Customizing MWD for math equations

Question

HI,

I want to customize the WMD editor (or wmd-new) to convert TeX equations like $\frac{2}{3}$ to Google Charts API images ()

Is it possible to customize how the HTML is generated?

Answer 1

I decided to use markitup with a python-markdown extension that I wrote. Here's the code for the Google App Engine parser:

import markdown

from urllib import urlencode
from markdown.inlinepatterns import Pattern
from google.appengine.ext import webapp

LATEX_RE = r'\${2}([^$]+)\${2}'
API_URL = 'http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'

class LatexPattern(Pattern):
    """
        Searchs for LaTex equations $$\latex$$ and
        returns img tags using google charts API
    """

    def handleMatch(self, m):
        el = markdown.etree.Element('img')
        src = API_URL + urlencode({
            'chl': m.group(2),
            'cht': 'tx'
        })
        el.set('src', src)
        el.set('alt', m.group(2))
        return el

class LatexExtension(markdown.Extension):
    def extendMarkdown(self, md, md_globals):
        md.inlinePatterns.add(
            'latex',
            LatexPattern(LATEX_RE, self),
            '<automail'
        )

class MarkdownHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def post(self):
        data = self.request.get('data')
        extension = LatexExtension(configs=[])
        md = markdown.Markdown(extensions=[extension])
        html = md.convert(data)
        self.response.out.write(html)