bLANS: better LaTeX for ANS

ANS.app is the satisfying grading platform. But sometimes typesetting math on ANS is not very satisfying. ANS uses its own flavour of markup which for typesetting LaTeX uses double dollar signs ($$) for inline equations and triple dollar signs ($$$) for display equations. ANS has the extra quirk of not supporting line-breaks in LaTeX expressions.

This is quite unusual, and I have yet to find other editors providing this same flavour of markup. The closest, which happens to be the most widely used, is Pandoc-flavoured markdown, which uses one less dollar sign across the board and allows for, as expected, line-breaks in LaTeX expressions.

More importantly, this flavour is supported by most modern editors and tools. The idea with bLANS is therefore to allow users to write their answers in their editor of choice, and then convert these to ANS-flavour markup via bLANS. This allows users to work more safely (don't need to rely on ANS not crashing) and more comfortably (can use more advanced editors).

Usage

Simply paste your normal LaTeX markup (pandoc markdown) in the top text area and press 'Convert'. Your input will appear converted to ANS LaTeX markup in the bottom text area. You can then either manually highlight and copy the result or press the 'Copy to Clipboard' button.

Development

This project is built using GatsbyJS and TailwindCSS, with hosting provided by GitHub Pages.

To get set up:

1. Fork this repository
2. Clone your fork
3. Install NodeJS and NPM. I recommend using NVM to take care of that
4. cd to the cloned repo
5. Run npm install to install the necessary packages
6. Run npm run develop to run a development version of the site on your local machine

Pull requests are welcome.

Issues and Feature Requests

For the moment the repo is very basic.

If something is not working or you would like an extra feature, please submit a new issue in the GitHub issues page