I have not tested the speed of lasme, but using it would very likely be slower than the current code since it has to convert tex to mathml and then parse that to render the formula. I guess for most use cases one could optimize this difference almost away by caching the mathml (DOM) or even the rendered images. This approach will not help if you have to plot many different labels though.
The problem with using LaTeX is probably (a) it is a huge dependency (although most of us will have it installed anyways), (b) that everything has to go via the filesystem(?) and (c) that LaTeX itself is not famous for being fast :-) Using caching etc this might be not so dramatic for typical situations though. If you have some code which gives me a SVG from a LaTeXString I can try this out (maybe PGFPlots.jl has already something in place?). Meanwhile I will try to clean up my code and put it on github ... Best, Alex. On Wednesday, 8 October 2014 10:21:57 UTC+2, Paweł Biernat wrote: > > I would definitely be an improvement over the current text renderer. By > the way, do you have an idea of how will it affect the speed of plotting? > > On the other hand, what is the main reason for not using the system LaTeX > renderer and use lasme (or any other built-in renderer) as a fallback? I > get that on some (most?) systems LaTeX is not installed but if it is why > not use it? > > Best, > Paweł >
