jsMath (Changes)

Changes in Version 1.x of jsMath

Version 1.8   (2 June 2005)

• Fixed support for OmniWeb 5.
• Fixed support for Safari 2 in Tiger? (Not sure, I don't have it to test with)
• Improved support for Konqueror.

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Version 1.7e   (15 Jan 2005)

• Yet another attempt to work around a clipping bug with MSIE.
• Also cleaned up a couple other items that were left over from previous changes.

Version 1.7d   (13 Jan 2005)

• Fixed a bug where using \overrightarrow and \overleftarrow would cause \longrightarrow and similar macros to produce the wrong results in MSIE.

Version 1.7c   (13 Jan 2005)

• Fixed a problem with spacing in MSIE introduced by the big fix in 1.7b in which some symbols were being clipped on the right.
• Fixed a vertical alignment problem in PC-based browsers where some in-line equations where not properly aligned on the text baseline.

Version 1.7b   (9 Jan 2005)

• Worked around a (another) bug in MSIE that caused space at the beginning of equations to be lost in some circumstances.
• Fixed an error where too much vertical space was being inserted above some equations in MSIE.
• Added a small amount of space above and below large equations so that they don't bump into nearby lines of text.

Version 1.7a   (7 Jan 2005)

• Fixed a bug with positioning of arrays in MSIE on the PC that occurred in version 1.7 with the introduction of absolute positioning for arrays.

Version 1.7   (31 Dec 2004)

• Added control over the style used for displayed mathematics (it used to be hard-coded as a centered paragraph). Use the div.typeset CSS style to control the formatting of display math and span.typeset style to control in-line math. For example

      <STYLE>
         div.typeset    { text-align: left; margin-left: 1in; }
      </STYLE>
  

  will indent all display math by 1 inch rather than center it.
• Improved handling of stretchable delimiters by using absolute rather than relative positioning when possible. Also fixed a bug with the sizing of the characters used for these delimiters. These changes are of particular value when the fallback fonts are used. They also help with a bug in some browsers where the stretchable delimiters seem to the browser to take much more vertical space than they actually require. JsMath compensates for this for display purposes, but it can cause the delimiters to "overlap" links lower down on the page and make them partially inaccessable. This release should vastly reduce this problem.
• Improved layout of arrays by using absolute rather than relative positioning when possible. This makes array alignment more stable when the font size changes, and when the entries in the array are particularly long. It also prevents entries from drifting off center (an artifact of relative positioning that is more apparent at some font sizes than at others).
• Fixed a bug with macro definitions: ## was not being translated to # in the output of macros, but this is now fixed.
• Fixed a bug with spacing in MSIE on the PC. (Some spaces at the beginning of formulas was being lost.)

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Version 1.6b   (20 Nov 2004)

• Added a number of matrix environments from the amsmath LaTeX package: matrix, pmatrix, bmatrix, Bmatrix, vmatrix and Vmatrix.

Version 1.6a   (14 Nov 2004)

• Added support for loading of additional TeX fonts (like the AMS font msbm10 that includes blackboard-bold characters). Created definition files for cmmib10, euex10, eufm10, eurm10, eusm10, msam10, msbm10. These are linked to the extra fonts page.

Version 1.6   (12 Nov 2004)

• Provide a method for authors to override the "missing font" message. If you define a JavaScript function called NoFontMessage, this will be called when the TeX fonts are not found. You can use this routine to supply your own message (or to not produce the message at all). For example

      <SCRIPT>
      function NoFontMessage() {}
      </SCRIPT>
  

  will prevent any missing font message, while

      <SCRIPT>
      function NoFontMessage() {
        document.writeln
          ('<CENTER><DIV STYLE="padding: 10; border-style: solid; border-width:3;'
          +' border-color: #DD0000; background-color: #FFF8F8; width: 75%; text-align: left">'
          +'<SMALL><FONT COLOR="#AA0000"><B>Warning:</B>\n'
          +'It looks like you don\'t have the TeX math fonts installed.\n'
          +'The mathematics on this page may not look right without them.\n'
          +'The <A HREF="http://www.math.union.edu/locate/jsMath/" TARGET="_blank">'
          +'jsMath Home Page</A> has information on how to download the\n'
          +'needed fonts.  In the meantime, we will do the best we can\n'
          +'with the fonts you have, but it may not be pretty and some equations\n'
          +'may not be rendered correctly.\n'
          +'</FONT></SMALL></DIV></CENTER><p><HR><p>');
      }
      </SCRIPT>
  

  produces the message that you usually see when the fonts are missing. You should define this function before loading jsMath.js itself.
• Non-breaking spaces (character code \xA0) are converted to spaces before jsMath interprets the mathematics. This prevents unwanted errors when jsMath processes these characters.
• Fixed a bug with the \rule command that caused the line containing the rule to have the wrong height when a depth was specified.

