# Recent Posts

300 posts found

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

Sorry for not answering for so long - but I would still like to discuss the feature I wrote about a few months ago.

Is this a feature that is implemented somewhere? :

Your short description is slightly … underspecified. So looking at an actual implementation would be helpful to me, in deciding whether this is something to implement in Instiki.

That’s true, my description is underspecified - it was just some ideas shooting through my head that I didn’t formulate clearly, and I also didn’t research existing approaches. The problem can be described as follows:

Both mathematical concepts and their presentation are moving targets. Mathematical notation is developed together with mathematical concepts and is permanently being refined afterwards, as one can witness in the discussions on nLab. Notations are the “interface” through which humans interact with mathematical concepts, so elegant, intuitive, consistent notations are important for understanding them. However, it has been a time-consuming job to keep notations consistent and to update existing work to new notations, effectively impeding the improvement of notation and in the end mathematics itself - at least because of time wasted, and IMO also by suboptimal notation leading to suboptimal intuition.

I think that this is a consequence of a deeper problem, namely that authors have to manipulate the presentation of the mathematical concepts they describe. My opinion is that in collaborative mathematics platforms, article authors should rather manipulate the mathematical concepts themselves. TeX-derived typesetting systems are very good at typesetting mathematical notation and should be used for presentation, but when describing mathematical concepts, you shouldn’t be bothered with such details. Rather than using TeX, I’d suggest using syntax customized for the respective field of mathematics.

What I wanted to point out is that software for collaborative mathematics platforms like nLab may offer the chance to solve that problem and maybe even endorse improvement of mathematical notation by making a clear distinction between mathematical notation on the one hand, and mathematical presentation on the other hand. Mathematical concepts would be stored using a schema/ontology spanning all fields of mathematics. Mathematical notation (=wiki syntax) defined for each respective field of mathematics could then be used to write about these concepts. The presentation would be implemented using transformation from the schema/ontology to MathML or TeX or whatever.

Once there is a mechanism for representing ontologies/schemata of mathematical concepts, it becomes possible for authors to choose any notation offered, or define their own. When the notation is changed to a newer version, automatic migration schemes may enable easier switching to new notation. And as for the presentation, the reader could then himself decide whether he prefers the comma category written using a downwards arrow or a slash.

I actually found a project that might have similar aims, namely SWiM. But what I see in the related article doesn’t really look like what I’d expect from a wiki - the source code in the screenshot on page 4 looks worse than LISP, in my eyes. I think that this problem is caused by forcing authors to use some one-size-fits-all notation of OpenMath or similar, so my suggestion should make such a wiki usable.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Launchd doesn’t play well with RVM. There are workarounds, e.g. here.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Or….not quite there yet.

irb require iconv is great

starting instiki 0.19.3 from the command line is great

starting instiki from the plist with launchctl is saying ” Bundler couldn’t find some gems.Did you run bundle install? (RuntimeError)”

since it does not give this error when run from the command line, and “ruby bundle install” and bundle update come up clean, I’m assuming that somehow this is running with the wrong context out of the launch daemon plist given multiple rubies in the system under rvm (although the default is set).

so I edited the instiki shell script to point to the correct, specific ruby directory, and I still get the same thing in system logs when using launchctl.

at all points, launchctl is being executed as unprivileged user, and specifies the same unpriviliged user in the plist file.

Has anyone encountered this before?

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Fixed. Had two ruby 1.9.2 installations in rvm, one had the iconv stuff fixed, one didn’t. Will try the instiki upgrade again. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

require ‘iconv’ returns:

1.9.2p180 :001 > require ‘iconv’ LoadError: no such file to load – iconv from internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require:29:in require' from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in require’ from (irb):1 from /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/bin/irb:16:in <main>'

and when I try to install iconv as a gem:

bash-3.2# gem install iconv Fetching: iconv-0.1.gem (100%) Building native extensions. This could take a while… ERROR: Error installing iconv: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    /usr/local/rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/bin/ruby extconf.rb

checking for iconv() in iconv.h… no checking for iconv() in -liconv… no *** extconf.rb failed ***

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Hmm. And does

# irb
> require 'iconv'

return 'true'? What does

#  /usr/bin/env ruby -v

return?

