[texhax] Any crazy math formulas for testing a TeX language interpreter

Deyan Ginev d.ginev at jacobs-university.de
Tue Jan 12 20:01:50 CET 2016


On 01/11/2016 03:40 PM, Douglas McKenna wrote:
> All/any -
> 
> I'm in the throes of testing, bug-flushing, and beginning to use for real work a new TeX language interpreter, currently called JSBox, that I've implemented.

Hi Douglas,

Impressive! Would love to learn more, as I'm personally helping out with
an XML-targeting TeX interpreter called LaTeXML [1], and it's always
fascinating to learn about sibling/cousin efforts.

[snip]
> 
> But the monograph I'm using has only fairly elementary math formulas in it, and the trip and etrip tests don't depend on any real world fonts.  So I'm wondering if there's some TeX-validation test file, using the plain format and not dependent on LaTeX, that has little more in it than a totally gnarly, full-page or multi-page, super-ridiculous, semi- or non-sensical math formula that exercises most/all of a TeX interpreter's math typesetting machinery, using most/all of the math symbol and extension glyphs in the Computer Modern fonts?  Worst-case math, in other words.
> 

As part of developing LaTeXML we are testing it on the biggest "worst
case" benchmark we could find, namely the arXiv.org corpus of scientific
papers. Both the PDFs and TeX sources are now available for public use
[2], so if you are serious about getting hit with the "worst case"
mathematics formulas out there, that's the place to go. Of course that
is not in any sense a "unit" test, rather a large-scale torture test.

Another potentially interesting place to look for challenging latex math
formulas, or at least an exhaustive set of math symbol macros, is the
MathJax test suite [3] which is routinely used for actual product testing.

> If not, I'll try to spend some time creating one.  It's just that testing with code I haven't contrived myself is more robust.
> 

Please do share if you make your own "math torture" document(s), would
love to try LaTeXML's grammar on it.

Greetings,
Deyan

> Thanks for any suggestions.  Onward, into the fog ...
> 
> - Doug McKenna
> Mathemaesthetics, Inc.
> 
> 
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeXML
[2] http://arxiv.org/help/bulk_data_s3
[3]
https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax-test/tree/master/testsuite/LaTeXToMathML


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