LatexRender & Friends: Math Servers

[Owen Densmore]

It is now (apparently!) possible to include arbitrary LaTeX equations  
in any web service: blogs, wikis, plain html, and even mime-email.

The stunt is to build an image tag in html which includes the LaTeX to  
be rendered:
   http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm
   http://sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/
An example given in the above is:
<img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.cgi?c= 
\sqrt{a^2+b^2}" />
which renders a LaTeX image inline.

The good news is that it works anywhere an <img> tag can be used.  The  
bad news is that it is a "dead" image.  But again, the good news is  
the "LaTeX markup" is still available in the markup too (in the <img>  
tag), thus can be used by other users via grabbing the original source  
and pasting into other documents.

Not MathML yet, but seems a reasonable solution.  Clearly TeX-math is  
becoming a web standard.

    -- Owen


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Owen wrote:

> The good news is that it works anywhere an <img> tag can be used.  The
> bad news is that it is a "dead" image.
It seems soon there will be the possibility of compiling C (e.g. LaTeX
itself) to run on Flash or Firefox's Tamarin...

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62043669,00.htm
http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=52



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Dale Schumacher]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

It is now (apparently!) possible to include arbitrary LaTeX equations
in any web service: blogs, wikis, plain html, and even mime-email.

The stunt is to build an image tag in html which includes the LaTeX to
be rendered:
  http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm
  http://sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/
An example given in the above is:
<img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.cgi?c=
\sqrt{a^2+b^2}" />
which renders a LaTeX image inline.

The good news is that it works anywhere an <img> tag can be used.  The
bad news is that it is a "dead" image.  But again, the good news is
the "LaTeX markup" is still available in the markup too (in the <img>
tag), thus can be used by other users via grabbing the original source
and pasting into other documents.

Thanks, Owen.  This is a very useful reference.  One usage note.  This HTML causes a server hit on www.forkosh.dreamhost.com and generats a new image EACH TIME IT IS REFERENCED.  For efficiencies sake it would be much better to generate the image once, save it locally and reference the generated image from your page.  You could include the markup in the "title" or "longdesc" attribute (but NOT in "alt").

On my Linux system I used "wget" to retrieve the rendered image and save it to a file.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:52:33PM -0500, Dale Schumacher wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> > It is now (apparently!) possible to include arbitrary LaTeX equations
> > in any web service: blogs, wikis, plain html, and even mime-email.
> >
> > The stunt is to build an image tag in html which includes the LaTeX to
> > be rendered:
> >   http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm
> >   http://sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/
> > An example given in the above is:
> > <img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.cgi?c=
> > \sqrt{a^2+b^2}" />
> > which renders a LaTeX image inline.
> >
> > The good news is that it works anywhere an <img> tag can be used.  The
> > bad news is that it is a "dead" image.  But again, the good news is
> > the "LaTeX markup" is still available in the markup too (in the <img>
> > tag), thus can be used by other users via grabbing the original source
> > and pasting into other documents.
> >
>
> Thanks, Owen.  This is a very useful reference.  One usage note.  This HTML
> causes a server hit on www.forkosh.dreamhost.com and generats a new image
> EACH TIME IT IS REFERENCED.  For efficiencies sake it would be much better
> to generate the image once, save it locally and reference the generated
> image from your page.  You could include the markup in the "title" or
> "longdesc" attribute (but NOT in "alt").
>
> On my Linux system I used "wget" to retrieve the rendered image and save it
> to a file.

If you're going to do that, why not automate the whole process by
using LaTeX2HTML (or l2h, which by some accounts is better)?

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
Mathematics                        
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 [hidden email]
Australia                                http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Carl Tollander]

So if we could make the image from the latex from the mathML (via some
sort of pipeline), and we could do an image map from the image back to
the original mathML, then...

or is that too rube-goldberg-y?

C.

Russell Standish wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:52:33PM -0500, Dale Schumacher wrote:
>  
>> On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 11:41 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>> It is now (apparently!) possible to include arbitrary LaTeX equations
>>> in any web service: blogs, wikis, plain html, and even mime-email.
>>>
>>> The stunt is to build an image tag in html which includes the LaTeX to
>>> be rendered:
>>>   http://www.mayer.dial.pipex.com/tex.htm
>>>   http://sixthform.info/steve/wordpress/
>>> An example given in the above is:
>>> <img src="http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mathtex.cgi?c=
>>> \sqrt{a^2+b^2}" />
>>> which renders a LaTeX image inline.
>>>
>>> The good news is that it works anywhere an <img> tag can be used.  The
>>> bad news is that it is a "dead" image.  But again, the good news is
>>> the "LaTeX markup" is still available in the markup too (in the <img>
>>> tag), thus can be used by other users via grabbing the original source
>>> and pasting into other documents.
>>>
>>>      
>> Thanks, Owen.  This is a very useful reference.  One usage note.  This HTML
>> causes a server hit on www.forkosh.dreamhost.com and generats a new image
>> EACH TIME IT IS REFERENCED.  For efficiencies sake it would be much better
>> to generate the image once, save it locally and reference the generated
>> image from your page.  You could include the markup in the "title" or
>> "longdesc" attribute (but NOT in "alt").
>>
>> On my Linux system I used "wget" to retrieve the rendered image and save it
>> to a file.
>>    
>
> If you're going to do that, why not automate the whole process by
> using LaTeX2HTML (or l2h, which by some accounts is better)?
>
>  

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Owen Densmore]

I just wrote up notes on this process, and likely answered most of the  
questions in the thread.  See:
   http://backspaces.net/

Finally!  A step forward for Math/Web integration.  Whew!  I'll blog  
on just why this is interesting to me right now in a bit, stay tuned.

Let me know/see what you do for putting Math in your blogs, wikis,  
forums, email and so on, I think this is an interesting problem.

    -- Owen


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Kenneth Lloyd]

Owen,

Cool.  I've just been dumping raw html from LaTex2html translations, or
(gasp) manually inserting the image.

http://nmug.net/page27503755.aspx

Viewing the page source <!Contents /> shows the ONE line of code to call
CodeCogs and the LaTeX math to convert.

Ken

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email]
> [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 10:25 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] LatexRender & Friends: Math Servers
>
> I just wrote up notes on this process, and likely answered
> most of the questions in the thread.  See:
>    http://backspaces.net/
>
> Finally!  A step forward for Math/Web integration.  Whew!  
> I'll blog on just why this is interesting to me right now in
> a bit, stay tuned.
>
> Let me know/see what you do for putting Math in your blogs,
> wikis, forums, email and so on, I think this is an
> interesting problem.
>
>     -- Owen
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Owen Densmore]

On Jul 20, 2008, at 9:25 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
> <snip>
>
> If you're going to do that, why not automate the whole process by
> using LaTeX2HTML (or l2h, which by some accounts is better)?

To tell the truth, I didn't give this much thought .. until your  
message!  I think the problem this presents for me is that I generally  
use server-side content management systems, most of which use a  
"markdown" language .. WikiTalk, Textile, and so on.

Although many allow "raw html", I think the integration with these  
CMSs might be problematic with this approach.

Do you have an example that might be interesting?

    -- Owen


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org