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From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
Subject: Re: MathJax - "typesetting" of maths in Web pages
Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2012 22:27:18 +0300
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2012-08-06 22:35, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

>>> [MathJax] uses a JavaScript include file to edit the transmitted body of the
>>> page; there is a perceptible delay.
>>
>> Yes, there might be a flash of non-typeset content, perhaps even more
>> than just a flash. I've got used to it.
>
> This is a P4/3GHz (XP sp3), and my intended document, a translation of
> Lagrange's prize-winning "Essay ..." of 1772, has about 507 equations.
> So far, I've translated 37 of them to LaTeX, and it takes about 5
> seconds to convert them for elegant display.  That suggests around 68
> seconds for the full work.

This sounds serious, but I don't think it's really that serious. It's 
the delay required to convert the first few equations that matters, as a 
rule. A reader who opens the page will probably spend several seconds 
with the initial display before scrolling or otherwise moving forward. 
So the conversion mostly takes place in the background, from the user's 
point of view.

The situation can be improved by using prose at the start of a document, 
such as a heading, a summary, a table of content, and other material 
that does not contain typeset formulas.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/