Re: [PATCH] Don't fill displayed equations

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

My thanks to Ihor for the argument concerning code of (maybe external) 
exproters and to Tom for parser-related considerations.

I think it is a kind of trade-off: breaking change vs. continuously 
breaking user experience. Do not worry too much, there is almost no 
chance that I will try to implement my plan, so current state will 
remain as is. In naive form my idea was:

1. Find the code where \( \) is parsed and remove \[ \] option
2. Find the place where \begin{equation} is handled and add \[ somewhere 
around.

I fill some misunderstanding since some arguments has the form "it is 
too hard because it requires ..." where "..." exactly what I was going 
to discuss.

On 04/10/2021 12:57, Tom Gillespie wrote:
> 
>> Maybe you are right and Tom was actually assuming \begin{equation*}, not
>> #+begin_export latex.
> 
> Correct. My bad on that one.

By the way, I realized that choice of "\begin{equation}" and not 
"#+begin_equation" is not clear to me. However it allows to pass 
\begin{equation} to LaTeX or HTML+MathJax transparently.

>> Just as Timothy, I believe that \begin{equation*} is unnecessary verbose
>> when \[ works *mostly* in a similar way.
> 
> \begin{equation*} is absolutely required if you want to be able to include
> newlines because \[ and \begin are not similar at all as far as parsing
> is concerned.
> 
>  From the spec: https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html#LaTeX_Environments
>> CONTENTS can contain anything but the “\end{NAME}” string.
> The spec is not completely accurate since latex environments can't
> contain a new heading, but the point is that latex environments are
> elements, whereas \[ \] is an object.
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^
I was going to discuss namely this change.

>> Isn't the whole point of the \[ ... \], \( ... \), $ ... $, $$ ... $$,
>> and \begin{env} ... \end{env} and constructs in Org to be consistent
>> with LaTeX?
> 
> For \begin and \end yes. For the others no.

Unsure, but then forbidding \[ \] at all may result in less confusion 
then current state "inline object that is transformed to block element 
during export". Making \[ \] a special case for paragraph filling when 
it is inline object would be even more confusing.

> I'm actually fairly certain that such a change should never be made
> due to the recent changes in org link syntax. Specifically given how
> \[ is used for escapes in links. https://orgmode.org/manual/Link-Format.html
> This means that the only place you could reliably use \[ is at the start of a
> new line preceded only by whitespace. However, if this were to happen then
> pretty much every org document that uses \[ \] is at risk for being broken
> because something that was once a single paragraph will now be multiple
> paragraphs.

Agree that context-dependent "\]" may cause problems.

> If you need multiline use \begin \end, that is what they are there for, and they
> fit better with org's general extensible approach to blocks. I would dearly love
> to be able to have a single shorthand for src blocks that worked inline and
> standalone,

I do not suggest using \[ \] both for inline object and block elements. 
I hope that even if behavior of \[ \] inside paragraphs were not 
specified it would not break user files since it will be transparently 
passed to LaTeX or HTML. However, LaTeX exporter may escape them to have 
it literally in the output.

> Consider the case where you have something like
> 
> \[ something something
> 
> more content
> more content [[www.example.com/\]oops][evil link]] \]

Frankly speaking, with Org I never sure in such cases whether everything 
inside \[ \] will be literally copied to LaTeX file or some some Org 
markup will be handled, so it is possible to insert something e.g. 
inside \text{}.

> \[ a
> 
> b \]
> 
> \[
> a
> b
> \]
> 
> a \[ b
> 
> c \] d

Similar variants exist for \begin{equation} \end{equation}

> In short. Just not worth it.

The value of TeX, markdown, reStructured text, Org is convenience to 
type in comparison with SGML&XML-based formats that are not really human 
friendly. In this sense \[ is noticeably better than \begin{equation*}.