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Abandon mimetex support

1 Reasons to Abandon Feature

Mimetex is a very old CGI program to create GIF image from LaTeX code.

• The original website http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html does no longer exist.
• The code can be found at https://ctan.org/pkg/mimetex with latest update from 2014.
• A copy of the original manual is found at https://www.mersenneforum.org/mimetex.htm.
• The code seems not maintained anymore. Since mimetex is a CGI program, security issues may exist.

ILIAS now supports MathJax with a client-side rendering of LaTeX since 2012 and with a server-side rendering since 2016. The code for mimetex, however, has never been removed although it was never tested in the last years and we can be pretty sure that no one uses it anymore.

I propose to take the advantage of the PHP 8 revision of the MathJax Service to remove mimetex already in ILIAS 8. At least ILIAS 9 should abandon it.

2 Technical Information

Mimetext is configured with a variable "path_to_latex_cgi" in the ilias.ini.php and this is treated with a setup aget and config in the MathJax service. This variable can be misunderstood as as MathJax related, like in the example given in the README of the Setup. Removing the Mimetex support will also remove the interpretation of this variable in the setup config.

3 Contact

• Author of the Request: Neumann, Fred [fneumann]
• Maintainer: Neumann, Fred [fneumann]
• Implementation of the feature is done by: Neumann, Fred [fneumann]

4 Funding

Removing the feature from the ILIAS code base might need funding. If you are interest in funding this request, please add your name and institution to this list.

• No extra funding needed if done with the PHP 8 revision.

5 Discussion

Use the following discussion section to express your objections against this request or your consent to get rid of this feature.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 29 NOV 2021 : We highly appreciate this suggestion and accept to abandon mimetex support with ILIAS 8.

6 Implementation

{The maintainer has to give a description of the final implementation and possible consequences for existing installations.}

Removed Testcases

The following testcases have been removed from Testrail or modified because the feature is no longer part of the ILIAS core.

• {Test case number linked to Testrail} : {test case title}

Approval

Approved at {date} by {user}.