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Installation/Upgrade Issues

Hi, I’m having trouble both upgrading an existing Instiki installation (0.19.1)MML+, and installing a plain vanilla 0.19.3 from github.

The issue seems to surround iconv, and none of the solutions or suggestions I’ve tried from googling have worked.

The platform is OSX Lion, using Ruby 1.9.2_p180, gcc compiler version:

Using built-in specs. Target: i686-apple-darwin11 Configured with: /private/var/tmp/llvmgcc42/llvmgcc42-2336.1~1/src/configure –disable-checking –enable-werror –prefix=/Developer/usr/llvm-gcc-4.2 –mandir=/share/man –enable-languages=c,objc,c++,obj-c++ –program-prefix=llvm- –program-transform-name=/^cg$/s/$/-4.2/ –with-slibdir=/usr/lib –build=i686-apple-darwin11 –enable-llvm=/private/var/tmp/llvmgcc42/llvmgcc42-2336.1~1/dst-llvmCore/Developer/usr/local –program-prefix=i686-apple-darwin11- –host=x86_64-apple-darwin11 –target=i686-apple-darwin11 –with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1 Thread model: posix gcc version 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.1.00)

The installation of 0.19.3 seems to go well, ruby bundle pulls down everything 0.19.3 requires, but the following occurs upon attempting to start instiki:

