More on typesetting

I tried to write more about this mimeTeX, but the frustrations with blogger made me erase the whole thing. Turns out that you can use a public server that was generously provided by Mr. Forkosh to generate gifs of LaTeX code. Here is an example


< img src="http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?c=\sqrt{a^2+b^2}"
alt="" border=0 align=middle >



Unfortunately, I think one needs very light background, for these to be visible, so I need to make that happen (I'm guessing it'd be enough to make a white box around the gif). Maybe this'll work:




Gotta go walk the dogs. I'll try to make it work later :)

Typing mathematics in blogs

I was talking to couple of friends about blogs in mathematics classrooms and they both asked "How do you typeset math in HTML". I had to say I had no idea. We use LaTeX, but that doesn't translate to HTML, unfortunately. So, instead of asking around, I tried to look it up. The is the first thing I discovered, courtesy of Clark Grubb , and I guess it should be accessible to high school and college students. Scroll down to find LaTeX lover's solution :)

The character entities can all be invoked via their numeric or alphabetic names. For example, both

x &#8712; A and x ∈ A

will display

x ∈ A

A radical can be done. The HTML

&radic;<span style="text-decoration: overline">a + b</span>

will display as

√a + b



Below is a partial list of the character entities specificied in the W3C Character Entity References for HTML 4. It includes most of the characters of interest to the mathematician.

Generic Character Entities

#	alpha	sym	IE6	FF	description
38	amp	&	Y	Y	ampersand
160	nbsp		Y	Y	no-break space = non-breaking space
8194	ensp		N	?	en space
8195	emsp		N	?	em space
8201	thinsp		N	?	thin space
8204	zwnj	‌	?	?	zero width non-joiner
8205	zwj	‍	?	?	zero width joiner
8211	ndash	–	Y	Y	en dash
8212	mdash	—	Y	Y	em dash
8230	hellip	…	Y	Y	horizontal ellipsis = three dot leader

Mathematical Character Entities

#	alpha	sym	IE6	FF	description
60	lt	<	Y	Y	less-than sign
62	gt	>	Y	Y	greater-than sign
176	deg	°	Y	Y	degree sign
177	plusmn	±	Y	Y	plus-minus sign = plus-or-minus sign
215	times	×	Y	Y	multiplication sign
216	Oslash	Ø	Y	Y	latin capital letter O with stroke = latin capital letter O slash
247	divide	÷	Y	Y	division sign
8226	bull	•	Y	Y	bullet = black small circle
8465	image	ℑ	N	Y	blackletter capital I = imaginary part
8472	weierp	℘	N	Y	script capital P = power set = Weierstrass p
8476	real	ℜ	N	Y	blackletter capital R = real part symbol
8501	alefsym	ℵ	N	Y	alef symbol = first transfinite cardinal
8592	larr	←	Y	Y	leftwards arrow
8593	uarr	↑	Y	Y	upwards arrow
8594	rarr	→	Y	Y	rightwards arrow
8595	darr	↓	Y	Y	downwards arrow
8596	harr	↔	Y	Y	left right arrow
8709	empty	∅	N	Y	empty set = null set = diameter
8711	nabla	∇	Y	Y	nabla = backward difference
8712	isin	∈	Y	Y	element of
8713	notin	∉	N	Y	not an element of
8715	ni	∋	Y	Y	contains as member
8719	prod	∏	Y	Y	n-ary product = product sign
8721	sum	∑	Y	Y	n-ary sumation
8722	minus	−	Y	Y	minus sign
8730	radic	√	Y	Y	square root = radical sign
8734	infin	∞	Y	Y	infinity
8736	ang	∠	Y	Y	angle
8746	cup	∪	Y	Y	union = cup
8747	int	∫	Y	Y	integral
8764	sim	∼	Y	Y	tilde operator = varies with = similar to
8773	cong	≅	N	Y	approximately equal to
8776	asymp	≈	Y	Y	almost equal to = asymptotic to
8800	ne	≠	Y	Y	not equal to
8801	equiv	≡	Y	Y	identical to
8804	le	≤	Y	Y	less-than or equal to
8805	ge	≥	Y	Y	greater-than or equal to
8834	sub	⊂	Y	Y	subset of
8835	sup	⊃	Y	Y	superset of
8836	nsub	⊄	N	Y	not a subset of
8838	sube	⊆	Y	Y	subset of or equal to
8839	supe	⊇	Y	Y	superset of or equal to
8853	oplus	⊕	Y	Y	circled plus = direct sum
8855	otimes	⊗	N	Y	circled times = vector product
8869	perp	⊥	Y	Y	up tack = orthogonal to = perpendicular
8901	sdot	⋅	N	Y	dot operator
8968	lceil	⌈	N	Y	left ceiling = apl upstile
8969	rceil	⌉	N	Y	right ceiling
8970	lfloor	⌊	N	Y	left floor = apl downstile
8971	rfloor	⌋	N	Y	right floor
9001	lang	〈	N	Y	left-pointing angle bracket = bra
9002	rang	〉	N	Y	right-pointing angle bracket = ket

