WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?
I’m not sure if I’m choosing a correct name for such a request but as of right now, Anytype treat inline Latex in a block all at once; meaning that if you have multiple instances of inline Latex in a block, and you move your cursor in the block, then all the math expressions come out of rendering to show their Latex code.
However, what I’m proposing is that the Latex rendering happens independently for each of the expressions whenever the cursor is one them and left the other ones rendered. In other word, when the cursor is within the block, the inline Latex math expressions ONLY come out of their rendered form when the cursor is on them directly.*
HOW COULD IT BE DONE?
As I’ve demonstrated in the video bellow, in Obsidian it’s already been done. If I’m not mistaken, it was like this from the beginning. So, essentially, the rendering happens when the cursor moves out of the $$, and remains like this unless you want to once again edit it and move the cursor within the dollar signs.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
*This is especially useful and dare I say necessary when you are dealing with a physics and math draft with heavy math expressions. I can categorize them in a couple of ways:
*
- For one, depending on how large your Latex code is, the cursor and the block moves crazy. This causes huge confusion as to what I was editing. It takes some time for me to figure out which of these expressions I was editing and think about. As you know, it’s not easy to scan and navigate a pile of Latex and text characters
. I tried to demonstrate it below:
- The other issue is that if you have some sort of problem in your Latex expression, this would be a problem since the block wouldn’t render at all even though there would be some correct Latex code in it. Unless you find and eradicate the incorrect Latex code, the whole block would remain un-rendered. It would be extremely exhausting to pick each of the Latex expression and put them in a separate block to see first which one is causing the problem and next try and fix it and then return it to the original block. It’s very time consuming and it would be solved at once if we have local, partial Latex rendering.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
Well as of right now, the alternative is to write every math expression in a separate block, make sure it’s correct and then corporate it into the original block.