Automatically scale LaTeX rendering to a readable font size

Is your suggestion related to a problem? Please describe.

Describe the solution you’d like.

Perhaps a content-sensitive upscale could be applied, especially regarding the very commond \frac, but perhaps some others can be preset. Alternatively have a min size for “regular” elements as well as sub/superscript elements. Calculate the text size of the smallest element, and scale up the whole result based on a reference smallest allowed size.

Describe alternatives you’ve considered.

There are probably more, including user controlled, like a button on messages that contain latex to pop it out in a larger viewer or user definable scaling factor. The default size may be larger in latex-only messages similar to emoji-only.

[dbkr]

Cleaning up Help Wanted stuff and we now consider it to be mutually exclusive with x-needs-design, and I agree this needs confirmation from design that this is the right choice.

[HarHarLinks]

I am not very familiar with that command, so I am not sure this is desirable… I am also not sure if it can be implemented easily, could you please open an issue about it?

That would be this issue here then, applying displaystyle would be a possible solution. The idea with inline math is to scale it such that it appears inline. This works ok for small formula or bigger font size, but with element’s defaults it results in a fraction being displayed very small. Displaystyle as an alternative to this inline style is (usually) for standalone blocks of formulas, allowing them to not be constrained to line height and thus formatting a lot nicer. See for an example: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Display_style_in_math_mode

My suggestion would be to simply default to this rendering mode in element by (presumably simply) telling the latex engine to use displaystyle instead of inline style.

One place where displaystyle should certainly be applied is when sending a message that is purely LaTeX, e.g. "formatted_body": "<span data-mx-maths=\"\\frac{a}{\\phi^2}\"><code>\\frac{a}{\\phi^2}</code></span>", where it currently renders as inline