July 18, 2020:
Today, at about 5:30 pm Taiwan time, I registered a second GitHub account, violapterinblog, to set up this GitHub Page (GHP). The new site was born! Every account of GitHub was allowed to own one GHP, endowed with a unique URL according to the username. I would like to import some past posts, so let this notice attest to the moment of what was supposedly a new start.
One reason I wanted to own a personal site was to write notes on mathematics, of either popular or research level. About just one year ago, I created a WordPress account, mainly because I knew that they support LaTeX to some extent. WordPress’s interface was straightforward, their templates modern and elegant, and their email support quick and helpful.
So why did I move away? WordPress only allowed the user to type in the web interface, and one couldn’t write and save locally. WordPress didn’t allow a lot of CSS, let alone Javascript, except in more expensive plans. Most importantly, it required syntax $latex ...$ for LaTeX expression, which could be verbose, and there was no way to compile and preview one’s work. Thus I basically stopped writing on the WordPress site after a while.
This May, Facebook friend Xinbo advertised GHP, and it sounded very much like what I desired. It supported LaTeX rendition, enabling me to write mathematics, and I could also write on a local device and commit, which would made the process more convenient and reliable, and commit records would also better protect my intellectual property. Finally, no matter what fancy thing I might want to do, as long as I converted the piece to standard HTML and CSS, it would be fine.
Figure: Creating the first repository on GitHub.
July 19:
Found the Jekyll template provided officially, which was incredibly helpful. Copied the code to my repo, and for the first time, my site worked on localhost, via bundle exec jekyll serve. After I committed, the default domain violapterinblog.github.io was also rendered successfully on the browser, which was exciting!
July 20:
Realized that Jekyll allowed raw html code protected by tags. Therefore, I might actually write directly in HTML. Jekyll called Kramdown, a Markdown standard, by default, and it didn’t harm to try Kramdown first.
Tried to call Mathjax, with no avail. It was pointed out that Mathjax seemed to have difficulty recognizing $$ . Then, I found relevant sections in the Mathjax documentation on changes in API; there was an example code for properly setting the Mathjax object in Javascript, which solved everything.
July 22:
I wonder whether my favorite Google fonts could be used instead of the default LaTeX fonts, like Computer Modern or STIX. Perhaps I might specify, in the CSS, the fonts which \textrm, \textsf, \texttt called, by a slight abuse of system? I asked on Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, and it turned out that, although Mathjax 2.7 allowed this, Mathjax 3 didn’t. Tried to call Mathjax 2.7 instead of 3, and failed. Quite disappointed, I gave up the thought of using custom fonts in LaTeX.
At least I learned to call Google fonts. Jekyll characterized CSS in /css/main.scss, and $ prefixed variables were expanded, in order to generated CSS statements. I used Roboto Sans for titles and headings, Open Sans for normal text, and Vollkorn for bold text (a slight abuse of design).
July 26:
Last year, I had bought the domain violapterin.com through WordPress-com, And today I finally transferred the domain to this GHP. I emailed WordPress-com staff about the steps, and their response was so kind! The instruction had always been there, and I never read carefully. To point a domain managed by WordPress-com, towards my GHP, I had to add a DNS CNAME-record and Apex domains on WordPress-com. Then add the CNAME on the web interface for GitHub repo of the GHP.
July 28:
Discovered \unicode extension of MathJax, and suddenly there again was hope of changing LaTeX font. With this, we could extract arbitrary unicode characters supported by the font. One couldn’t specify the style (normal or italic) and weight (light, regular, or bold etc), but this might be asking too much.
The macro extension, though not part of TeX, was tremendously helpful too. It would have the macros expanded, even recursively, before Mathjax was called! I imported and translated the list of custom LaTeX macros, which I had been using all the time, to the Javascript.
July 29:
A critical progress! This night, I was thinking intensively of an imagined TeX command. This command should display a first glyph in the TeX source, but throw it away from the “stack” (or whatever), and display a second glyph like usual, so that the third glyph immediately following knew only the second glyph, but not the first one. If only there were such a thing! But I wasn’t optimistic, since I felt that this didn’t quite agree the spirit of TeX’s design.
Meanwhile, I was troubled by the ugliness of the unicode letters with accents. Then, when searching Stack Overflow about usage of \overset and \underset, I saw a post explaining the plain TeX control sequence \smash. Its name alone sounded like what I was after, and turned out it was!
To elaborate, \smash {<subformula>} yielded the same result as <subformula>, but effectively made its height and depth to be zero. By using both \smash and \vphantom we could typeset any subformula, and give it any desired height and depth. See TeXbook (p 178) for more explanation, and its implementation in Appendix B (p 360):
\def \smash{\relax
\ifmmode \def \next{\mathpalette \mathsm@sh}
\else \let \next \makesm@sh
\fi \next}
Instantly I applied \smash to my \unicode containing macro, and the letters did look normal! I really should have learnt TeX. Some other plain TeX sequences unknown to me might very well answer many of my confusions.
August 2:
Unfortunately, most miscellaneous symbols weren’t available in Noto Sans nor Noto Serif, which meant I might have to stick to Mathjax. But as I said, \unicode extension allowed me to use unicode characters not provided by LaTeX, even Japanese Hiragana and Kanji.
At this point, I decide to take a break, in order to learn a good deal of HTML, CSS, Javascript, as well as Jekyll and SASS. Hopefully, the solution of some problems will come naturally afterwards to me, or at least, knowing more web programming can only be beneficial to my career. By now, I have spent too much on these matters which this post explains, and I had better focus on the very writing which this site is constructed for.
❧ early August, 2020
References
❉ T Preston-Werner, ‹A Jekyll Template›
❉ J McGlone, ‹Guide on GitHub Pages›
❉ GitHub, ‹Managing a Custom Domain for Your Github Pages Site›
❉ Google, ‹Getting Started›
❉ Mathjax, ‹API Changes›
❉ WordPress-com, ‹Domain Management›