[Pmwiki-users] latest news on the math front

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, Feb 06, 2004 at 06:10:56PM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> It's working pretty well, here's a test area:
> 
>    http://www.lyx.org/~chr/wiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=MathTest.MathTest
> 
> I've also added a directive [[mimetex: x = y ]] that doesn't use
> latex/dvipng, but a very small tool called mimetex which produces gifs.
> The advantage with that tool is that latex doesn't have to be installed.

Christian-

This is really cool.  I think it's a good idea to break this module
into two modules, one that uses mimeTeX and another that uses LaTeX or
something more robust if needed.  A WikiAdmin can then choose whichever
approach is most appropriate for his users/server, and both approaches
can use the same markup.

> Unfortunately the interest for using this on the lyx wiki is low, so I'd
> like to hand it over to someone else. (I'm working on a few other pmwiki
> projects that will be of use for the lyx wiki, so I'm giving them prioriy)

I'll be glad to take over the mathTeX version, as it will be of use to
many of my colleagues at TAMUCC.  All can experiment with it on the beta
site at http://www.pmichaud.com/work/beta/pmwiki.php/MimeTeX/MimeTeX .
The code I used is at http://www.pmichaud.com/work/beta/local/mimetex.php
-- I'll clean it up and add it to the Cookbook when 0.6 is released.

Some changes I made:
  * I chose {$ ... $} as the markup instead of [[$ ... $]], since a lot
    of directives already begin with [[$.
  * It doesn't need the external shell script--just the location of
    the mimetex binary itself.
  * I put the cached images in 0.6's pub directory, so they're easily
    accessible to browsers.
  * I'm using simple md5 hashes for the image filenames, as I'm
    comfortable with the low probability of collisions.  Hey, if md5 
    hashing is good enough for authentication then it ought to be good 
    enough for this application (I'll grant that good authentication 
    schemes typically do more than a simple md5 hash, but you get the
    point).  And if a md5 collision between two LaTeX equations ever 
    *does* occur I'd love to report it.  :-)
  * I fixed the img alt="" attribute to work if there are single 
    quotes in the equation markup.

Pm

P.S.:  Christian--let me know if the credit I'm giving you in the 
mimetex.php file is sufficient/appropriate.