Keyboard shortcut to replace LaTeX code using equation editor

[barsmith]

Often when I create equations, I go through a page and write all the equations as LaTeX code, then when I am done writing the page I do the following with each piece of code:

• highlight the code
• click the button to enter the equation editor
• click insert equation

Sometimes I have to do this dozens of times, since really each time I refer to a variable 'x' the best practice is to format even that single character as an equation. And when my browser window is small, there is an additional click I have to make — I have to click the button with three vertical dots to get the button for the equation editor to appear, then I have to click twice more as described above.

It would be a great speed-up if there were a hotkey that you could type after highlighting code that would immediately act as if you had opened the equation editor and click "insert equation." 

One potential drawback is that if you typed erroneous LaTeX code that didn't display propertly, this shortcut would keep you from seeing a preview first. But I don't think that's a problem. When you try to insert an equation with bad code, it just shows "LaTeX: {bad code here}". That only happens to me occasionally, and I have no problem then entering the equation editor proper with the preview so I can correct the code. 

[James]

@barsmith 

With the February 20, 2021, production release of Canvas, you will be able to use type LaTeX directly without having to force it to be an image at all. You will be able to add to the assignment name if you like.

Use \( and \) for inline mode and $$ and $$ for paragraph mode. More information is available in the release notes.

Note that this even works in messages, so I can finally type math to my student in their Inbox, but it likely will not look right outside of Canvas, so you may want to use it judiciously there.

[barsmith]

Thank for including this update. I wanted to point out that the functionality reportedly does not work with the Canvas app. I can see the equations rendered fine when I use a browser, but students report seeing unrendered LaTeX code when viewing pages in the Canvas app.

[James]

@barsmith 

Thanks for saying something. I just went in to test this and I cannot get them to work at all, even in the browser, right now. It was working earlier today, so hopefully it gets fixed quickly. I was loading MathJax on my own prior to this weekend and all of my calculus 2 notes were written using the \( ... \) delimiters so this made my notes unusable. 

I also noticed that there was an update to the Student App on my iPad sometime in the last 2 days, but it doesn't list math support. Of course, I cannot verify if the App update fixed the issue because none of the mathematics is working right now.

[barsmith]

I didn't see an obvious way to report a bug, and I don't know who actually looks at this page, so I went to the live chat and reported it. Here is what they said:

Thank you for reporting this, It seems our engineering team turned off this feature, for some reason, and seems they will enable it later but there is no ETA when this will be re-enabled again. What I can do now I can attach our engineering ticket to this case and once there is an update we will reach out to you but until that, nothing we can do, and even our engineering team did not really provide a workaround to this. Due to this is an issue that affects multiple institutions it is prioritized so I am sure it should be sorted out soon.

So hopefully it will be turned back on soon... When it's permanently on, I'm going to be a happy Canvas user.

[Stef_retired]

@barsmith That's how you report a bug! Thanks for doing that. Since your chat case has been attached to the engineering ticket, you'll receive updates directly on the status of the resolution.

[barsmith]

I would like to report another bug(?) with the LaTeX functionality. Overall, it is a fantastic addition to Canvas. But if I write an entire page using \( and \) to delimit LaTeX code and save it, it doesn't render the equations when viewed on the phone app. It looks fine in my browser on my laptop, but my students mostly access pages through their phones and they just see a bunch of LaTeX code. 

However, if I use the equation editor (the button at the top of the edit box) to save a single equation on the page, and then use the \( and \) to insert every other equation on the page, then it looks fine both in my browser and in the phone app. It's a little annoying to have to remember to save one equation with the equation editor, and it would be nice not to have to do that.