The initial idea is David Topham's: use the JavaScript VM (!!!) developed by Fabrice Bellard to allow, for example to teachers, to deliver courses to students about the use of TeX and of litterate programming tools, without the need to install anything, just using the browser.
This is when kerTeX' minimality shows its virtues (even the compilation, if one is patient, can be done in the VM): as long as kerTeX is concerned, from the creation of fonts to the production of PostScript, it goes fast...
The VM will be launched—except if you have configured your browser otherwise—in a new tab.
A simple text, display in an easy to use editor, explains several things to try in order to have an overview of what kerTeX provides.
An advice: do try everything! including METAFON, a program that deserves more credits and fame than generally given and that will pop-up a surprise... Not to mention that John Hobby derived MetaPost from METAFONT, MetaPost providing a mean to make various figures, complex, with a script language that de facto is a script language producing PostScript—just think a little about what this means (KerGIS for example uses kerTeX and MetaPost to make maps, allowing for example to customize legends easily with scripting.
There are some infelicities with the keyboard (the keycodes vary from system to system, and between the hosting system (the one of the browser) and the hosted system (Linux) :
- If you are under Linux, there will be no problem, whatever keyboard you are using;
- If you are not under Linux, but are using a Qwerty/US keyboard, there should be no problem either;
- In all other cases, there will probably be problems with the supplementary keys and the composition of keys notably with Alt-Gr. In this case, and temporarily—the problem has to be solved at the JavaScript code level—for BSD systems try: fix_kmap_bsd that should at least give you the Alt-Gr; For MS-Windows: fix_kmap_mswin ;
- The num keypad, despite the led being generally on, is not considered activated; if you activate it, the led will be switched off... The keys on the num keypad, with Num_Lock not activated, can be used as the arrows keys and generally work whatever the keyboard (in case the "other" arrow keys do not work);
- When switching from a browser tab to another one, apparently the clock computation in the machine goes erratic and, in the VM, the autorepeat for keys stutters. It is hence turned off and you have to press a key several times to have it produce several times the action (for example for Del; keeping it pressed doesn't suffice).
Finally: this is a VM; the OS runs "on" the VM, unmodified. So give it the time to start, the same way your physical computer needs time to boot... At the beginning, there is a black screen with a blinking cursor. No, it has not crashed: it boots...