New top-level mode for LaTeX, HTML, or Org-mode output

[mahrud]

In Macaulay2/M2-emacs#79 I suggested a new top-level mode for producing LaTeX output which can be previewed inline using Emacs (or vscode).

This made me wonder why we don't have some obvious top-level modes:

1. A mode which produces a truncated html file, in such a way that you can open the partially written html file in a browser for a cheap WebApp replica, where you need to refresh to load the rest of the page after every command. There's tons of ways to improve this, e.g. obviously syntax highlighting, a navbar at the top of the page, parsing of positions into links, auto-update using javascript, incremental loading, perhaps even a basic http server running in M2 to serve the output via 127.0.0.1 in this mode to a single browser (maybe with json?) and handle interrupts that way. (Side note: can an M2 thread interrupt a running command in the main thread?)
2. A mode which produces an essentially complete LaTeX source file, basically consisting of input lines in \verbatim followed by the LaTeX output line.
3. A mode which produces Org-mode. Even better would be if it was reproducible, i.e. you could grab the org-mode output of an M2 session and rerun/update everything in it like Jupyter.
4. A mode which produces Markdown for viewing in capable viewers.

I think @d-torrance has a usable version of 3 already, but I think 1 above is the one I'm most interested in because its a lot simpler to use locally than either Jupyter or the WebApp.

[pzinn]

perhaps even a basic http server running in M2 to serve the output via 127.0.0.1 in this mode to a single browser

Macaulay2Web can do that, you can run it in local mode

A mode which produces an essentially complete LaTeX source file

see the TeX mode as well as the MergeTeX package which uses it to do pretty much what you asked for

[mahrud]

I'm aware of both, but neither are relevant to what I'm asking here.

Macaulay2Web requires docker, npm, an ssh key, and the result is way above what I asked for, which was a cheap WebApp replica you can run from the standard M2 binary.

I'm not sure what is the TeX mode but MergeTex package serves an entirely different purpose. I want a live M2 session which returns tex code that can be displayed by emacs or vscode or similar.

[pzinn]

in local mode, Macaulay2Web does not require docker. the ssh key is a detail and could be dispensed with if really necessary, but it takes one line to set it up... and what's the deal with not wanting npm?? if you want a web server you probably want node, hence npm.

[mahrud]

Again, Macaulay2Web is an entirely different project, not distributed with M2. If you can embed it in M2 itself so I can run M2 --web that would be great.

Why would I want node? Try running python3 -m http.server and imagine instead of the contents of your directory you see the output of an M2 session. It's basically a static website like the documentation, but you can refresh it (or have it autorefresh) to see the latest output. I'm not specifically opposed to some jquery+node app like your minimal.html, but here I'm asking for something with zero dependencies.- Only whatever comes with M2.