" default. It's not perceptibly slower on modern hardware and it does a much better job. In that vein, you should be sure to enable semantic highlighting. This isn't as important in C/C++ as it is in a language like Scala, but it's still extremely useful.
Streamlined Editing
Get used to using Ctrl+O and Ctrl+Alt+H. The former pops up an incrementally searchable outline view, while the latter opens the "Call Hierarchy" view and searches on the currently selected function. This is incredibly useful for tracing execution.
Ctrl+Shift+T (Open Type) isn't exactly an "editing" combo per se, but it is equally important in my workflow. The C++ Open Type dialog not only allows incremental filtering by type, but also selecting of definition (.h) or declaration (.cpp) and even filtering by element type (typedef, struct, class, etc).
Task Oriented Programming
Mylyn: never leave home without it. I just can't say enough about this tool. Every time I'm forced to do without it I find myself having to re-learn how to deal with all of the code noise. Very, very handy to have.
Stripped Down Views
The default Eclipse workspace layout is extremely inefficient both in space and in usability. Everyone has their favorite layout, take some time and find yours. I like to minimize (not necessarily close) everything except for Outline and keep the C/C++ Project Explorer docked in the sidebar configured to precisely hide the Outline when expanded. In this way I can always keep the editor visible while simultaneously reducing the space used by views irrelevant to the current task.
CTRL+TAB let you navigate quickly between a source file and it's header file (foo.cpp <--> foo.h).
I like also the local history feature because you can go back and revert your changes in a convenient way.
ctrl + space is the best tool ever in Eclipse. It is the auto-complete feature. It can complete variable names, method declarations, user defined templates, and a ton more.
Go Eclipse. Tons of my code is generated by ctrl + space.
If the Java Developer Tools aren't installed the Spellcheck won't work.
The Spellcheck functionality is dependent upon the Java Development Tools being installed. This can be a perplexing issue if you just install the C Development Tools exclusively, because it gives no reason for the Spell Checker not working.