[Ptah]

Hi. I've installed it on my forum and it works great!

I have a concern though, which becomes a suggestion/request of sorts.

My understanding is that each expression rendered results in a new PNG file in /pics. Makes sense, if so. So with that understanding...

/pics files accumulating when users iteratvely tweak TEX expressions in preview/edit?
Let's say someone is using the preview-edit-preview in a loop whilst developing a post, and tweaking the latex expression each time, hence generating however many intermediate PNG files (per latex expression tweak), only the last of which is really useful (the one they wind up posting). This results in a pile of images sitting around under /pics that are effectively wasted space. I don't think this is too unrealistic of a scenario, being that people may see a problem with their (say, nontrivial) latex in preview, so then tweak it, iteratively, until they see what the want.

Concern of "waste" /pics accumulation
Now my concern. Over time this can become a problem, lots of wasted space.

For instance, anticipating this may be a problem, I have asked the users of my forum to consider using one of the freely available online, interactive LaTeX renderers to "draft" their expressions before posting them on my forum, hoping to head off useless PNG file accumulations.

Extent suggestions/workarounds...
So. I understand that you can purge the post cache and rebuild, but that seems to be long-term unfeasible as the forum ages, and accumulates many posts, right? Just to purge unused /pic files, you have to drop and rebuild the whole post cache? Seems like hitting it with a hammer, unless I've misunderstood?

Suggestion/Question?

I'd consider making the suggestion, "Hey, can we disable the TEX tag from rendering in preview mode?", but that would just encourage people to post, then edit their post. They can iteratively tweak the TEX expressions anyhow, which does not head off the accumulation problem.

So, instead I make the suggestion (or ask for the clarification): is there a way to either prevent or periodically cleanup the long-term accumulation of effectively no-longer-used/intermediately-generated PNG files?

Such as through some "smarts" to drop any net-unused, intermediately generated /pics images during preview-edit-preview loops?

OR

Such as through a cron or somesuch? I'm not sure what the effort would be, imagining something that has to effectively sweep recent posts against the /pics folder, and weed out those which are deemed unused, etc, although I admit I can imagine it being a headache...

Perhaps my understanding is off to begin with?

Any insight here would be great. This mod is a great addition to my forum, it offers a great value to my membership!