Greek Letter Character Entities

Both IE6 and Firefox implement all of these characters.

#	alpha	sym	description
913	Alpha	Α	greek capital letter alpha
914	Beta	Β	greek capital letter beta
915	Gamma	Γ	greek capital letter gamma
916	Delta	Δ	greek capital letter delta
917	Epsilon	Ε	greek capital letter epsilon
918	Zeta	Ζ	greek capital letter zeta
919	Eta	Η	greek capital letter eta
920	Theta	Θ	greek capital letter theta
921	Iota	Ι	greek capital letter iota
922	Kappa	Κ	greek capital letter kappa
923	Lambda	Λ	greek capital letter lambda
924	Mu	Μ	greek capital letter mu
925	Nu	Ν	greek capital letter nu
926	Xi	Ξ	greek capital letter xi
927	Omicron	Ο	greek capital letter omicron
928	Pi	Π	greek capital letter pi
929	Rho	Ρ	greek capital letter rho there is no Sigmaf, and no U+03A2 character either
931	Sigma	Σ	greek capital letter sigma
932	Tau	Τ	greek capital letter tau
933	Upsilon	Υ	greek capital letter upsilon
934	Phi	Φ	greek capital letter phi
935	Chi	Χ	greek capital letter chi
936	Psi	Ψ	greek capital letter psi
937	Omega	Ω	greek capital letter omega
945	alpha	α	greek small letter alpha
946	beta	β	greek small letter beta
947	gamma	γ	greek small letter gamma
948	delta	δ	greek small letter delta
949	epsilon	ε	greek small letter epsilon
950	zeta	ζ	greek small letter zeta
951	eta	η	greek small letter eta
952	theta	θ	greek small letter theta
953	iota	ι	greek small letter iota
954	kappa	κ	greek small letter kappa
955	lambda	λ	greek small letter lambda
956	mu	μ	greek small letter mu
957	nu	ν	greek small letter nu
958	xi	ξ	greek small letter xi
959	omicron	ο	greek small letter omicron
960	pi	π	greek small letter pi
961	rho	ρ	greek small letter rho
962	sigmaf	ς	greek small letter final sigma
963	sigma	σ	greek small letter sigma
964	tau	τ	greek small letter tau
965	upsilon	υ	greek small letter upsilon
966	phi	φ	greek small letter phi
967	chi	χ	greek small letter chi
968	psi	ψ	greek small letter psi
969	omega	ω	greek small letter omega

Immediately after stealing all this code from Clark (thanks a bunch), I ran into Flip Tomato's Blog. This was an absolute gem, as it contained the following link: mimeTeX. Score! I better get this running on my computers. If anybody has better solutions, let me know.

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