
Writing Math on the Web - jaydub
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.5765,y.2009,no.3,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx
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smanek
I think the big problem with rendering LaTeX client side is that everyone uses
different style files, fonts, etc. The options are to either include them all
on the page (which would make it difficult for me to upload a LaTeX file,
since I'd have to include half a dozen auxiliary resources). It seems like
this problem has been solved adequately well by just having a PDF file (which
embeds fonts, and doesn't need style files).

Even if browsers could render LaTeX clientside, I still feel like there would
be no real advantage to PDF. Since there is no standard way to embed LaTeX
markup in HTML, you would just have to link to a .tex file which the browser
could display as a separate page, just like it displays a PDF.

I almost feel like XHTML would be a good fit for this problem. We could
develop a XML schema for which a simple bijection to LaTeX markup exists.
Then, since XHTML supports using multiple namespaces in a single document, we
could include any LaTeX markup natively within an XHTML web page (by prefacing
LaTeX markup elements with the proper namespace). You would still have to deal
with fonts/styles, but I think that's a much easier problem in this sort of a
framework.

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sqs
Is there a plugin for Firefox or something else that can convert math TeX to
vector (non-raster) displays in the browser? Wikipedia/Mediawiki (and lots of
other systems) converts equations to PNG, but they get pixelated when they're
scaled up, they don't print well, and they don't look beautiful like a TeX PDF
does.

In my math courses recently, I've come across lots of things that don't have
any good explanations on the Web. I'd like to write a bit about them on my
site to help other people studying the same things, and I'd like the equations
to look really nice.

~~~
earl
Why should it be done clientside? Far better to do it on the server; something
like the latex to svg projects that already exist is probably ideal.

