Math equations on the web

Question

What is the best way for me to render math equations on the web? I am familiar with LaTeX's math mode.

Answer 1

texvc can convert LaTeX math equations to png or HTML.

Answer 2

It turns out this is a bit of a pain.

You can use MathML, but browser support is still iffy. If you are starting with latex you've got a few options for converting to html, but they'll all typically end up rendering the actual equations to images and inlining those.

Nothings all that pretty (unless you resort to pdf or something). What's best will depend a bit on what sort of content, how many equations, and how complicated the equations are.

Here is a decent summary.

Answer 3

LaTeX and MathML are the only "right" ways to do this. However each has severe limitations. The other options are images (not really optimal if you need to edit the equations later) or complex HTML(requires some training but can be done).

Answer 4

If you do use images, will a reader for a blind user be able to read the equation? Some may want to.

Answer 5

There is a little Mac App called LatexIt that makes it very easy to convert LaTeX equations to PDF, PNGs etc.

(I use it to create equations for my slides in Keynote or PowerPoint. It's very nice, with drag 'n drop support, so you can just 'drag' the equations anywhere to insert them.)

Answer 6

You can do more math directly in HTML than most people realize. See these notes.

The only safe way to render LaTeX is to save the output as an image. Some sites try to use tools to do this on the fly, and they never work reliably. For example, on some blogs, this works if you visit the web page directly but not if you go through Feedburner/Google Reader.

I've had terrible experience with MathML browser support, both in Firefox and IE. Don't even try it. Not yet. Maybe in a few years.

Here's the site I use to compile LaTeX to gifs.

If you're willing to use PDF instead of HTML, things get much easier. Just create your LaTeX document and use pdflatex to compile it to PDF. If you do go the PDF route, you may be interested in how to include PDF properties such as author, keywords, etc. in your LaTeX file. Also, this page explains how to mark up the LaTeX to make links in your PDF.

Answer 7

I do render LaTeX formulas "on demand" in my wiki. Basically, I extract the latex code from each wiki section and put it into a .tex file (whose filename is an md5sum of the latex, so if the same code is used again, the same tex and therefore the same image will be used). The tex file is then latex compiled by a cron task every minute, to produce first a .ps, then with the convert program a .png (named again with the original md5). The wiki entry replaces the latex text with an img tag referring to this png (with the original latex code as an alt, for text readers).

If you want to go this way, be very careful to sanitize your latex as much as you can. there are commands in latex, like \input, that you definitely do not want to let go through, as anybody able to use them would be able to include any readable file in your server disk and include it in the resulting latex output.

To solve this issue, Mediawiki (of wikipedia fame) has a special plugin which sanitizes the latex input, but I didn't want to use it for two reasons: first I did not use mediawiki, second it's written in OCaml and I didn't want to mess with a language I don't know.

Answer 8

I have the impression that MediaWiki will allow you to enter LaTeX markup (or something similar) and dynamically decide the best way to display it. Currently I think that uses HTML where possible for small expressions and images for more complicated expressions that cannot be represented otherwise; I suspect that one day it may take advantage of whatever other methods become state of the art, i.e., MathML if browsers start supporting it. So I think you might find that if you use MediaWiki as if it were your website engine you'll be forward-compatible with whatever comes in the future.

Answer 9

I've used ASCIIMathML for this in the past. It's essentially a JavaScript library and can use a plugin in IE to optimize performance, but also works without it in IE & Firefox/Mozilla (although a bit slower). The syntax supports a subset of LaTeX, but the differences cause some confusion, so it may confuse your users, depending on where they are coming from.

Here are some links so you can check it out yourself:

• ASCIIMathML
• ASCIIMath Tutorial

Not perfect and doesn't work in all browsers (Safari, etc) but it's something that works today at least, albeit in a somewhat selective subset of the web.

Answer 10

You can generate equation image on-the-fly via a LaTeX server.

http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html

If you are using WordPress, you can use LaTeX for WordPress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/latex/) plugin.

Answer 11

The jsMath package is another option that uses LaTeX markup and native fonts. Quoting from their webpage http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/:

The jsMath package provides a method of including mathematics in HTML pages that works across multiple browsers under Windows, Macintosh OS X, Linux and other flavors of unix. It overcomes a number of the shortcomings of the traditional method of using images to represent mathematics: jsMath uses native fonts, so they resize when you change the size of the text in your browser, they print at the full resolution of your printer, and you don't have to wait for dozens of images to be downloaded in order to see the mathematics in a web page. There are also advantages for web-page authors, as there is no need to preprocess your web pages to generate any images, and the mathematics is entered in TeX form, so it is easy to create and maintain your web pages.

See for example this page or that one.