Math button shortcuts for people who don't know TeX

[juzerali]

I was thinking how convenient would it be for people who don't know TeX (yet) to have visual buttons to input mathematical notations and equations. There is a trade off between minimalism and features, I know. But a full GUI based Math editor is required for a full featured text editor.

@benweet Would you like to add that feature, or else, will you accept pull requests that implements these features?

[kasperpeulen]

@juzerali I've been thinking about ideas like this as well. I would like to see stackedit as a full featured math editor. But I think that a high percent of the stackedit users, use stackedit for reasons other than its math capabilities.

Maybe it would be cool to have some kind of math button, that turns stackedit into a math editor. Or just some extension which is not necessarily turned on by default.

I was thinking how convenient would it be for people who don't know TeX (yet) to have keyboard shortcuts to input mathematical notations and equations.

What do you mean with keyboard shortcuts ? I think that for user that don't know TeX it would be good to have some kind of math buttons. Like this for example: http://www.texpaste.com/ or this: http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

I think that keyboard shortcuts are more interesting for people that want to type TeX faster. Ghuba and I have made some keyboard shortcuts that work with stackedit: #92

[juzerali]

@kasperpeulen You are right, sorry about poorly typed issue. I meant math buttons only, like textpaste. I have corrected that in my issue. Agreed that it has to be loaded optionally or on demand. Your attempt at keyboard shortcuts is interesting as well. Any idea if @benweet is interested to take them in if given a pull request?

My use case is that I want to design an app for schools wherein they can accept assignments from students online and possibly can conduct examinations as well, if not over open internet than at least within their premises. It is important for me to have an editor which has seamless integration with math. Students will not be able to learn TeX overnight so it is important to have visual help. Buttons will go a long way in helping them learn the new platform. And as users get used to TeX they can move forward to using keyboard shortcuts.

I am committed to working for it and putting in effort, but I am afraid I am not thorough when it comes to performance. I might leave behind memory leaks and messy code. So I would like supervision of a well established project and community. If anyone interested in seeing this happen, I encourage you to discuss it further here and contact me to discuss proceedings.

The important question for me is, will the pull request be accepted and will @benweet accept the overhead of maintaining the additional code that will ensue?

[benweet]

@juzerali the purpose of StackEdit's user custom extension is that you can easily add this kind of functionality in your own running instance and eventually share it here on GitHub like @kasperpeulen did. The step to go from user extension to generic extension is technically straight forward (you can ask me for help). If the extension is useful for some users and does not degrade experience of other users, I will review it and merge it.

I think the question of maintaining the additional code is irrelevant. I'm happy to review any contribution. If there are bugs, I will ask you to fix it. If it's really degrading the app I will remove it.

[akerbos]

This is a bottomless pit of despair. Even dedicated LaTeX IDEs have a hard time with this. I suggest to not even try and implement this -- it can only bring pain.

For LaTeX, there is no good shortcut. Learn it, and profit.

[victorel-petrovich]

@akerbos , @benweet , @juzerali

How about an extension that provides a list of matchig of latex commands, when when user starts typing a particular latex command. Ex: $\left...$ (then a popup appears and suggests \leftarror, \leftbracket etc). Then user can navigate with arrow down and select by enter or space.
I think this could not only help beginners, but speed the work of advanced users too.

[juzerali]

My idea for opening this ticket was to assist users who have absolutely no
experience with latex. What you are suggesting is helpful to experienced
users.

On Sun 1 Mar, 2015 6:42 am victorel-petrovich [email protected]
wrote:

@akerbos https://github.com/akerbos , @benweet
https://github.com/benweet , @juzerali https://github.com/juzerali

How about an extension that provides a list of matchig of latex commands,
when when user starts typing a particular latex command. Ex: $\left...$
(then a popup appears and suggests \leftarror, \leftbracket etc). Then user
can navigate with arrow down and select by enter or space.

I think this could not only help beginners, but speed the work of advanced
users too.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#185 (comment).

[akerbos]

@victorel-petrovich That's a non-trivial task in itself. The list of available commands depends on which packages are loaded, what you have defined above, conflict resolution, and so on.

[victorel-petrovich]

Yeah, I agree, it's advanced feature. I saw it in LYX.

[benweet]

Closing as too old.