LaTeX rendering for HTML viewer

devonwt · 2025-01-29T20:56:13+00:00

Is it supposed to be the case that LaTeX equations should render as normal in the HTML viewer? If not, is this a planned addition for the future?

I currently find that they do not render correctly.

adamsmith · 2025-01-29T21:06:32+00:00

Could you give an example/screenshot and, if you're talking about a Snapshot, the link to the URL it's from?
As written, the answer is definitely no (LaTeX never renders in HTML), but formulas can be made to render in html.

devonwt · 2025-01-29T21:17:37+00:00

An example is this URL: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2023/monosemantic-features/index.html

The original webpage looks like this:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u8221639/t02fqc1dj0ci9kdt7egq.png

The Zotero Snapshot looks like this:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u8221639/43o8dim8lk9a8bu7fn0e.png

adamsmith · 2025-01-29T21:40:48+00:00

Thanks -- that's using KaTeX, which generally the HTML viewer is able to display -- try e.g. the KaTeX homepage: https://katex.org/

I'm not sure exactly what's going wrong on that page, but it does have a ton going on -- you can't even load the source view in some browsers, e.g. -- and I suspect Zotero's html viewer isn't running the javascript that handles the conversion from TeX to HTML. Not sure how easy this particular instance would be to fix, but it's not a general issue with formulas (mathJax formulas, e.g., also work https://mathjax.github.io/MathJax-demos-web/speech-explorer-tex.html )

devonwt · 2025-01-29T22:22:28+00:00

Thanks for looking at that. I see that the math rendering does work for other pages I try. However, it looks like all the papers / posts on https://transformer-circuits.pub/ have the same issue when using the Snapshot to save them. It's a bit of a shame since many of those popular papers are only available as webpages and are not posted as PDFs.

By the way, here is an example of a page that has a little less going on [?] but has the same issue: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2023/may-update/index.html.

AbeJellinek · 2025-01-30T19:00:11+00:00

@devonwt: I tried saving your last link using Web Page with Snapshot in both Firefox and Chrome, and the equations (e.g. the "Weight Superposition" section) are rendered fine in the Zotero snapshot reader.

Could you right-click the snapshot in Zotero, choose Show File (Show in Finder on macOS), and attach it to an email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?

AbeJellinek · 2025-01-30T19:01:53+00:00

(And the same goes for the first example link, for what it's worth - it takes a few seconds to load in Zotero, but the equations are rendered correctly.)

devonwt · 2025-01-30T21:59:10+00:00

I sent the files. The HTML files that I get after choosing "Show File" render fine in Firefox, but not in Zotero. This includes the "Weight Superposition" section, shown below:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u8221639/1c3dbgzney61l8wdg4n7.png

poettli · 2025-01-31T01:28:54+00:00

I see the same as devonwt with the last link. I save with right-click > Save to Zotero > Save to Zotero (Web Page with Snapshot) on two different computers:
- Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS , Firefox 134.0.2 with Zotero connector 5.0.151beta1 and Chrome 132.0.6834.159 with Zotero connector 5.0.152
- Sequoia 15.2, Firefox 134.0.2 with Zotero connector 5.0.151, Chrome 132.0.6834.159 with Zotero connector 5.0.152 and Safari 18.2 with Zotero connector 5.0.148

dstillman · 2025-01-31T04:41:45+00:00

It looks like they're rendered properly in the Zotero 7.1 beta, which is based on a newer version of Firefox, but not Zotero 7.0. So this should just be fixed when we release 7.1.

poettli · 2025-01-31T04:51:24+00:00

I forgot to check on the beta (I just checked, it is properly rendered). My bad.

AbeJellinek · 2025-01-31T16:16:23+00:00

Thanks, yeah. It looks like SingleFile is saving the equations using Declarative Shadow DOM, which wasn't yet supported in the version of the Firefox platform that 7.0 is built on.

devonwt · 2025-01-31T20:15:48+00:00

Nice! Great that this fix is already there in the next version.