Still More LaTeX On The Web

A good friend has brought yet another library for embedding LaTeX into an HTML page to my attention. It's a JavaScript library called MathJax. It looks like MathJax builds on jsMath, a 2004 vintage JavaScript library.

The results look beautiful to me. If you're a scientist, it's got to be great to have such wonderful tools so freely available. The typesetting is taken care of for you; all you have to do now is imagine great applications. And the proof is left for you! QED, baby.

More LaTeX On The Web

Sometimes I find myself in need of a GIF image of an equation or two. I want to be able to generate them quickly and easily, but I find that my MikTeX setup on Windows isn't helping.

Fortunately, Google found a utility that converts LaTeX to an image at EquationSheet.com. All I have to do is type in a snippet of LaTeX, hit the "convert" button, and I can see the equation rendered as an image. Even better, I can copy the URL and paste it into another HTML page as an image tag. Just what the doctor ordered!

jsMath: Typesetting Math In A Browser

I just became aware of jsMath, a JavaScript library from the Math Union for typesetting mathematics in a browser.

The content from the web site says it far better than I will, but it looks like jsMath was inspired by the slow adoption of MathML support in browsers running under Windows, Mac, and *nix machines.

The examples that the web site offers look beautiful. It's based on TeX, so it's no surprise that the results look so good. I didn't get a chance to dive into it this weekend. Unseasonably nice weather on the East Coast made it possible for me to clean up all the leaves that were covering my yard, so time to program was hard to come by. But I'll be looking into this gem soon. It's a nice complement to my recent rediscovery of LaTeX.

It amazes me to see how smart people can come up with things like this. It's also another example of the increasing reach of JavaScript. Brendan Eich's language is becoming more important every day.