mark:instiki-0.19.3/ (master) $./instiki -p 2501 14:26:37 NOTE: Gem.source_index is deprecated, use Specification. It will be removed on or after 2011-11-01. Gem.source_index called from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/gem_dependency.rb:21. /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/inflector.rb:3:in require': no such file to load -- iconv (LoadError) from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/inflector.rb:3:in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/integer/inflections.rb:1:in require' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/integer/inflections.rb:1:in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/integer.rb:2:in require' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/integer.rb:2:in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext.rb:8:in require' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext.rb:8:in block in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext.rb:8:in each' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext.rb:8:in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support.rb:56:in require' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support.rb:56:in <top></top>(required)>' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/script/server:7:in require' from /Users/mark/Dropbox/Research/Instiki/instiki-0.19.3/script/server:7:in <top></top>(required)>' from ./instiki:6:in load' from ./instiki:6:in <main>'</main> I had previously rebuilt ruby 1.9.2 in rvm, after doing rvm pkg install iconv and rebuilding 1.9.2 pointing at the rvm version of iconv, as suggested online. I’m stumped. Has anyone else seen this? What did you do to solve it? Thanks! Forum: Instiki – Topic: Some questions • Is there a way to link to a category? My idea is to have a lot of categories, but only link to the most important ones from the homepage. I couldn’t figure out any way to do that. Not sure what you are after. Perhaps you mean to link to the page listing all pages in category ‘foo’. The url for that is /list/foo . • Macros for iTex: Is there any way to define per-page or global macros? No. Though this is a much-discussed question. • Errors for iTex: So far it seems like if some TeX expression doesn’t work you just get the source rendered, but there is no way to find exactly where the error is. This way if I have a long equation I am left to hunt through the whole thing for the missed bracket or parenthesis. Is there something I’m missing? I agree that itex’s error-reporting is pretty useless. Depending on the type of error (a missed brace bracket, say), LaTeX’s is often not much better. Here, at least, you know which equation to look at for the error, as each equation is parsed separately, and errors can’t spill over as they sometimes do in LaTeX. • Linking and/or embedding local files: I am running Instiki locally, but I am syncing the whole thing online, so I can use it from more than one computer. I often use Xournal (on a tablet PC) to take notes/do calculations. While for high-level results, or summaries, Instiki is fine, for long/messy calculations it’s a lot faster to just hand-write them in Xournal. Ideally, I want to be able to link to a Xournal file from Instiki and have some quick way of viewing or editing it. Right now it seems like that the only way is to put a file:/// url, but that requires syncing two things separately, and making sure the url’s make sense on every computer I am using. Look at Instiki’s file upload capability. That probably doesn’t help you very much from the point of view of syncing between different computers (as each Instiki installation will have its own set of uploaded files). • Editing SVG graphics: This is something that I’m pretty sure is a bug. It seems like unless there is empty space before and after the svg tags, the “Edit SVG graphic” button doesn’t show up. I think it doesn’t like ”<svg” as the first characters on a page. But I have not had any trouble if the graphic is in the middle of the text. • How can I adjust the way math is rendered? I am using Firefox 11 under Linux. All math is much smaller than the surrounding text (e.g. 0 is the height of a lower case letter). I imagine there is some CSS option to change the font size for math, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. That’s strange. I am using Firefox on a Mac, and see no such inconsistency. Do you have the STIX fonts installed? • I have some programing experience, though I haven’t used Ruby before. I am willing to try to add some of these features myself, if you can give me some pointers as to where to start. Contributions are always welcome. The source repository is available both through BZR and on Github. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Some questions Hello, I just started using Instiki a few days ago. First of all, let me say I think it is great, and I think it is a really good productivity tool. (I am using it as a personal notebook, rather than a public wiki, although I might do both at some point). That said, I have run into a few problems/inconveniences so far. I’m not sure whether they qualify as bugs, feature requests, or just something I couldn’t figure out how to do, so I’m just going to ask them all here: • Is there a way to link to a category? My idea is to have a lot of categories, but only link to the most important ones from the homepage. I couldn’t figure out any way to do that. • Macros for iTex: Is there any way to define per-page or global macros? • Errors for iTex: So far it seems like if some TeX expression doesn’t work you just get the source rendered, but there is no way to find exactly where the error is. This way if I have a long equation I am left to hunt through the whole thing for the missed bracket or parenthesis. Is there something I’m missing? • Linking and/or embedding local files: I am running Instiki locally, but I am syncing the whole thing online, so I can use it from more than one computer. I often use Xournal (on a tablet PC) to take notes/do calculations. While for high-level results, or summaries, Instiki is fine, for long/messy calculations it’s a lot faster to just hand-write them in Xournal. Ideally, I want to be able to link to a Xournal file