[Pmwiki-users] Re: Typesetting math -- experience using PmWiki

chr@home.se chr
Wed Sep 15 13:26:13 CDT 2004


On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Joachim Durchholz wrote:

> chr at home.se wrote:
> > 
> > This is probably a general problem with HTML, but when doing technical 
> > stuff you really need something. (Would be needed when writing emails as 
> > well for that matter).

> >>MimeTex continues to get updated; indeed, John Forkosh has been updating
> >>his package so that it incorporates the caching directly and
> >>(supposedly) integrates easier with PmWiki.

> Personally, I highly dislike TeX due to its horrific syntax. The TeX 
> typesetting algorithm has been recast in OCaml (I think, I'll have to 
> look it up), so it would be easy to retrofit a better syntax.

The math syntax isn't so bad. Caveat: Since I wrote my thesis using LyX I
never actually used it. One of my *long* term goals is to enable LyX to
edit wiki pages -- entering math would then be trivial since LyX's math
editor is amazing.

Anyway, I think using the basic subset of LaTeX for math is a reasonable 
solution since it's well known within the scientific community.

> The downside of all this is that math typesetting is heavy on syntax, 
> which is diametrally opposite to pmWiki's simplicity goal. I'm not sure 
> how to handle that (maybe recast syntax extensions in plug-ins, and have 
> a syntax that tells the page editor "here comes complicated plug-in 
> stuff"...)

Guess that's another argument for why a separate editor would be good. As
for using a directive that changes the syntax, that worked well when I
wrote a plugin that did something like this. I wonder if Patrick continued
working on that, can't remember what happened.

Ah... this is probably it:

	http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MimeTeX

guess I'll have to check it out.

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr





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