Re: [matplotlib-devel] Different behaviour of mathtext and LaTeX rendering

[Darren D. <dsd...@gm...>]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Michael Droettboom <md...@st...> wrote:

> Manuel Metz wrote:
> > Michael Droettboom wrote:
> >
> >> There was a discussion on this list around a year ago about this.  The
> >> concern was that not rendering $ as $ would break (matplotlib) backward
> >> compatibility with scripts that don't care about math at all but use a
> >> lot of dollar signs (e.g. financial plots).  This is one of the few
> >> places where we deliberately broke usetex compatibility in favour of
> >> matplotlib compatibility.
> >>
> >> That said, it's probably a bug that the escaped dollar sign in non-math
> >> context is not rendered as a dollar sign.
> >>
> >> As a workaround "$\$%1.2f$" works with usetex on or off, with the
> >> proviso that it uses math- rather than text-rendering for the numbers.
> >>
> >> Mike
> >>
> >
> > In that case I suggest to note this somewhere in the docs (and User
> > Guide) with three exclamation marks (or is it ???).
> >
> So there's really two sub-bugs here:
>
> 1) '\$8' gives '\$8' in mathtext (well, actually it gets sent verbatim
> to the non-math text renderer, which is a bug).  This, IMHO, is a
> "must-fix".
>
> 2) '$8' gives '$8' in mathtext and an error in usetex.  This could be
> solved in two ways:
>
> a) document the difference
> b) make '$8' give '$8' in usetex as well
>
> I realise b) is technically making usetex accept a string that is not
> normally valid TeX -- but it's not like a user would ever enter '$8' and
> *want* to get a TeX error back.  And usetex strings aren't perfectly TeX
> anyway.
>
> Personally, I'm leaning toward b), because it requires less mental
> effort for the user turning usetex on/off.  And it doesn't force us to
> backtrack on the idea of supporting "$100.00" easily.
>
> But before I commit -- any feedback?
>

I opposed to b). If we go that route, we can look forward to advertising
usetex as "a latex backend, with familiar, standard latex markup, except
when it isnt."

Darren