from Instiki and have some quick way of viewing or editing it. Right now it seems like that the only way is to put a file:/// url, but that requires syncing two things separately, and making sure the url’s make sense on every computer I am using. • Editing SVG graphics: This is something that I’m pretty sure is a bug. It seems like unless there is empty space before and after the svg tags, the “Edit SVG graphic” button doesn’t show up. • How can I adjust the way math is rendered? I am using Firefox 11 under Linux. All math is much smaller than the surrounding text (e.g. 0 is the height of a lower case letter). I imagine there is some CSS option to change the font size for math, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I have some programing experience, though I haven’t used Ruby before. I am willing to try to add some of these features myself, if you can give me some pointers as to where to start. Forum: Instiki – Topic: How to Generate Table of Contents (TOC) distler, so it appears that the table of contents is not generated, but rather it is its own page within the wiki. And somehow this page is displayed persistently on the right hand side. Is there some magic to getting this started? Jack Forum: Instiki – Topic: How to Generate Table of Contents (TOC) Why don’t you click on the “Source” link, say, at http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/wiki/instiki/show/HomePage, to see how it’s done. Of course, you also want to look at the source of the Sidebar itself. Forum: Instiki – Topic: How to Generate Table of Contents (TOC) The page at http://instiki.org/show/HomePage has an elegant table of contents that seems to mirror the contents of the wiki. I want to do this on my own installation. Can someone point me in the right direction? Jack Forum: itex2MML – Topic: itex and other languages That’s cool. I’m sure other people would be interested in your PHP extension. So you should think of packaging it for distribution (Pear?). Forum: itex2MML – Topic: itex and other languages I thought it might be worth noting that the nForum (and the other mathematical forums that I run) now use itex directly in PHP. (I probably won’t get the words right on this) That is, I’ve compiled itex2MML into a PHP extension (using swig) and am calling that now instead of farming the conversion off to the nLab. I’ve also installed MathJaX to support (as best I can) non-compliant browsers. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests I was checking this forum to see if you’d posted a notice that you’d fixed the bug, but I didn’t see that you’d edited your previous comment rather than posting a new one - and at the start of the week then I don’t always click through links or check RSS feeds. All of my instiki installations are now up to date. Thanks. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests You’ll note that another bug that I fixed, in the same commit, was Maruku’s section numbering (disabled by default; see vendor/plugins/maruku/lib/maruku/defaults.rb). Dunno whether that’s of interest. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests Wrong thread, then! Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests Ah. That is indeed a bug. Fixed (in Instiki and Heterotic Beast, too). Thanks. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests Take a look at http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Sandbox (feel free to ignore the request, I put that there to ensure that no-one messed with them before you’d seen it). Each theorem has .num_theorem style so the CSS counts them. However, the counting that is done by Instiki to find the theorem numbers for use in \ref{...} commands only counts those with ID tags. So the labels for the theorems that I do want to refer to are miscounted because I prefer to have all my theorems numbered rather than only number those that I explicitly refer to. Does the same issue happen here. Let’s experiment: ###### Theorem The first letter of the English alphabet is A. ###### Theorem The second letter of the English alphabet is B. ###### Theorem The third letter of the English alphabet is C. ###### Theorem The fourth letter of the English alphabet is D. ###### Theorem The fifth letter of the English alphabet is E. ###### Theorem The sixth letter of the English alphabet is F. Theorem 1 refers to A, Theorem 3 to C, and Theorem 6 to F. Yes, so it’s the same here. Thus, no need to check the Sandbox. Here’s the source of what I just typed:  +-- {: .num_theorem #a} ###### Theorem The first letter of the English alphabet is A. =-- +-- {: .num_theorem} ###### Theorem The second letter of the English alphabet is B. =-- +-- {: .num_theorem #c} ###### Theorem The third letter of the English alphabet is C. =-- +-- {: .num_theorem} ###### Theorem The fourth letter of the English alphabet is D. =-- +-- {: .num_theorem} ###### Theorem The fifth letter of the English alphabet is E. =-- +-- {: .num_theorem #f} ###### Theorem The sixth letter of the English alphabet is F. =-- Theorem \ref{a} refers to A, Theorem \ref{c} to C, and Theorem \ref{f} to F. Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests The issue of needing ids to keep theorem numbers in step has been raised (again). I’m not quite sure what the issue is. So if I write +-- {: .num_theorem} ###### Theorem$X$is nuclear and Banach if and only if it is finite dimensional =-- your theorems still get numbered (correctly, I hope). Since there’s no label, there’s no easy way to refer to this theorem, but maybe you don’t care. And if you do care, wouldn’t you want to avoid the fragility associated to an automatically-generated id (which will change if someone re-orders the theorems, adds a new one, or whatever)? I must be misunderstanding… Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests The issue of needing ids to keep theorem numbers in step has been raised (again). Mike came up with a suggestion which seems reasonable on first reading which is that instiki (or whichever part of it is appropriate) adds an automatic id if one isn’t present, much in the way that the table of contents part does. So if I write +-- {: .num_theorem} ###### Theorem$X\$ is nuclear and Banach if and only if it is finite dimensional
=--

