Is it possible to post equations using Microsoft Equation or equivalent?

breadmonkey

I want to ask a question about an integral but it would be pretty hard to write it using only the keyboard symbols. Is there any way around this?

subway

if you could write it in another program and then perhaps take a screenshot of it?

breadmonkey

I suppose but that's a bit naff.

subway

well it is the internet.
why dont you write it on a post card and post it to interested parties...

breadmonkey

eh...ok, will do

fletch

Looks grand to me

breadmonkey

Right, I;m confused, how do you do that?

subway

type up your equation in ms formula (or whatever tool your using)
press print screen on your keyboard
open up mspaint
paste the print screen into that
select the area that your formula is in
press ctrl+c together to copy just that selection
open another mspaint window
paste in the selection you just copied and youll have an image like the one fletch posted.
save and post

breadmonkey

Ok, just one more thing, where can I save it on the web so I can post it?

subway

imageshack.us is a popular place

Farouk.Bulsara

breadmonkey wrote:

I want to ask a question about an integral but it would be pretty hard to write it using only the keyboard symbols. Is there any way around this?

Generating, cutting and pasting images of math equations is a bit tedious! There are a number of ways to display maths on the web, and I think that the MathML standard is about the best. MathML is a W3C approved standard, much like HTML and is an integral part of the web page in which it resides. MathML offers the possibility of adding interactivity to the equations using the W3C Document Object Model. The Mozilla and Firefox browsers have native ability to display MathML. IE requires a plugin.

Unfortunately, the Boards software does not seem to facilitate mathematical input or the display of MathML. What a pity, considering that this discussion list is about Mathematics.

Farouk

ecksor

If there was a plugin for MathML or latex then I'd certainly install it. I've not heard of one, but I'll have a quick search for one now just in case.

ecksor

Ok, I'll give this a twirl once we've upgraded our servers in the next week or two: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=91545

For anyone who uses Microsoft Equation Editor, I recommend learning Latex, it looks much nicer and is much faster to use once you've gotten the hang of it.

breadmonkey

Where can I find latex? Do I have to buy it?

ecksor

Nope, the guts of it are open source. There are free frontends too along with frontends that you can pay money for. I use a Mac and I would recommend TeXShop which outputs nice pdf documents. I'm sure someone would have a recommendation for windows software and I can find a list of unix packages if you like.

Farouk.Bulsara

ecksor wrote:

If there was a plugin for MathML or latex then I'd certainly install it. I've not heard of one, but I'll have a quick search for one now just in case.

Design Science has a plugin to allow Internet Explorer to display MathML:

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/

In the case of Netscape 7, Mozilla and Firefox, the browser has inbuilt capability to display MathML.

TeX and LaTeX are fine if you want to publish your stuff to paper - i.e. static documents where the page dimensions, resolution, etc are fixed for all time.

MathML is designed for publishing on the web - and is particularly well suited for use in browsers where the screen dimension, window size, display resolution, etc can change from machine to machine. MathML does not involve the conversion of the maths to images - this might be important!

The main advantage of MathML over TeX/LaTeX is that it allows dynamic behaviours to be attached to equations and symbols - e.g. rollover and rollout effects, tooltips, left and right-click event handling, zooming, drag and drop, cut'n'paste and lots more!

Fred

ecksor

I don't care about users' browsers (although users might find this information useful). I mean that if I can find a plugin for boards' version of vbulletin then I'll look at installing that.

Farouk.Bulsara

ecksor wrote:

I don't care about users' browsers (although users might find this information useful). I mean that if I can find a plugin for boards' version of vbulletin then I'll look at installing that.

Hi Ecksor,

Sounds great - it will be interesting to see this working.

Thanks

Fred

ecksor

All I saw was that latex thing above. If anyone else finds a MathML plugin for vbulletin let me know.

Boston

breadmonkey wrote:

Where can I find latex? Do I have to buy it?

Latex is basically a declarative language, all you really need is a compiler

http://www.miktex.org/

But Heres an IDE for writing .tex files (the scource code).

http://www.texniccenter.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/texniccenter/

and heres a getting started PDF

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf

Latex is very good at producing professional looking documents. Possibly because so many professionals use it to begin with.

pH

ecksor wrote:

All I saw was that latex thing above. If anyone else finds a MathML plugin for vbulletin let me know.

I've been on about this forever ... but could we get subscript and superscript tags added? A lot a vB boards have them and they make simple math and chemical formula much more readable. Latex would be great too for complex equations, but sub/sup would really help too for simple stuff.

Michael Collins

Hey Ecksor, have a look at how the lads over on PhysicsForums have implemented LaTeX, it really works great.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=8997

ecksor

Looks nice. I only skimmed over the first two pages but I couldn't see if they're using the mimetex thing I linked above or not. Still haven't upgraded anything here yet so I won't be adding new features yet.