[texhax] Blogs

[tom sgouros]

Matt Hoffman <hoffmanm at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

> > I just asked a question about using LaTeX, which is, I think, the
> > purpose of this list.  I wanted, and still want, to be able to put up
> > some decent looking formulas in a blog.  I did not want, and still do
> > not want, to engage in a debate over the point of blogs, lists, e-
> > mail,
> > mathematics, or whatever.

<snip>

> One possible approach that could work in both cases might be texvc
> which itself is used by mediawiki (the software responsible for
> wikipedia). To quote directly from the texvc README:
> 
> "texvc takes LaTeX-compatible equations and produces formatted output in
> HTML, MathML, and (via LaTeX/dvips/ImageMagick) rasterized PNG images.
> Input data is parsed and scrutinized for safety, and the output includes
> an estimate of whether the code is simple enough that HTML rendering
> will
> look acceptable."

I think the real issue here is that posting images via blog software
like DailyKos is kind of a pain.  You can type all you want in the post
window, and use html formatting as elaborate as you want, but you can't
upload images to the blog server.  Instead you have to find somewhere
else to post the images that won't mind the volume of downloads and link
to them from your posting.

There are several solutions to converting LaTeX to HTML, but since
mathML isn't yet a widely used standard, to my knowledge, they all
convert the equations to PNG or GIF or some image format, and
segregating these images, posting them on picture-trove.com or wherever,
and making sure the links from your blog text work properly is hard
work.  Not as hard as coal-mining, say, but computers are supposed to
make our lives *easier.*  

So I think the most useful way to reframe the question might be: is
anyone aware of a LaTeX to HTML converter that does *not* use images for
equations, and if so, how does it work?  As I said, I don't know of one,
but others on this list know a lot more than me.

 -tom


p.s. I, for one, would be interested to know in what diary
Prof. Flom's posts appear.

-- 
 ------------------------
 tomfool at as220 dot org
 http://sgouros.com  
 http://whatcheer.net