then instiki adds an automatic id, say id="theorem1" where the 1 gets incremented according to the internal counter (which it has, if I remember right, since it uses that to figure out the ref number). Would this be feasible?

Forum: Instiki – Topic: S5 presentation export

Thanks for thinking some more! :-)

I wonder why the number of files is so large. If you look at the “nanoc-slidy” solution the number of files does not look too big. BTW some of the features of JessyInk (inkscape) - the option of inserting “whiteboards” during the talk and draw on the slides would certainly be another great feature. Although I know how much work that means, a tool which supports in collecting information for lectures, at the same time allows for preparing the slides and at the end you get an output which you can use on any computer with a browser (or a portable firefox). And this program supports drawing on the slides … I am dreaming - but Instiki has great potential!

Thanks

T

Forum: Instiki – Topic: S5 presentation export

It’s not so clear to me what the best approach is.

The number of CSS and Javascript files (MathJax, in particular, is huge) required to support a single S5 slideshow is very large.

It would be possible, but very inefficient, to produce a Zip file, with all of that junk, for every slideshow you decided to export.

In some ways, you’d be better off putting an entire Instiki installation on a USB stick (assuming that the host computer has Ruby).

A hybrid approach would be to export a static file of the S5 slideshow, with the URLs rewritten to point to the files in an Instiki installation.

Gotta think some more …

Forum: Instiki – Topic: S5 presentation export

As far as I can see, an export of a S5 slideshow with all the scripts is not implemented with the current version of instiki. I believe this would be a great feature if one could export a slide show which was prepared within instiki onto a memory stick (with all the scripts, css and embedded graphs at the right place) and use the presentation “offline” on a system without a ruby/rails/instiki installation.

Is there some work around to achieve this?

T

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

I’m sure there’s a solution for that: …

Is this a feature that is implemented somewhere?

Your short description is slightly … underspecified. So looking at an actual implementation would be helpful to me, in deciding whether this is something to implement in Instiki.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

That sounds like a request for macro-support in itex. For a variety of reasons, that’s unlikely to happen.

What I mean is a research-friendly facility

• to define vocabularies for abstract mathematical languages (notations), and
• to render terms of that language in configurable ways. An implementation of this idea might use Turing-complete macros, but would be using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I, for one, would be against this. It would actually hinder collaboration as everyone would have to learn the local conventions every time they wanted to edit a page, and stuff that worked on one wouldn’t work on another.

I’m sure there’s a solution for that: A vocabulary could be modelled in a distributed fashion much like OWL ontologies or XML Schema Definitions, which allow for importing other “vocabularies” (ontologies/schemata). One could even imagine a versioning and migration scheme to implement the global refactorings I mentioned in my first post. I haven’t thought this through, but that might even be a practical application of basic category theory ;) BTW this also has the advantage that a user doesn’t have to learn the language again and again.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

That sounds like a request for macro-support in itex. For a variety of reasons, that’s unlikely to happen.

I, for one, would be against this. It would actually hinder collaboration as everyone would have to learn the local conventions every time they wanted to edit a page, and stuff that worked on one wouldn’t work on another.

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

That sounds like a request for macro-support in itex. For a variety of reasons, that’s unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, perhaps you have something else in mind …

Forum: Instiki – Topic: Feature Requests

As far as I can see, there’s a lot of discussion about notational conventions on nLab, e.g. in the article on comma categories. However, there’s a huge number of articles that would have to changed if some notation actually was to be consistently adopted. I haven’t made any scientific investigations, but it seems clear to me that this hinders improvement of notation. Good notation is essential for making mathematics intuitive and useable, so wouldn’t it make sense to add powerful features for expressing and experimenting with notations?

A first step would be separating data and presentation, e.g. writing “\commacategory{F}{G}” or similar (not necessarily itex) instead of “F \downarrow G”. The concrete notation would be specified at a separate stage. This could happen

• globally by the site operators to consistently change all occurences
• per-article by the authors e.g. to avoid notation clashes
• individually by the user based on his preferences.

If this was done in every article, changing notations would become a matter of seconds. This would of course mean that in the case of nLab, some thousands of articles have to be changed (maybe some heuristics could be used to speed this up), but that has to be done only once and then hopefully never again. Future search-and-replace style global “refactorings” for generalizing or normalizing notation would become possible, too.

The major technical challenge I see would be finding a good mechanism for specifying abstract notations. The rest should be pretty straightforward.