Re: Warn about shell-expansion in the docstring of org-latex-to-html-convert-command

[Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>]

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Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com> writes:

> (let ((org-latex-to-html-convert-command
>         "printf '%%s' '%i'"))
>    (org-format-latex-as-html "$f' = df/dx$"))
> "/bin/bash: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
> "
>
> Something weird may be executed in the case of sufficiently complex 
> equations.

> It should be more reliable to pass fragment to command stdin. It can be 
> done if %i is missed in `org-latex-to-html-convert-command'.

I agree that it will be more reliable to shell-escape argument.
However, I am concerned that escaping may break certain uses like

somecommand << EOF
%i
EOF

In the above scenario, escaping will break things.

That's why I prefer to add a new replacement, not change the meaning of
%i. We might even remove %i from the docstring, keeping support in the
code for backwards-compatibility.

Also, I just looked closer into the example with latexml we provide in
the docstring and played around with it.

I noticed that

with

(defun org-format-latex-as-html (latex-fragment)
  "Convert LATEX-FRAGMENT to HTML.
This uses  `org-latex-to-html-convert-command', which see."
  (let ((cmd (format-spec org-latex-to-html-convert-command
			  `((?i . ,latex-fragment)
                            (?I . ,(shell-quote-argument latex-fragment))))))
    (message "Running %s" cmd)
    (shell-command-to-string cmd)))

(with-temp-file "/tmp/test2.html"
(let ((org-latex-to-html-convert-command
	      "latexmlc literal:%I --profile=math --preload=siunitx.sty 2>/dev/null"))
	 (insert (org-format-latex-as-html "$f' = df/dx$"))))

test2.html is rendered *incorrectly* as in the attached screenshot.

In contrast, manually providing output file as

latexmlc literal:\$f\'\ =\ df/dx\$ --profile=math --preload=siunitx.sty --output /tmp/test3.html

yields correct rendering.


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-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
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