How to force Vue to update modified HTML - vuejs2

Question

I use a custom directive to render LaTeX-code with KaTeX' renderMathInElement function. This, obviously, changes the component's innerHTML. I would like to re-run KaTeX once the content changes, but: The content never does!
A simple reproduction of the problem does not need KaTeX or directives and still shows, that reactivity works, but stops to work for the parts of a component with changed innerHTML:
<template>
<div>
{{content}}
<span ref="elem">{{content}}</span>
</div>
</template>
<script lang="ts">
import { Component, Ref, Vue } from "vue-property-decorator";
#Component({})
export default class Test extends Vue {
content = "Hello World!";
#Ref()
elem!: HTMLSpanElement;
mounted(): void {
// Without the following statement, Vue correctly re-renders the whole component after a second with the new content
// With this line, the update does not happen for the span element.
this.elem.innerHTML = "<b>Hello World!</b>";
setTimeout(() => {
this.content = "Greetings!";
}, 1000);
}
}
</script>
I suppose this is intended behavior - but that doesn't solve my problem. Is there some way to force Vue to replace all the component's DOM as soon as a re-render takes place?

Answer 1

You can use a key on your span, but if you don't want to tie it in with content, you can instead set it to a number, and increment it every time you want to make a change. Like so (I am not using TS here):
Set a key on your span:
<span :key="content_key">{{ content }}</span>
Then you can watch content and update the key accordingly:
watch: {
content() {
this.content_key ++;
}
}
In this way you can avoid setting the key to content directly.
Does this work for you?