Topic on Talk:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality/Flow

Formulas: bold and sometimes too large

13
78V2z (talkcontribs)

Not sure how Latex is being implemented but there's something wrong with the formulas; and I see this on a variety of pages where math formulas are used.

(1) Sometimes all the formulas in the article are the correct size but they all are in bold (and they shouldn't).

(2) Sometimes the integral sign and the rest of the integral aren't on the same "line", meaning they're not aligned.

(3) Sometimes some parts of the formula are bold and some aren't but none should.

(4) Sometimes part of the formulas are in different size that other parts, e.g. integral sign is too large compared with what's behind it.

P.S. The two-page layout has similar issues.

Johan (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Thanks.

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

Seems like glyph fallback issues, are the math fonts installed on the rendering machines ?

OVasileva (WMF) (talkcontribs)

@78V2z - the bolding I believe is due to the browser itself, but I can double check. Could you give us example articles of the other issues (2-4)?

73.97.162.120 (talkcontribs)

@OVasileva (WMF) - I don't think the browser has anything to do with it. The PDFs are generated on the server side. However, I have tried both Firefox and chrome and several tests yielded exactly the same documents. I had a nice example of errors 2 to 4 but can't find it anymore. I did find an example for 4 but it's on the two-column generated PDF. Anyway, it's an interesting example that shows some very severe issues where the Latex code isn't being resolved at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

An example of the alignment error (#4) can be seen in the paragraph "Charge conservation" on PDF page 5, bottom right. Hope this helps. When I run into another of these issues I'll post them here.

78V2z (talkcontribs)

@OVasileva (WMF) - Actually, the 1-column PDF of Maxwell's Equations shows most formulas in bold but some not. See an example in the paragraph "Formulation in Gaussian units convention" on PDF page 3, at the bottom, in the text.

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

That's intentional isn't it? The section even mentions: "Symbols in bold represent vector quantities, and symbols in italics represent scalar quantities, unless otherwise indicated."

73.109.63.144 (talkcontribs)

@TheDJ - You're right

78V2z (talkcontribs)

@TheDJ - I think part of the confusion is that on one-column PDFs the difference between bold and not bold isn't as outspoken as on the two-column PDFs. Not sure why that is but it strongly affects readability. Take a look at the two formulas on page 9 of the one-column PDF, right after the sentence "...by splitting the total electric charge and current as follows:". It's as if normal became bold and bold became super bold...

I actually just noticed that the two tables at the beginning of the article didn't make it to the two-column PDF. I'll open a new thread for this issue.

Gpc62 (talkcontribs)

@78V2z - Yes, the fonts are too heavy in displayed equations in one-column format. Looking at the Maxwell's equations page: In the one-column pdf, the normal-weight characters in the displayed equations are about as heavy as the bold characters in the body text. Then the displayed bold characters are even heavier. That makes it harder to read which are bold and which are normal.

The type in the 2-column pdf is much clearer. In 2-column, the fonts in displayed equations seem to match those used in the body text. In 1-column format, the fonts don't match, which can be confusing.

On the other hand, look at what a mess 2-column format makes of some of the displayed equations! eg, the equation just above the section header "5 vacuum equations..." on page 5. The version in 1-column format (bottom of page 7) is much better, despite the too-heavy fonts.

78V2z (talkcontribs)

@Gpc62 - Exactly. The formula you mentioned is indeed a mess; the line break is at the wrong location and the integral sign isn't aligned vertically. I've already mentioned this in another thread. The biggest thing with the 2-column layout though is that all the large tables are omitted - they're simply not there. I've started a separate thread on this issue as well. But when it comes to readability the 2-column layout wins hands down, every time.

TheDJ (talkcontribs)

"Sometimes part of the formulas are in different size that other parts, e.g. integral sign is too large compared with what's behind it." This might have to do with the fact that at several points, the integrals are actually images, because it's a notation that is not properly supported in Latex.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Oiint

70.74.132.64 (talkcontribs)

5.11.35.19 frameware

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