Edge cases

February 17, 2015

Some edge cases and cautionary examples on using Markdown for writing content using this theme. In particular, list syntax can really knot things up.

Mathjax improperly parsing greater and less than and ampersands inside blocks

The mathjax plugin has been modified to contain all the block style mathjax inside a <div class="mathblock">..</div> tag wrapper pair which fixes many of the issues with conflicts with the Kramdown parser. Some examples sent to me by Quxiaofeng are now parsing correctly, I believe.

This code:

latex {% math %} D = \left(\begin{matrix} 1 & -1 & & & & \\ & & \cdots & & \\ & & & 1 & -1 \end{matrix} \right) {% endmath %} yields this:

$D = \left(\begin{matrix} 1 & -1 & & & & \\ & & \cdots & & \\ & & & 1 & -1 \end{matrix} \right)$

Other examples from the wikia Tex reference:

$\begin{matrix} \alpha& \beta^{*}\\ \gamma^{*}& \delta \end{matrix}$

$\begin{bmatrix} \alpha& \beta^{*}\\ \gamma^{*}& \delta \end{bmatrix}$

$\begin{Bmatrix} \alpha& \beta^{*}\\ \gamma^{*}& \delta \end{Bmatrix}$

$\begin{vmatrix} \alpha& \beta^{*}\\ \gamma^{*}& \delta \end{vmatrix}$

$\begin{Vmatrix} \alpha& \beta^{*}\\ \gamma^{*}& \delta \end{Vmatrix}$

However, a problem still exists for inline matrix notation, from an example here:

A matrix in text must be set smaller: $\bigl(\begin{smallmatrix}a & b \\ c & d\end{smallmatrix} \bigr)$ to not increase leading in a portion of text

Edge Case 1 from Quxiaofeng:

No blank lines between Markdown list items

The issue arises when sidenotes and marginnotes are put into list items. For example:

Split Bregman iteration Goldstein, T. and Osher, S. (2009). The split Bregman method for l1-regularized problems. SIAM J. Img. Sci., 2:323-343.
Dykstra’s alternating projection algorithm Dykstra, R. L. (1983). An algorithm for restricted least squares regression. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 78(384):837-842.
Proximal point algorithm applied to the dual
Numerous applications in statistics and machine learning: lasso, gen. lasso, graphical lasso, (overlapping) group lasso, …
Embraces distributed computing for big data Boyd, S., Parikh, N., Chu, E., Peleato, B., and Eckstein, J. (2011). Distributed optimization and statistical learning via the alternating direction method of multipliers. Found. Trends Mach. learn., 3(1):1-122.

Why this matters

Notice how the sidenotes display properly.

In summary: Take out any blank lines between your list items.

Okay, this is a really strange thing about the Jekyll Markdown engine I have never noticed before. If you have a list, and you put a blank line between the items like this:

``` + list item 1

 + list item 2 ```

It will create an html tag structure like this:

```

list item 1
list item 2

``` Which totally goofs up the layout CSS.

However, if your Markdown is this:

+ list item 1 + list item 2

It will create a tag structure like this:

```

list item 1
list item 2

```

Here is the same content as above, with a blank line separating the list items. Notice how the sidenotes get squashed into the main content area:

Remarks on ADMM version 2 - one blank line between Markdown list items

Related algorithms

Split Bregman iteration Goldstein, T. and Osher, S. (2009). The split Bregman method for l1-regularized problems. SIAM J. Img. Sci., 2:323-343.
Dykstra’s alternating projection algorithm Dykstra, R. L. (1983). An algorithm for restricted least squares regression. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 78(384):837-842.
Proximal point algorithm applied to the dual
Numerous applications in statistics and machine learning: lasso, gen. lasso, graphical lasso, (overlapping) group lasso, …

Liquid tag parsing strangeness

Example of the proper way to write an url inside a Liquid full-width image tag.

This code: {% fullwidth "assets/img/rhino.png" "Tufte pet rhino (via <a href=\"//www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/\">Edward Tufte</a>)" %}