[Rd] Feature request – math in HTML help

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 27/05/2021 4:54 p.m., Jan Netík wrote:
> I am so sorry, my post sounded quite the opposite of what I intended! I 
> used the term "monkey patch" as a technical one (see 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch 
> <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch>) and I said "weird" 
> meaning mathjaxr is something fulfilling the concept, but only figuratively.
> 
> Actually I gave mathjaxr as a good (the best I know, in fact) example of 
> an approach how to solve the issue. However, no package can achieve 
> nicely formatted/rendered math in every single R documentation files. I 
> thought this could be solved globally, directly in R, as it is the case 
> of PDF Reference manual. I propose (in line with mathjaxr authors) that 
> mathjax is pretty good candidate for it.

Now I don't understand your point at all.  If you like mathjax, what's 
wrong with mathjaxr?

Just guessing, but perhaps you think that base R should incorporate 
mathjax, so package authors don't need to use mathjaxr.  That's an 
example of a common suggestion, of the form "Package X does a great job 
at Y.  Why doesn't R incorporate it?"  The answer is usually "Because 
package X is doing a great job at it.  If R incorporated it, it would 
add to the R Core workload with no advantage."  R Core should do things 
that can't be done in packages (and things they like to do, let's give 
them that).  If something has been done in a package and you don't like 
the way they did it, then do it better in a different package.

Duncan Murdoch