[Scummvm-devel] New Wiki extensions for math stuff

[Max Horn]

Hi there,

as you may know, we didn't have support for the <math> MediaWiki tag  
so far, as it required installing a TeX distribution on the web  
server, which we can't do. Yesterday I discovered a replacement for  
this based on jsMath <http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/> which  
renders TeX-style math formulas on the client side using JavaScript.

Here you can read about how to use it:
  <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/ 
Instructions_to_Wiki_Editors#JsMath>
And here is another brief example:
   <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User:Fingolfin/Sandbox>


This is not perfect, as it requires JavaScript and has a certain  
overhead when loading a page, but it also has advantages; like if you  
increase the font size, then unlike the static PNGs generated by the  
default MediaWiki code, this formulas created by jsMath scale along.  
Also, you can download some free TrueType fonts from
   <http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/download/jsMath-fonts.html>
and
   <http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/download/extra-fonts/welcome.html 
 >
to speed up the rendering; as a side effect, this also makes it  
possible to copy&paste the rendered formulas to a degree.

If your browser does not support JavaScript or is console based (say  
w3m or links), you'll see the formulas in LaTeX notation; e.g. for my  
sandbox, you'd see

[...]
   Some math mode tests:

   \displaystyle \sqrt{2}+\pi^{20+a_i} - \tfrac{23}{42}

   \displaystyle \sum_{k=1}^n k = \frac{k(k+1)}{2}
[...]


To me as a mathematician (i.e. being used to reading LaTeX formulas),  
this is actually a lot lot more readable than the alternative (using  
HTML entities and unicode to encode the same formula); and the  
graphical rendition looks better anyway.


Enjoy,
Max