Embedded LaTeX as images

[JayUtah]

At other forums I use a service to embed complex equations as images generated on the fly from LaTeX markup sent as URL arguments. The problem with that here at ISF is that we have different view modes. Equations rendered in black pixels...

are invisible in dark mode and equations in white pixels...

are invisible in light mode. In other words, you're either seeing one equation above in this post or the other. What looks better everywhere? A mutually-contrasting color...

or an image rendered without an alpha channel (transparency)?

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

I like the contrasting color (red shown above) but the non-transparent black on white (or white on black maybe) is going to give the most contrast in either view setting and so is probably your best bet.

 

[junkshop]

I'd be inclined to go for non-alpha version, mostly to avoid problems for anyone with colour blindness (I have no idea if anyone here has to deal with that, but erring on the side of caution would avoid it ever being a problem).

 

[JayUtah]

Thanks for the feedback. What I'm discovering is that while I prefer dark mode, it's harder to format for it using the tools available. And that's not just in terms of images.

Readability comes from contrast, and contrast is about differences in brightness. The only way to achieve that for both modes here is a neutral medium gray that may still work. When you have to switch to hue and chroma to create contrast, you invoke a different set of problems. Not just color blindness, but the notion that chroma just doesn't achieve sufficient contrast on a dark background.

I agree the non-transparency version seems to work the best. It's almost indistinguishable in light mode from the transparent version. It's readable in dark mode, although I dislike how the bounding box of the image is literally only as big as it needs to be to contain the rendered text.