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Version 1.5c   (18 Oct 2004)

• Fixed a problem with the algorithm for checking for the availability of the TeX fonts. The patch added to 1.5 caused Mozilla on the PC to fail to use the fallback fonts, and so I altered the test to account for that.

Version 1.5b   (12 Oct 2004)

• Fixed a subtle problem with spacing (explicit spaces interfered with the determination of the proper spacing between elements in TeX's math lists).

Version 1.5a   (12 Oct 2004)

• Fixed problem with \kappa and \Omega (and the characters in these same positions in the other fonts) in the Opera browser on the PC.
• \fbox now processes its arguments in text mode rather than math mode (i.e., like an \hbox).

Version 1.5   (10 Sep 2004)

• Fixed a bug that caused some nested LaTeX environments not to be processed properly.
• Added LaTeX \begin{eqnarray}...\end{eqnarray} environment.

• Changed the test for the presence of the TeX fonts to handle a situation reported by a user where Safari did not properly report the height of the character that was being used for the test.

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Version 1.4b   (7 Jul 2004)

• Created generic fallback tables for unix browsers. This may not get everything OK, but it should help. I've also made some progress on using the TeX fonts. See the fonts page for more details.
• Fixed a minor spacing issue with subscripts.

Version 1.4a   (1 Jul 2004)

• Updated the fallback character tables for the PC. Notable improvements for Mozilla's display of stretchable delimiters.

Version 1.4   (29 Jun 2004)

• Improved computation of the pixel-to-em ratio, which helps with horizontal alignment of vetically stacked elements, such as those used in fractions, arrays, stretchable delimiters, and so on.
• The better knowledge of the horizontal widths allow for less frequent measuring of element widths, providing a speed improvement for the rendering of mathematics overall. This improvement is more apparent with some browsers than with others.
• Improved character tables for all browsers on the Macintosh for when TeX fonts are not available. Particular improvements are in the stretchable delimiters. There are still no tables specifically for the Opera browser (which doesn't seem to have access to many of the Unicode characters). The tables for the PC still need to be updated.
• Added LaTeX \fbox and \dots commands.
• Fixed some spacing problems with \root ... \of
• Fixed problem were italic correction wasn't being scaled properly when the font size was changed with \small, \large, etc.

• Removed some spacing adjustments in placement of superscripts on large operators (went back to the original TeX spacing for these).
• Fixed a bug with the fallback mechanism introduced in v1.3.

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Version 1.3   (18 Jun 2004)

• Added support for LaTeX font-sizing commands (\tiny, \large, etc.)
• Fixed some spacing problems with square roots and fractions.
• Fixed a bug were fractions at the end of arrays might not be displayed correctly.
• Some internal modifications to make adding extensions easier.

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Version 1.2   (6 Jun 2004)

• Added support latex form of square root: \sqrt[n]{...}.
• Added support for LaTeX array and cases environments. The array environment respects the c, l and r arguments, but ignores all rules and other items.

• Added support for a few other minor LaTeX commands needed by WeBWorK.

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Version 1.1   (3 Jun 2004)

• Changed the way jsMath looks for the TeX fonts to make it work better on more browsers. It's still a bit of a hack, and may not work in all circumstances.
• Fixed a bug where jsMath always reported missing fonts on MSIE, even when the TeX fonts were installed. (This occured when jsMath was loaded inside a table rather than at the top of the HTML file.)
• Added a check so that if the jsMath.js file is called in more than once, it only runs once. (Needed for WeBWorK, which may attempt to load the javascript several times.)
• Fixed a bug with Process() and ProcessBeforeShowing() where if they are called more than once, the typeset mathematics from the previous calls would get messed up by the second call.

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Version 1.0

• The major new feature from the last beta version is that you no longer need to have the TeX fonts, as jsMath will now fall back on unicode fonts when the TeX fonts are not available. This is reasonably effective on most platforms, but depending on the fonts available on the user's system, the quality of the results may vary.

jsMath web pages Created: 14 Mar 2004 Last modified: 01 Dec 2005 20:50:08 Comments to: dpvc@union.edu

jsMath Home Page Changes in Version 2.x of jsMath