Prior to MathJax and jsmath, MathOverflow used http://latex.mathoverflow.net/png to generate images of mathematical equations to insert in posts (e.g. this one). That didn't last very long but all of those image links are currently broken.
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2$\begingroup$ Could it be a good occassion to instead of fixing this get rid of it? How many question should there be that might be affected (I have no idea how long this was used)? This seems even somewhat more feasible in view of the fact that the posts are not turned unreadble. $\endgroup$– user9072Jul 4, 2013 at 20:38
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$\begingroup$ Sure thing. Go ahead! $\endgroup$– François G. DoraisJul 4, 2013 at 23:41
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2$\begingroup$ Is there any way for moderators to "edit" the comments that need to be LaTeX-ified, or to replace them with latexified copies? $\endgroup$– Andrés E. CaicedoJul 4, 2013 at 23:54
5 Answers
These are the questions provided by m0sa (thank you!), that would contain the type of "LaTeX" that creates problems. (Please note that at the moment it works, so the post does not look broken, but looking at the source it will be clear that this is done different from how it is done now.)
Everybody who is in an editing-mood can pick a post here and add MathJax. After having completed it, please strike-out the post (rather than delete) from this list.
As Andrew Stacey said let us try not to make too many at once. (The revision history of this question could serve as a guide to know how many were done in the recent past.) At the bottom there are three comments where moderator powers wouls be needed. (I also put the corresponding questions there to minimize bumps.)
Still to do:
All done
Completed:
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4516
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4473
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4615
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4625
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4658
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4601
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4494
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4664
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5161
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5321
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5338
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4429
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4083
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4115
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4121
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4125
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4128
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4130
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4135
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4169
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4174
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4180
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4193
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4233
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4246
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4268
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4276
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4296
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4333
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4406
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4409
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4422
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4424
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4452
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4456
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4459
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4460
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4672
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4674
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4709
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4728
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4779
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4851
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4865
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4939
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/4966
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5006
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5008
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5013
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5044
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5064
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5103
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5122
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/5144
http://www.mathoverflow.net/questions/1845#comment-6101
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$\begingroup$ (I only accepted to improve visibility.) $\endgroup$ Jul 7, 2013 at 17:46
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3$\begingroup$ Couple of lessons from doing a couple of these: there may be more than one part of the post that needs fixing (ie check the answers too, and take the opportunity to fix minor things in those since the whole thing will be bumped anyway); and the "alt" text may not fully correspond to what is in the image. $\endgroup$ Jul 8, 2013 at 10:01
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1$\begingroup$ Oh, and not all of these questions are questions. Some are answers. So if fixing more than one issue in a question-and-answer list, it will be that the answer should also be struck out (if you can locate it in the list). $\endgroup$ Jul 8, 2013 at 10:07
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$\begingroup$ Thanks to everybody who contributed so far, and especially to @AndrewStacey for the remarks. I was aware of the answer-issue but did not know the potential "alt" text problem. In any case, once this is completed/close to completion I will double-check the changes. $\endgroup$– user9072Jul 8, 2013 at 19:32
Upon discovering that the question linked in this question was mine, I decided to fix it and discovered also that a simple regexp would not suffice. Sometimes it should have been displayed maths, sometimes not, and there were sufficient other small changes that I felt it needed a person to do. For example, not every mathematical phrase in that series of questions and answers was sent off to latex.mathoverflow.net
, and I'd used the \sb
command to get round the dodgy parsing of underscores (seems this isn't supported by MathJaX).
Is the list of questions using latex.mathoverflow.net
very long? Maybe you could post the links and then kind hearted users could (slowly!) go through them and fix them. Say, no more than 5 a day to avoid flooding the active tab?
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$\begingroup$ It seems a bit stupid that you work a lot with this and then get get a downvote as a result... $\endgroup$ Jul 5, 2013 at 10:02
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$\begingroup$ @AndrásBátkai I found that highly amusing. But it did make me realise that when editing old posts it is probably a good idea to state that this post is ancient history and so voting on it just because it is on the active list is a bit pointless. $\endgroup$ Jul 5, 2013 at 10:12
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$\begingroup$ I tried to search for latex.mathoverflow.net on the site in order to identify posts for manual fixing, however this seems to fail both with the search on the page as well as with Google; presumably one would have to search the database or a dump. Now, likely I could somehow manage to do this, but I never did, while I have the impression some do this all the time, so I will wait for a while if such a list is created by somebody who can do this more easily then me before venturing to create it myself. $\endgroup$– user9072Jul 5, 2013 at 12:46
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$\begingroup$ @quid Yes, it would be easiest from the database dumps as the text
latex.mathoverflow.net
doesn't appear on the pages but only in the page source. $\endgroup$ Jul 5, 2013 at 13:12 -
I ran a quick query, here are the non deleted posts and comments containing latex.mathoverflow.net/png
in CSV format: http://pastebin.com/2ffiacNF
I propose we ask the Stack Exchange team if they can do a search and replace on the database for us.
As an example, we want to replace

with
$\sum\sb {n \ge 1} \frac{1}{n} \cos(n \pi t)$
It's probably a reasonable thing to do with a regular expression!
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$\begingroup$ Would not be better to have displaystyle here? $\endgroup$ Jul 5, 2013 at 6:44
In the meantime, I got the script that produces the images running again. I don't think this is a good solution, short term or long term.