Math equations on the web

Question

How can I render Math equations on the web? I am already familiar with LaTeX's Math mode.

Answer 1

texvc can convert LaTeX math equations to png or HTML.

Answer 2

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 3

Currently the state of client side MathML rendering isn't ready for broad adoption. The means you really need to render the MathML as an image. How you do this will depend on your environment.

Do you have root access to your own server? Are you comfortable installing software on it? In this case, you can render your own images. If your running blogging software or a wiki, generally you can find a plugin which will take advantage of your platforms capabilities. This is usually the idea scenario if you plan to write a lot of math expressions.

If you host your own images, you can either pre-render them, or use an extension like mimetex.cgi. If you allow arbitrary MathML expressions to be rendered, you run the risk of other websites hot linking to your image renderer. If you put a filter in on your web server to prevent hot linking, then people viewing your site through a feed reader will also be blocked.

If you can't render your own images, or if you only have a few expressions you want to render, then you can usually have another service generate the image, and you hot link the image on your site. The downside of course is your dependent on another site, who gets nothing in return for serving up images for you.

Examples of other services (as mentioned in other comments) include: * http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/LaTeX/AoPS_L_TeXer.php : alt text http://alt2.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/latexrender/pictures/a/f/c/afc183343d84d030898f589bac12a8d9cf04558a.gif * http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html : mimetex.cgi http://www.forkosh.dreamhost.com/mimetex.cgi?c=%5Csqrt%7Ba%5E2+b%5E2%7D

The advantage of using mimetex is one can easily change the formula and have it re-rendered.

Answer 4

The other answers are out-of-date. As of 2012, beautiful math is easy to write and render. The technology is called MathJax. You can see it in quiet action on MathOverflow and hundreds of math blogs.

MathJax is an open source JavaScript display engine for mathematics that works in all modern browsers. No more setup for readers. No more browser plugins. No more font installations… It just works.

Mathjax is reliable and unobtrusive, so you just need to write the math. You do so in Tex (Latex), a concise syntax with which most scientists and mathematicians are familiar (and have shared decades of good tutorials). For Mathjax, you simply write Tex code in-line in your HTML between double dollar signs, eg.

When $$a \ne 0$$, there are two solutions to $$ax^2 + bx + c = 0$$ and they are $$x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}.$$

To use Mathjax to render your math, put a Javascript line in your HTML header:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js"></script>

If you publish on a platform such as Wordpress, Tumblr or Blogger there are plug-ins in their galleries to do this (Wordpress).

How does Mathjax render math? With Javascript it renders your math to beautiful HTML and CSS (remarkably resembling Latex) in a fraction of a second. If a browser supports MathML, it can render math through that too, but that's not important. It's a popular success because the end-user workflow is easy, not because of the technology behind it.

You can choose to use Mathjax (over png images) on Wikipedia if you have an account. Look for Special:Preferences / Appearance.

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MathML is ridiculous. It's neither human-readable nor human-writable (the quadratic equation takes 800 characters - it's 50 in Tex). It's just another pointless XML language . Thankfully, it's obsolete before most browsers support it. It doesn't even look as good as Tex or Mathjax's HTML-CSS!

Answer 5

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 6

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.