Web display of mathematical equations
ajfox
Last modified: Tue Jun 29 14:43:29 1999
Current Options
At present, the options for including mathematics on web pages are
limited by browser capabilities. Current methods for displaying
equations fall into two categories:
- Browser display
-
The basis of the document is HTML. Equations are displayed with embedded images or Java applets, or are rendered natively as text (possibly with the use of symbol fonts from the browser).
- Graphical page display
- Full-page images of the document are rendered by a viewer or plug-in from files in page-description languages (TeX/DVI/PS
or PDF), or are displayed directly in the browser (e.g., images scanned
from paper originals).
For direct creation of HTML-based documents, the choices are the same as
for any Web authoring task (a text editor or full-featured, WYSIWYG
program), and the process of embedding images of equations is the same
as placing any image on a Web page. Equation editors included with word
processing applications may be used to generate images of simple
equations, and newer tools dedicated to mathematics such as WebEQ
include both WYSIWYG math palettes and a typesetting syntax to generate
images of equations or equation-rendering applets.
There are various conversion programs to translate TeX/LaTeX files to
HTML; these may generate images for equations, or attempt to represent
them in native HTML. Packages such as Maple and Mathematica let you
save directly to HTML with images and/or generate images of single
equations.
Samples and Tools
Displaying Math on the
Web is a site created by Academic Computing with samples of the
different approaches mentioned above, all generated with tools available
on Athena. It includes:
- sample pages containing equations
- notes on tools for creating such pages
- comparative overview of different approaches
- general information on putting math on the web
Future Prospects
Ongoing developments toward integrated Web publishing of mathematics
have led to the creation of MathML, an XML-based format for marking up
equations both in terms of presentation and structure. It is intended
not only to encode mathematical notation for visual display, but also to
capture semantics in a way that lets other tools process the content of
equations. MathML basically consists of a set of HTML-like tags used
hierarchically to represent the structural relationships between
elements in a mathematical expression. It can be read by humans, but is
extremely verbose and is intended not for direct editing but rather for
machine-to-machine communication, including authoring tools or syntax
converters.
Ultimately, the hope is that browsers will be able to render MathML
directly; it is already being incorporated into authoring tools,
applets, and plug-ins aimed at the scientific community. Further
information on putting math on the web
UP
PREV
NEXT