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Zeitgeist — a spike by Chris Gathercole
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LaTeX renderer

Blog · Watch/Read · (gathered 2026-10-18)

  • Simon Willison developed a new web tool that renders LaTeX directly from code embedded in a URL’s #fragment section, inspired by Paul Ford’s Tiny Little Office concept of shareable, bookmarkable web documents.
  • The tool supports compressed LaTeX via a URL prefix, provides an interactive editor for direct input (with a bookmarkable rendered view), and allows switching between rendered output and source code even for fragment-based links.
  • Built with assistance from Claude Code (Opus 5.5 Extra), it leverages MathJax 4.1.3 for rendering and Pako 2.1.0 for compression, while incorporating an iframe sandbox mechanism for XSS protection, a pattern borrowed from his existing SVG in Markdown tool.
  • This project highlights the utility of LLMs as a powerful coding assistant for rapidly prototyping and integrating multiple libraries and security features into complex web applications.