cannot use macro `\newcommand`

[hleiaa]

I understand that we can specify latex macros in a "macros.txt" file. Also, it seems that LaTeX macro commands do not work at this time.

A minimal example:

$$
\newcommand{\RR}{\mathbb{R}}
$$

Real numbers: $\RR$ and $\mathbb{R}$.

The above example does not work. As katex has support for \newcommand, is it possible to use that feature?

Rationale: I mostly write in vscode and wish to publish using mdbook. The above example works fine with vscode markdown preview, which is also powered by katex.

[SichangHe]

Hi @hleiaa,

I remember this problem. TLDR; Please put all the macros in a file and configure mdBook-KaTeX to use it.

My attempt to add an option to process each chapter in serial to fix this: https://github.com/lzanini/mdbook-katex/tree/parallel-chapter-option. It does not work in my testing.

In theory, if the same JS engine processes two blocks, it should remember what happened in the first block when running the second one. I thought that was the case because we use katex-rs, which has one JS engine per thread, but there seems to be something else wrong.

Maybe you could look a bit into this if you want, or consult the katex-rs people. I probably won't have time for major investigation until the end of next month.

Steven Hé (Sīchàng)